The Jackfish

Time passed, walking hand in hand with seasons as they came and went. Life was the best it could be for the hunter and his wife. The hunter prospered, and the seasons treated them well, but neither one could meet the other’s eyes. The words of the Sorceress stood always between them. Still, some nights were very cold, and so it came to pass that the hunter’s wife was pregnant. They did not prepare a room, but the hunter took his wife into the nearby village where a doctor listened to her heartbeat, and took her temperature, and tested all manner of things about her body which the hunter already knew. He took care of all those things his wife could not do as her belly grew, and he was thankful for their prosperity, which allowed him to care for her.

One month, as the doctor listened to the belly of the hunter’s wife very near the end of her pregnancy, he said, “Your wife has not one child within her, but two.” Thus they learned that the hunter’s wife was to bear twins.

That night, they sat up late in their small cabin. They spoke for the first time of the bargain struck by the Sorceress. Neither of them wished to surrender their first born child, and they both agreed that with the hunter’s wife bearing twins, the Sorceress now intended to take two children from them rather than one. “Let us face whatever consequences there must be,” said the hunter’s wife. “We have had a short reprieve, and we shall soon have brought children into this world. That is enough. Let us secret away our children and face the Sorceress together.”

The hunter saw the wisdom in his wife’s words. “I know of one who is clever enough to hide our children from even the Sorceress. I will see if I am able to beg his favor.”

The hunter rose early the following day, as was his custom, and his wife was up earlier still. He had breakfast, and promised her he would return. He carried with him a freshly cut hunk of venison, and he set off into the forest, following the sounds of birds, singing in the late summer morning. As a good hunter must, he spoke all the languages of all the birds. He listened to their conversations and let their words guide him through the forest, until he heard at last the seared-throat call of the one he sought.

Crow, who brought fire to men, had died many years ago. She had been one of the eldest of those first beasts upon the earth, and had lived longer than many gods and even the ocean. But though she had died, like the ocean she had a child, and her child was also Crow. The hunter came before Crow with his offering of venison and presented it to him, speaking in the language of crows. “The Sorceress has bargained to take our firstborn children from us, for through my foolish actions we owe her our lives. My wife and I will face whatever punishment we must, but we cannot give over our own children. We ask your favor to take our children when they are born and hide them from the Sorceress. They will be your children from then on, and in exchange for your protection and your wisdom they will always watch over you and your own.”

Crow took the venison from the hunter and placed it on a branch so it could ripen. “You have always been kind to crows,” he said to the hunter. “Though I know you hunt many other birds, you have no greed or malice in you. My brethren and I have often watched over the children of men, and so if that is all you ask, it is little enough. I shall come when I hear your children’s cries and keep them safe and secret.”

The hunter thanked Crow, and their bargain was struck.

It seemed like the glittering of an eye, as the cusp where summer turns to fall rushed up on the hunter and his wife, and she woke one morning to the beginnings of labor. Her labor was long, and the hunter moved back and forth between their wood-burning stove and her bedside, heating damp cloths and bowls of water. He held his wife’s hands and hoped that Crow was already on his way as the twin children were born, one boy and one girl.

The hunter quickly bundled up both newborns, and no sooner had he finished than Crow appeared at the small window. The hunter did not look to see whether he grabbed the boy or the girl, but handed one of the children over to Crow and said, “Please hurry and return, for the Sorceress is surely on her way as well.” Crow could carry only one at a time, and so he flew from the window carrying one of the twins. As soon as Crow had gone the other twin began to cry out, and as if she had been summoned by the cries of the newborn infant, the Sorceress was instantly before the hunter, his wife, and their daughter (for it was the boy whom Crow had taken).

The hunter sat beside his wife, who was too exhausted to speak, and spoke the same wisdom she had given to him, “Please, we two will take whatever punishment you have to give for my own foolish actions, but do not take our child. Crow will return for her soon enough and we will go willingly.”

“You are brave now to face the truth of your misdeeds,” said the Sorceress, “but you have still lied and deceived me, and acted with fear and dishonor. Although I will grant you this much, and not seek out your son, you are, the three of you, mine. A lie is as much a life as a death.”

This was the Sorceress’ final pronouncement, and moments later the little cabin was empty. This was how the son and daughter of the hunter and his wife came to be separated. This was how their son came to be raised by Crow. This was how their daughter came to be raised by the Sorceress.

Crow carried the baby back to his nest. Though all the crows and ravens of the world were his children, his nest was empty. He settled the child in a bed of warm and worn feathers, shed over the many seasons of his long life. The child’s eyes were already open, colored a bright and pale blue. Crow watched the child’s chest rise and fall, though the infant made not a sound. The child was born with his eyes open - Crow recognized this immediately - and he saw the world around him clearly. The pale eyes met Crow’s dark eyes, and he gently rocked the child, singing a lullabye in the languages of men and birds.

While the child was too young to leave his nest, Crow brought him food and all manner of things he found in the forest. Crow brought the child seeds, and the child learned how they grew. Crow brought the child old and rusted game traps, and the child learned how to be a hunter, and how things would come to their ends. Crow brought the child spiders, and he learned how they wove their webs, and what secrets they wrote in them. The first language the child learned was the language of the crows and the ravens. Crow brought each bird of the forest to speak with the child and so he learned all the languages of all the forest’s birds. Each bird taught him their songs and their stories, and the child learned all these as well. Only when the child could speak to all the birds did Crow and his sister Raven teach him the languages of men. The child was the youngest of all of Crow’s many offspring, and so he was called the Jack.

The child Jack learned to speak, and to sing, and to tell all the stories before he could walk. When the time came for the child to leave the nest at last, he asked Crow to teach him how to fly. “You are my son,” Crow told him, “but you are also a man, and flight is taught to birds alone. I will teach you all I know of the forests so that you may move freely about them.” This was enough for the child, and so he learned first how to crawl amongst all the branches of all the trees. Jack could climb the highest trees in the forest and see for miles around, or slip from branch to branch and journey through all the paths the birds had taught him. When the child grew to a boy, he began to climb down from the trees and move amongst them. He saw how silently the birds flew from branch to branch, and so his footfalls became as soft as a bird’s wing.

When the boy was old enough to walk through the forest on his own, he learned to be a hunter so that he could bring food to Crow, and he learned to find the plants which bore edible fruit so that he could bring food to the other birds, and he learned the mushrooms and leaves it was safe to eat so that even if there was nothing to hunt and no fruits to pick no one need starve. So the Jack watched as, season after season, new young birds were born and raised and learned to fly. He helped feed and teach the young birds, as all the other birds had taught and fed him, and he would run through the forest after the young birds as they made their first flight. But birds all grow faster than men, and so the birds would always leave, and the boy would always stay. The boy made a vow that when his legs were long enough, he would follow the birds and see where they flew every winter.

However, the boy quickly tired of hunting the creatures of the forest. He was already a friend and protector to all the birds, and he took no pleasure in what seemed like torture to him, following and hunting and killing. He saw how the other animals killed only the slow, or the weak, or the unaware, but he had no way of seeing these things, as he had neither the sight of an owl nor the nose of a wolf. Then one day, he saw the osprey diving for its catch of fish in a place where the river was wide and the trees were few. In seeing the osprey fish, he learned how to fish, and so set about gathering scraps of string and barbed hooks.

The very first fish the boy caught was a great pike, as long as himself and ten times as old, which is quite old for a pike fish. The pike had been around long enough to know who the boy must be, so he said, “I will teach you all I know of fish. I will teach you our language and how to read the waters, and you will never want for fish.” The boy accepted the pike fish’s council, and he learned the currents of the river as well as the pike fish knew them. He knew the times to cast his line and where the river would carry his lure. He returned the pike to the river and, thereafter, left all pikes unharmed. This was how he spent his boyhood, bringing food to his father Crow, and telling stories to all the birds and the trees as he sat by the river and fished. The birds came to call him the Fisher, and they carried his stories to all corners of the earth. And so he told his tales to the world. But even as the shadows grow long while the sun sets, so Jack the Fisher’s legs grew long and he became a man.

When he could touch Crow’s nest without taking his feet from the earth, the boy knew it was time to go into the world and see where the birds flew. So he found Crow and said, “Father, I have learned many stories and many languages. I will never go hungry or want for shelter. I am ready to find my own way in the world. But before I go out into the world, I would like to take on your name.”

“You would do me a great honor to take my name into the world,” said Crow, “for men have long forgotten all I have done for them. You are my Jack, and the fisher for all the birds, so let the world know you as Jackfish of the Crow, after all those who have taught you. But you must know this before you seek your fortune: you have a sister. She was stolen away from you on the day of your birth by the Sorceress, when your father and mother gave you over to my care. You may do as you will with this knowledge, but it is your inheritance and so you must have it before you go into the world.”

Jack the Fisher thanked Crow for his generosity and for his final words, and he packed up his few possessions into a bundle. “I think I shall find my sister, for we have been too long apart,” he declared, as he set out from the forest, “but first I must see something of this world which all my brethren have visited.” Thus determined, he set out on the path of the forest which would lead him into the world of men.