Early one morning, James took a leisurely flight, surveying the terrain below, looking for tasty treats or for anything shiny that might catch his eye. He was supposed to meet his brother Charlie in the same tree where their nest once was. It didn’t feel all that long that they were brood mates resting in their mother’s soft, black down feathers. Whenever she came back to feed them, she’d tell them about an old lady who lived in a small, quiet cabin deep in the forest. Somewhere near an old logging route, she mentioned how the old woman was extremely generous and kind. Once he and his siblings were old enough and had fledged the nest, their mother, Rose, took them to the old lady. He remembered how she gave them something strange. It had a long, slender, lumpy shape with a dimpled, hard, rough shell surrounding the treat inside. However, he could sense there was a delicious treat inside the shell as he generously took the old lady’s offering. He flapped his black wings towards a branch with his prize on the edge of the clearing that had the lady’s house. A few pecks of his beak, and the shell broke open, revealing two light colored nuts inside a pod. He gratefully took one of the nutmeats in his beak and swallowed the tasty treat. Later on, he learned that the two-legged humans called those treats peanuts.

But he was suddenly pulled from his reverie when he heard a gunshot echo through the forest with a deafening sound. It sounded like it came from the east, where the farmer, who was in his sixites lived. James heart dropped. Did the farmer shoot down another crow? He beat his wings hard, his heart racing as he flew towards the source of the sound. He was hoping it was the pesky fox that hung out too close to the chicken coop. He heard stories about how much the farmer's wife loved her chickens, spoiling them rotten. Or maybe it was the farmer's son, just doing target practice, but James couldn't take his chances. As he grew closer, there was a congregation of crows; their distressed caws were deafening. His heart sank. Someone was shot down from the sky dead. Her lifeless body lay on the earth, her black feathers scattered in a gruesome black mess, and blood beneath her. The crow that was shot was Rose.

"Mother!" James swooped down, spiraling in the sky to land beside the lifeless black body. Rose's feathers, once so soft and warm, now lay in a mangled mess of blood and bone that could barely be recognized as a crow. She was gone. His caws of anguish joined the rest of the flock's as they mourned their own.

"Crows are survivors," she had always told him and Charlie. "Our ancestor, many thousands of years ago, stole the sun from the heavens and brought its light to earth. We keep his quickness, his cleverness, with us." But no crow was cleverer than the aim of a two-legged human, and no crow flew quicker than a gunshot. James buried his head in his wing. "Mother," he cawed. "I'm so sorry. How can I go on?"

Another crow, Clara, ran her beak through his feathers to comfort him. Riley pressed against him. "Life will go on," he said, but James wasn't sure if he believed it. Even Shadow, the flock navigator, seemed shaken by the loss. Rose was beloved by all as the best storyteller in the northlands. No crow would ever have harmed her.

Death was sacred to the crows of the northlands. When a crow died, it was custom for the flock to each give a treasure, one of their most prized or symbolic possessions, to the deceased. James placed the shell of a peanut on the ground beside Rose's broken body and softly said the sacred words, "Fly high and far, until we meet again."

"Fly high and far!" echoed Riley, and the other crows took up the call. Each of them in turn placed a small token, a little shiny thing or a piece of food, on the site of the death. The sounds of cawing echoed between the pines and stones for hours, but life had to go on. The congregation disassembled at dusk light, each crow flying off to their nests. Only then did James realize he hadn't seen Charlie, his brood-mate, at the mourning circle. How was he going to break the news to his brother?