The Freezing Crow
A Minta Story

If there was one thing my troll mother Minta liked to do more than any other thing in this whole world, it was telling stories. Making up and telling stories.

Well, let me put it this way: for many years—say from three and change to about ten or so—I never questioned the veracity of what she told me. Not at all. Never. Gospel. If she told me them, she told me something that had happened, had been done, had been wished, thought, had been said. Truth. No question. None.

Then from say around eleven up through my mid-twenties, I grew increasingly skeptical. These stories could not all be true, or all-the-way true. Very doubtful aka No way. She was making all or part of them up, she spun these tales out of whole or at least just-about-whole cloth.

Less and less question about that.

But then, as I matured (okay, late bloomer) I began more and more to revert to my initial take: she wasn’t making these stories up, she was remembering. Implausible, even outrageous (as some of her stories were), their hearts of truth beat stronger and stronger for me the older I grew. Truer and truer.

And today, I have grown to accept that her stories are not so much stories as, as I said, memories—or that she recounts some other trolls’ remembered story.

Not made up, in other words.

Also, trolls are, I now know, or at least strongly suspect, not of this world. I did on more than one occasion ask her outright, and she always answered no, we’re not, but so glibly that I could not be entirely sure, even though she often added a slightly offended “Would I lie to you?

According to Minta (though she’s a little stingy with details), they are visitors, dispatched here by God knows who (she would not say) and God knows when (she does not know) to keep an eye on us; and in my case, an eye on me particularly. And while her more salient interventions in my life were undertaken to keep me alive (as in, yes, to stop me from dying), what she did more than anything else, and what remains with me more than anything else: she told me a lot of stories.

A lot. And she still, to this very day, does.

One story she did not tell me, however, was “Of Trolls” that you can find a little earlier in this kaleidoscope of life fragments. This particular story (or history) she handed to me early one morning in Los Angeles, handwritten on incredibly fine (but strong) what I took to be paper but which wasn’t, in a blue, ornate hand. What is this, I asked her.

An extract, she said.

Extract from where?

From the Encyclopaedia of Trolls, she said—with a face so straight that I did not feel my leg in the least pulled.

For real?

She smiled: for me to know and for you maybe never to find out. Then she sat down and busied herself with something or other—meaning for me to read what she had given me, now.

So, I did. Is this true? I said once I was done.

I don’t see why not, she said.

No, really? I said. Meaning it.

It is not un-true, she said.

I gave her a few more increasingly empathically sincere “No, reallys” but she never took the bait as it were. Not Un-true was what she tossed back at me to the point where I knew that no matter what I said or did, this was as much as she would divulge or explain, at least for the moment.

Then she asked for the papers back.

Setting “Of Trolls” and the mysterious Encyclopaedia of Trolls aside, here is the first story I remember Minta actually telling me. I was three and a month or two staying with Irene, my dad’s mom (Farmor) at the time, and I was out walking on my own down a brilliantly cold (and snowy, recently plowed) road just outside her house.

Not a cloud in the sky.

Not as much as a sigh of wind.

Oceans of snow all around, even the forests were covered with more than just a sprinkling—more like steeped in white.

The smoke rising from distant houses’ chimneys rose straight up, plumb as you please, drawn with care, dissipating from black to less black to gray to less gray to white air to smokeless air, to pure, colorless air, at I don’t know what altitude, fifty meters perhaps. And walking down that road, hearing the snow squeaking under my feet, it was that cold, I saw two crows on a telephone wire, nestled up against each other, looking very cold, and I thought of a popular song I had heard on the radio more than once recently that told one and all not to light fires (i.e., burn precious fuel—this was not long after the Second World War and fuel was still in short supply) to warm the crows (meaning not to light fires in drafty or badly insulated rooms so that the heat escaped and, in theory, kept the outside crows warmer than the people inside).

That’s when Minta, as she did and still does every so often, materialized next to me, surveying the distant houses just like I did. I wonder, she said, whether they are warming the crows over there.

While I knew the words to the song, I didn’t really understand what they meant, or what the message was, and I told her so.

She explained to me.

But the crows are cold, too, I said. Why shouldn’t we warm them?

That’s a good question, she said, and it reminds me of a story. Do you want to hear it?

I nodded, sure.

Here’s another thing I should mention before I forget. At that time, Minta when visiting always matched my size; so when she materialized by my side this morning, she had shrunk herself to my three-year-old height. We could have been siblings walking down that freshly snow-plowed road that freezing winter’s morning—though I was a lot more bundled up than she was, of course.

“Okay,” she said and took my hand, and began.

There once was a crow, so large that he could have been a raven.

“What’s a raven?” I asked.

“A big crow,” she answered.

“What’s the difference?”

“Size.”

I shook my head, not really understanding.

“A crow’s big brother,” she added.

“Aha,” a little clearer.

So, she said, there once was a crow, so large that he could have been a raven.

“But different from a crow?”

“Yes, different.”

“Bigger?”

“More robust,” she said.

“Robust?”

“More meat, more feathers, larger head, and beak.”

“A raven. But these are crows, right?” I said, pointing at the huddling crows up there on the wire.

“Those are crows.”

“Not ravens, for they would be bigger. The wire would sag more.”

“The wire would sag more,” she agreed.

I nodded.

She looked over at me, all okay?

I nodded again.

“What do you think his name was?” she said.

“Blackwing,” I said.

“Precisely,” she said.

So, there once was a crow named Blackwing, so large that he could have been a raven.

And since I didn’t ask any more questions, the story continued.

Although Blackwing had a large family and knew many, many more of his kind, he preferred his own company and often set out alone, much like a raven, in fact.

“Not in twos, then, like these,” I pointed out.

“Ravens prefer their own company,” she said.

Understanding, I nodded again, “But Blackwing is a crow, right?”

“Blackwing is a crow,” said Minta, and continued.

And another thing he did like a raven, although he was a crow, he would glide on his wings; first, he would flap, flap, flap high up into the air, and then, into the wind, he would keep his wings stretched and just glide and glide, riding the air almost like an eagle. The other crows thought him a little crazy, to be frank.

This one winter’s day, very cold like today, but no sun—the sky was draped by a whole flotilla of snow-bearing clouds, ready to bear down upon the land below—Blackwing took a long look at the sky before he made up his mind: he would not spend the whole day shielded with his blizzard-expecting family and all the other crows here in this forest, he would, as usual, set out for another solo expedition. He would make it back before the snow, he was pretty, although not entirely sure.

Those around him, both family and not, told him (and told anyone else nearby) that he was crazy to set out on a day like this; snow soon; too cold. Blackwing ignored all this and took to the air, soon gliding away just like a raven.

Blackwing was as good a judge of weather as any crow or raven and was seldom wrong, but this day he was wrong. He had flown for nearly an hour, now surveying a village (much like this one, she said, looking around) far below, when the blizzard broke.

And not only did the flotilla of clouds burst and spill their millions and millions and millions of flakes upon the little village, but the temperature dropped as well, plummeted.

He would have to find shelter, he knew that, and soon, so he wheeled toward the nearby forest where he hoped to find some tightly-needled pines or firs to creep below or within, and he thought he had spotted the perfect huddle of trees when out of the forest, heading right for him came four hawks aiming not to kill but to chase away—this was the hawks’ (and their family’s) forest, no crow will settle here or find shelter.

Over their dead bodies.

Blackwing knew he would not have even a tiny prayer against these larger and more sharply-beaked birds, and so swiveled around and headed for another part of the forest the other side of a narrow field—not that the hawks would have any part of that either, for they took up chase to make sure that Blackwing stayed out of their forest altogether, all parts of it. He was not a hawk, and being un-hawk, he was not welcome.

As he flapped his way back over the small lake toward the little village the temperature kept dropping and the snow kept swirling and he knew that he would have to settle and find shelter among or (if he were lucky) within the houses below. And soon.

Alighting on the porch of a large, well-lit house, smoke billowing out of two fat chimneys, he walked up to the door and knocked as loudly as he could with his beak. And knocked again.

The door flew upon and the man looked around in confusion, there was no one there; until Blackwing spoke: “Would you let a freezing crow warm himself inside your house?”

“The crow could speak?” I said. News to me.

“All animals can speak,” said Minta. “When they want to.”

News to me.

The man looked down at Blackwing and didn’t even bother to answer before he slammed the door shut in his face, almost crushing his beak.

The next house was not quite as large but looked just as warm, and had a nice pillar of smoke rising from the gray chimney.

He knocked and knocked, and as the lady of the house opened the door he asked the same question, “Would you let a freezing crow warm himself inside your house?”

At least the lady answered him before slamming the door shut. “Not on your life Master Crow. This is not a zoo.”

He tried three more houses with the same result.

Very cold now and stiff and partially white with frost, he came to the last house in the village, a small, paltry-looking one, not much more than a hovel, really. Still, he knocked, knocked, knocked.

The man who opened was old and needed a cane to get around.

“Would you let a freezing crow warm himself inside your house?” said Blackwing.

“Oh, my, Master Crow,” said that man. “You look like one very cold bird. You had better come in out of the blizzard.”

“Thank you so very much,” said Blackwing and hopped on in just like happy crows like to hop (like fat little priests).

This blizzard was no ordinary blizzard. For days the snow just kept on falling, adding first inches then feet then yards to the snow already on the ground and covering all the houses; by now, only a narrow tunnel of air made it from within these houses—from the hearth through the chimney, through the snow and out to the sky above; snow-tunnels drilled by the fire and widened by the warm, rising smoke.

One morning the man said to the crow, “I only have firewood for one more day. If the blizzard doesn’t stop, the chimney will freeze and the snow will crowd itself in to fill the tunnel and then you and I will die of the cold, or of starvation, or of suffocation, take your pick.”

Blackwing, who was smarter than the average crow (or raven) gave this some thought. “I know what to do,” he said.

“What would you do?” asked the man.

“Bank the fire as much as you can, so it doesn’t burn me as I climb out.”

“Climb out?”

“I will climb up the chimney and up through the snow tunnel and into the air and fly back to my forest to fetch help.”

“Can you fly in this blizzard?”

“With the warmth and the food and the nourishing conversations I’ve had in this house, I can fly in any weather,” said Blackwing.

“Well, all right,” said the man and set out to bank the fire.

Once it burned more slowly and not so hot, Blackwing scaled the chimney and then the snow tunnel (which was almost six feet long by now) and then heaved himself into the cold air above. He stretched his wings and shook off the soot and took to the air.

All birds, as you know, can find home blindfolded, and Blackwing being a crow who is a bird knew precisely in which direction to fly even though he could hardly see a thing through the falling and swirling snow. And fly, fly, fly he did, flap, flap, flap (no gliding in this weather) all the way back to his own family and his own village of crows.

They were all surprised to see him back, and alive at that, can you believe it, in this weather. Once settled Blackwing told them all about his adventure and about the old man who had let him into his house to ride out the blizzard in comfort. But now, he added, his firewood has run out and by now his chimney will be filled with snow and he might die soon if we don’t help him—for lack of air, or food, or warmth, or all of the above.

“Once the blizzard dies down, or takes a sizeable rest, we must all fly over to his village and help him,” he said.

“We?” said his family.

“We?” said the other crows (there were many, many of them, a little over eight hundred of them).

“We,” repeated Blackwing. “The man did one crow a big favor, and so did all of us crows a big favor, a big, unselfish favor, and we owe him one in return.”

It sounds like quite an uproar when eight hundred crows discuss the pros and cons of saving a human life, and this went on for a while; in fact, it went on all through the night and into the next morning, which rose, clear as a bell, a fresh, white sun rising on the whitest world.

“Okay,” said eight hundred crows. “Let’s go help the man.”

And so it came to be that a deep and wide cloud of crows set out from the forest for the village and before the sun had climbed too far into the sky they arrived, all eight hundred of them.

“That is his house,” said Blackwing.

“How can you tell?” said the crows—for there were no houses visible anywhere, just big lumps (small mountains) of snow, some of which—all of which, in fact, but one—still had smoke rising up through the snow and into the clear air.

“It’s the house without smoke,” said Blackwing.

“What would you have us do?” asked a thousand crows.

“We have all seen thousands of starlings explode into the sky as living cloud. We will do the same, but not high into the air but above and all about this house, where we will flap and flap to loosen the powdery snow and where we will circle and circle faster and faster as fast as a whirlwind to lift all the snow from his house.

Crows, as I think I mentioned, are very clever, and soon enough they had descended upon the little snow-mountain house as a flapping, whirling cloud, and soon, perhaps after a thousand fabulously fast spins around the house, all the snow had been cleared from the house itself and from several feet all around it as well.

The man opened the door. “Blackwing.”

“Yes.”

“You came through.”

“Was there ever any doubt?”

“Yes, a little,” said the man.

Eight hundred crows still circled the house, but much more leisurely now, while the man, standing and warming himself in the sun, thanked them over and over and over again.

As for the rest of the houses in that village, as for all those larger snow mountains, they all starved or froze or suffocated to death for no one could make it out through the snow and by the time they ran out of firewood, the crows had long since returned to their forest.

“For real?” I said. “All of them?”

“What? People or crows?”

“People. They all starved or froze or suffocated to death?”

“Would I lie to you?” said Minta.

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