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I felt the change happen slowly, like I was drawing the entire transformation inside of myself in a long slow drawn-out breath. I felt something soft and fluttery being dragged and pulled and tugged from out of my bones. I felt veins stiffening and sharp shooting pain shouting out as if someone were sticking giant white hot darning needles into my skin and then yanking them back out fast.
I felt as if my blood was made out of something like the ocean and the sky above the ocean was on fire and everything inside of me had just begun to boil.
I squeezed my eyes closed and for just a moment I saw nothing but a long swallow of midnight black.
I heard a giant crow laughing over me – with a harsh caw.
I wondered just what was so funny.
And then I opened my eyes.
There was nothing but clear blue and patches of white cloud. I could see my feet hanging beneath me only they had stretched out into hard yellow sticks.
No, not sticks.
Talons.
Bird feet.
I looked down at myself and then I realized that somehow I had been magically turned into a giant crow.
“You just feel that you are a giant, is all,” I heard the shadow man talking above me. “You are not really a giant at all. You have seen a giant before, haven’t you, Teller-boy?”
I knew that he was talking about Old Nanna Bijou and for about the hundredth time since the last five minutes I wondered why in the world did Nanna Bijou send me to see this freaking creep?
Were they friends or something?
Maybe partners?
What had Bigfoot got me into?
I looked up above me and all that I could see was a field of darkness. I felt a little like an aircraft trying to land on an aircraft carrier only I had got my directions turned around and the carrier was floating above me while I flew deep down in the water.
“You know,” the shadow man cawed down at me. “For a fellow who only watches television and Youtube videos you have one heck of a peculiarly vivid imagination.”
It was one heck of a little peculiar seeing a giant crow talking down at me in the middle of what had to be a nightmare in the middle of the day.
“I’m a raven,” the bird corrected me. “You’re a crow.”
“What’s the difference?” I cawed back.
I’m not really sure if I was cawing or talking or just thinking about cawing and talking but he seemed to understand me just fine.
“The old people will tell you that crows are nothing more than the shadows of every other bird in existence,” the shadow raven told me.
And then he paused.
I knew he was waiting for me to ask.
So I did.
“So what’s a raven?” I asked.
“A raven is the shadow of a crow grown giant-large beneath the promise of sunlight,” the shadow raven explained. “A raven is everything that a crow has ever dreamed of ever becoming and then some.”
He gave a sharp little flap of his wings in a style and a manner that could only be called smug.
“Isn’t that somebody you know down there?” Raven asked, sort of half-pointing with the tip of his right wing.
I looked down and all of a sudden I could see what looked to be some sort of a village growing up below me.
What the freaking heck was going on?
That village hadn’t been there before – or at least I hadn’t noticed it down there.
And then, with one strong beat of his wings the shadow raven swooped down towards the dirt. Actually, I think he stepped onto an invisible elevator. He plummeted faster than I could even think about.
I knew I couldn’t keep up with that kind of speed, so I just drifted down a little closer – thinking about autumn leaves and parachutes and those little tiny dust motes that always dance in sunbeams.
My wings worked – so far.
I looked downwards. I could see about a billion acres of gray sand stretching out below me. Further on I could see gray stone buildings cluttered about the sand like a small child’s building blocks.
The scene looked both primitive and modern at the same time.
As I got a little closer I saw smoke drifting up.
There was a figure lying in the dirt.
“Come on slowpoke, the last one to make it to the lunch box was hatched from a rotten egg,” the raven cawed out.
He swooped down past me like a jumbo jet in a drag race.
I flapped just as hard I could.
Wings or not, this flying business wasn’t easy.
As I got a little closer I could see what I’d been looking at from my bird’s eye view.
The figure was a soldier.
I could see the uniform.
It was my Dad.
My real Dad.
I knew that before I even got close enough to see.
“This is who you wanted to see, wasn’t it Teller-boy?”
My dead Dad.
I flew down just a little bit closer, deathly afraid of what the Raven was going to show me next.
And yet I was still not able to turn away.