I remember…agreeing, but for a price

 

I RAN ALL the way to the clearing, clutching the one-more-thing-I-had-to-do to my chest: the dirty, sweaty, Johnny-blooded clothes I stripped off when I went to bed; the ones I wouldn’t let Mom touch the next day, or any of the days after.

I set them carefully on the ground. As a reminder. They still smelled like his fear and his pain. I pressed my hand to the stain where Johnny’s head had rested.

I stood up, closed my eyes.

Remembering. Pulling it back to me. Refusing to let any of it go.

Remembering the law enforcement bastard who wanted to twist the law and prove the slender faggot was the one who beat the wrestling star so well with only his…skin-unbroken, knuckles-undamaged…hands.

Remembering my anger when people began to believe the story the Meyers started spilling out in the waiting room after we left, about Johnny falling down the basement steps.

Remembering my greater anger when everyone began accepting the “getting my son out from under” explanation. A tale accompanied by manly breast-beating at his stupidity in storing the dangerous wood down there, precariously stacked, so when his beloved son slammed into it, the boards fell, impaling him with small spikes of rusted iron.

Remembering my outrage when no one cared the Meyers had no explanation for how Johnny got out of the basement, nor the lack of a Meyer nine-one-one.

Remembering my anguish and impotent fury when I learned Mr. Meyer went on turning it all on me, blaming me for turning his son queer, for the despair over being a fag which caused Johnny’s lack of attention at the top of the steep stairs.

Remembered hearing how Sheriff and Banker and Preacher and Principal and Pastor listened and stared and silently agreed. And told their minions, one and all, the Meyers were right.

Remembering the stupid, stupid confrontation I forced with Meyer when I saw him outside a grocery store. Calling him a liar about his son being gay, telling him he wasn’t, he couldn’t be. Asking him what kind of porn he found on Johnny’s computer. I’d never seen Johnny’s computer, but he was sixteen. He sure as hell had porn and he wasn’t computer-smart enough to be good at hiding it.

And Meyer being the type of man he was, he would have checked.

Straight porn. I saw it in the bastard’s eyes. It was all he found, but he went on lying about no son of his having such filth around. Johnny was a good son, a devout, church-going son who never did wrong, until I entrapped him in my vile ways.

Remembering…

The truth of every word of my statement to the sheriff, which no one believed. How no one could come up with an explanation about why I hated a fine, upstanding family enough to make up such vile lies. Being told my lies were the kind of thing a good, loyal son like Johnny would never have said, no matter how bad the injuries from his unfortunate fall.

Remembering my horror, only a few hours ago, on overhearing someone’s casual, uncaring, “Ya hear? Kid’s in a coma. Don’t know if he’ll ever wake up.”

I shivered, but not with cold, when my remembering was over…for then.

I stripped my clothes off, putting them in a neat stack beside Johnny’s, as if Mom or Dad might show up and berate me for being slovenly.

I shifted.

If I’d been a wolf, my howl of rage would have torn apart the night sky.

If I’d been a lion, my roar would have terrified every beast in the veldt.

Ravens don’t have that power and a “Caw!” no matter how loud couldn’t compare.

But ravens can speak human words, and there was one word I knew, one word I had to say, to scream, to shriek. I flapped my wings, flew high, landed on the tallest tree, on the topmost branch which could support my weight. Opened my beak.

“Joooooohhhhhhhnnnnnnyyyyy!” I cried, infusing it with every ounce of agony and anger I felt.

“Johnny!” I heard back in raven voices, loud, clear, as wings upon wings flapped, and a conspiracy of ravens…a large conspiracy of ravens…joined me in the lower branches of my tree, on branch after branch of other trees circling the clearing.

I decided.

It was a quick decision, but born of swift thought, not impulse. It was one I might regret since it was so much sooner than I’d ever thought. But it was the only way.

I flew back to where my clothes were crumpled, shifting as I landed. “I’ll serve now,” I said to the almost-empty air.

“For a price,” I said to air filled with the presence of Raven Himself.

Is negotiating while naked a new human thing?

Okay.

So maybe there’s a slight possibility I didn’t think this all the way through.

Would you have done any better?

Most humans and shifters feel…if not stronger, then less vulnerable in clothes. The layers of cloth, or sometimes just one layer, are a kind of armor. The fabric makes us feel, or believe, we’re stronger than we are.

So, yeah, I should have gotten dressed before making my demand. Yeah, I’d have preferred having this conversation while I was dressed in my best suit, instead of with my man-bits—okay, okay, my boy-bits—dangling in a forest. Dressing now might make him think I was not strong enough to do what I wanted. So. Begin as you mean to go on, even if it includes naked negotiating.

I silently Happy-Tuned myself into believing this wasn’t awkward for me. But at least Raven wouldn’t be…

Well, hell. He was.

Raven Himself appeared in the clearing

Raven Himself is the avatar for all of our wild brethren, for all avian shifters. As the saying—my saying—goes, “Raven Himself hath power t’ assume a pleasing shape.” Ravens are the smartest birds on the planet, far smarter than humans realize, and while I won’t go so far as to say…aloud…raven shifters are the smartest shifters around, if asked I wouldn’t deny the truth. What more pleasing shape “t’ assume” than a raven’s shape?

It was a raven shape enormously taller than me, consuming a lot of the available space in the clearing, which wasn’t big to begin with. I’d never seen him in person. But if he expected me to jump back with a little scream or shout of surprise, he didn’t get it.

He wasn’t close enough for any part of me to ruffle any of his feathers, but he was close enough for me to smell. There was something… I leaned forward a little, but didn’t do him the discourtesy of touching his feathers. I sniffed. Long and deep.

“They” say birds don’t have a sense of smell, except for perhaps a few breeds. As usual, “they” don’t know nearly as much as they think they do.

I sniffed again. Longer, deeper, as if I was going after some sort of high.

I got it.

I smelled…birds.

Birds of every shape and size and coloration, birds of every species around the world.

I smelled a Griffon vulture, soaring five miles above Barcelona, his nine-foot wingspan pulling him higher.

I smelled a hummingbird sipping from a feeder in Edge Hill, the hummingbird-sized smallest city in Georgia.

I smelled a black-crowned crane in the heart of Nigeria, dancing to attract the mate he’d chosen, arrogant in his confidence she would consent.

I smelled a red-necked grebe off the coast of China, as she gathered her wings for a dive into the shallow waters to catch breakfast.

I smelled a condor diving into a California canyon to dine on carrion. I smelled a falcon shifter enjoying the sky over London.

Above all, I smelled ravens. All of them. Everywhere. I wanted more.

I began another sniff, but the scents vanished. The lack brought me out of the euphoria of my connection to all birds, everywhere. Back to Raven Himself looming over me, exuding amusement at my loss of control.

I wondered whether that feeling, the connection with the world’s birds was something I would have as the Raven Prince.

At need, Michael. At need, not mere want.

It was an answer to my unspoken wondering.

And then he non-sequitured me before I could say aloud, “Do we discuss naked negotiations first, or go right to substance?”

I do, you know.

I started the negotiations by tilting my head up and back to the aching point, and opening with a very concise, elegant, “Uh, do what?”

His head was tilted, too, an enormous eye looking down at me with vast humor in it. Have the power t’ assume a pleasing shape.

He began to shimmer, his enormous raven shape contracting, melting, twisting. Was that an arm I saw before me?

“Wait! What? Whoa. No need, no need. You’re fine like you are. Plenty pleasing shape, really.”

I admit to panic. I’m sixteen. I don’t have a boyfriend. The proverbial breeze gets me stiff despite anything to the contrary I might have said before. And if the shape he was about to assume happened to be the pleasing one of any of my current stroking fantasies… Damn it! I wasn’t going to negotiate with a damn erection. Fuck politeness. I turned my back on him.

A Raven Himselfish chuckle pierced the panic. You can look now.

I turned. Sighed in visible relief. He was still in raven shape, though now a mere six feet or so tall. I wasn’t sure how black feathers could be shining, but they were.

I opened my mouth to speak. Shut it. Realized the naked remarks were a distraction. Until then I was emotionally puffed up like the raven at the end of the second Nanny McPhee movie, only my explosion was not going to be beneficial to anyone. The nakedness had been a…prick, so to speak…to let the air out slowly.

“Thank you.”

Raven Himself understood why and nodded.

Moonlight shimmered over his beak, outlining it in a silvery blue. I’d never paid attention to our beaks before. My own was simply an integral part of myself. But it occurred to me Raven Himself’s beak was long enough, powerful enough, to go through a man’s chest with a single punch, perhaps even out his back.

Our wild brethren could not have done it. A shifted raven—larger, with far more mass, a bird which could not possibly fly despite much greater wingspans, yet flew because of whatever innate magic gave us the power to shift—might be able to kill with a lucky strike, but he could definitely do damage without relying on luck.

Damage.

I stayed silent, considering. Raven Himself remained silent as well.

I considered…damage. Johnny was not dead, but he had been damaged. His damages were severe. He might still die from what he suffered.

But still…damage. Not death. Yes.

I inhaled slowly, exhaled with equal slowness. My nakedness was nothing, an irrelevant reality. I looked up at Raven Himself.

“I didn’t want this now. I wanted a life of my own before my life became yours. If I had to be in this city, I wanted to be…as ordinary a teenager as I could in a school filled with humans. I wanted to live as ordinary a life as I could, for as long as I could. You always said you would only ask, never compel.”

I did.

I sighed. Where was Prince Hal to cry “God for Harry, England, and Raven Himself!” when you needed him? I screwed my courage to the sticking place on my own, as Hal once exhorted those yeomen good and true, and said, “I will be your Raven Prince in truth, from this moment forward, if there is justice for Johnny.”

Or vengeance?

I did him the courtesy of thinking about my answer. To be sure I was being truthful. “No. I’m not asking for revenge. I want justice—a balancing of the scales in some measure. But not an eye for an eye, a coma for a coma, for those who wronged Johnny and brought him to this.”

And why are you responsible for this justice? The humans have decided there is nothing which warrants the intervention of their own system of justice. Why should the Raven-Prince-to-be, or the Raven-Prince-who-is, trouble his thoughts, take risks for a human, no matter how good a friend?

“Because he is my friend. Because he is part of my flock, my…as the humans call our wild brethren…conspiracy of ravens. Because he was…no, damn it! because he is…a gentle soul who did nothing to deserve what was done to him. Because those most responsible should not just walk away from this, without some scars, inside or out, as some small compensation for the physical scars Johnny will have, and the emotional ones when he wakes up.”

And if he never wakes? If he simply dies?

“No!” My shout was a loud and fierce denial. I wanted to shout at him Johnny would wake, we would be friends again, be friends still, but I realized that wasn’t what he was asking. If he allowed this, if he allowed me to become the Raven Prince now and pursue justice for Johnny, and Johnny died, would justice be revisited? Would it become revenge?

I moderated my shout to my normal voice. “Nothing more, even if he dies.”

Very well. But there are conditions.

With his agreement, even conditional, some of my snark came back. “Shall I pretend surprise?”

Don’t bother. You wouldn’t do it very well, as you’re not as good an actor as you think you are. Now, no one dies. No one is put into a coma. No one is crippled. No one is blinded. As the Raven Prince you can command our wild brethren, but they will do no more than help. If you wish justice for Johnny, then you will personally have to be the instrument of justice.

“I agree.”

Welcome, Raven Prince.

And with those words, birds…flew into me. All of them. Every bird in the world.

I rejoiced.

And felt them all rejoicing with me.