The Language of Crows & Ravens

“Oh, here’s a fun one,” Celandine muttered to herself, examining the thin leather tome in her hands. Crooked Creek’s library was odd—the most interesting place in town, she thought. Somehow, this tiny backwater possessed myriad ancient nonsense books. Like the work in her hands: The Language of Crows and Ravens by Koronis Floros. She’d found it in the library’s Foreign Language section, so she didn’t think it was intended as fiction or satire. It looked like something a tanner-turned-amateur-bookbinder had thrown together, but—when she opened it—the yellowing and mold-spotted pages themselves looked far more modern. When she flipped to a random page, the text alternated between Latin, Old English, and a language she didn’t recognize.

Since Celandine spoke both recognizable languages a little, she could pick out some sentences at a glance—“…but only utter this cry if it is first spoken to you, for crows have peculiar feelings towards humans who speak their tongue…” and “When one bird sits with only one other, the single caw refers solely to the singular speaker. When amongst the flock, the single caw may be used interchangeably to refer to the speaker or the group.” She chuckled, knowing the book would be ripe for entertainment. After adding it to the pile of books on dead languages, she hefted up the lot and proceeded towards the check-out desk.

When she stepped out of the aisle, however, she rolled her eyes. That girl was working the front desk again—the one who probably got all her outfits verbatim from some influencer’s selfies and muttered K-pop under her breath despite probably not understanding a word. This particular librarian assistant had to be as shallow as the popular girl from a Disney Channel movie. She tapped away at her phone screen until Celandine was almost at the desk, then started with an audible gasp.

She chuckled, “Celandine, you startled me!”

She stopped herself from quipping, Yeah, I noticed, and instead replied, “Sorry.”

The librarian assistant lifted The Language of Crows and Ravens off the stack and grinned, “You always manage to find the most interesting books!” 

“Yep.” She stopped entertaining back-handed compliments a long time ago.

***

When Celandine got home, she ducked away from her mom and sisters, retreating to the study. After placing her new library books on the desk, she cracked open The Language of Crows and Ravens. She decided to grab a half-used notebook and get some translation practice in.

She scoffed at the introduction, where the author blabbering on about the virtue and beauty of “unsavory” creatures. They were crows. They all looked the same! The paragraphs alternated randomly between Latin, Old English, and the unfamiliar language. At first, switching between languages taxed her. The sentences sometimes spilled over into the next—“You may find, as you speak this phrase, the crows watching you will notice the feathers will ruffle slightly and with this cry to indicate a distrustful mood is important to…” She gave up translating and just let her eyes run over the text. Soon, the text engrossed her. The discord and randomness gave way to a strange pattern—not something most would consider a real pattern, but there was an ebb and flow to it. 

The book discussed different cries in extensive detail, diagrammed corvid body language without a single picture, and even described typical political happenings within and between flocks. He even alluded to similarities with rats’ and vultures’ languages. Celandine realized she forgot to skip over the sections in the unknown language, but she understood them anyway. She only paused to turn on the desk lamp as the sun set. She finished the book, then flipped back to the first page and started again. 

Her mind stretched like an inflating balloon, and she began to see shadows at the lamplight’s edges flicker. Eyes stinging with exhaustion, a childish excitement pushed her on. How many people knew this book’s secrets? When she finished again, she started over once more. She wanted to memorize every word in the book. She read without ceasing.

***

Then she woke up. Her mouth tasted like sleep, and her head rested on her arms, one hand on a random page in The Language of Crows and Ravens. Both her arms tingled from the shoulder down, no doubt due to their awkward position on the desk. Her head and stomach ached with hunger and dehydration, and her back hurt from being hunched over. She didn’t remember falling asleep, and passages from the book still rang like a song stuck in her head. Something felt…stretched out.

Sitting up, she glanced at the clock on the desk. It was quarter-till eleven in the morning. She stretched her aching back, then stood up and regarded the book. Though she remembered what about it fascinated her, she couldn’t feel it anymore—as if she was recalling something someone told her, not something she experienced. She pulled the book closer and glanced at the passage in the unknown language. It was indecipherable once more.

***

Celandine concluded she’d fallen asleep sooner than she’d thought, and the book had given her weird dreams. It would be better to return it today since she couldn’t understand a big portion, anyway. After grabbing the book, she walked out the front door and started walking towards the library.

As she approached the corner, a sharp cawing grabbed her attention. The long, three-note Wrah! Wrah! Wrah! was a check-in sound, something sentries called at regular intervals to indicate they were still at their posts.

With a start, she realized she’d understood the bird’s meaning. She froze and looked for the sound’s source. A barely-mature crow sat atop a street lamp.

It looked at her, twitching its head with curiosity. Without thinking, Celandine mirrored the movement. The young crow let out a light cry in surprise, then a tentative greeting caw. She realized she knew how to respond, and imitated the caw after hesitating.

Again, the crow started. It expressed confusion, then wonderment.

Celandine obliged, muttering, “This can’t be real…”

The crow indicated it didn’t understand.

In response, Celandine gestured and cawed to ask the crow to fly onto a nearby signpost if it understood.

The crow squawked in the affirmative and obliged.

“This is insane…I’m talking to a bird…” then a giddiness rushed up her spine, like a child uncovering a secret. “I’m talking to a bird!”

The crow shrieked, displeased with Celandine’s outburst.

Celandine apologized, stating she was excited about this discovery.

Again, the crow let out a confused call, asking what she meant. Crows have been speaking for as long as there have been crows. It was more remarkable to find a human who could speak. 

“I suppose that makes sense,” she mumbled. It took her a long moment to explain how humans communicated.

The crow expressed confusion; how could a creature communicate without ruffling feathers or gestures?

Celandine elaborated: body language was something people did and read on instinct, using it less to communicate ideas than emotions or emphasis. 

This, the crow understood. It invited Celandine to follow her to its flock—the others would find this fascinating.

***

When Celandine asked for the crow’s name, it said it was called Wind. It took Celandine a moment to figure out how to ask what Wind’s gender was. There were no gestures or caws for the term. She settled on asking whether or not Wind could lay eggs, which baffled the crow. It didn’t understand the relevance, so Celandine decided she’d refer to every single crow as a “they.”

Wind led Celandine into the forest behind her neighborhood, to a creekbed over which dozens of crows perched and roosted. Wind cried out, announcing their arrival, then told the flock about the Talking Human she’d found. Several crows asked for a demonstration, to which Celandine obliged. They were amazed, curious.

An older crow with a scarred beak introduced themself as Branch and asked how Celandine came to learn the crow-language. 

Celandine exhaled, realizing she’d have to explain books and reading to birds. “Oh geez, where do I even begin…” Then she remembered she still held the book. She showed it to the crows, cawing and moving her head to explain how people had symbols to represent their languages, and how they could communicate ideas through these symbols. One human—a long time ago—and used these symbols to explain the crow-language, and she learned it by looking at his symbols.

The crows were equal parts confused and fascinated.

A crow about Wind’s age asked how they could show feather ruffles and wing gestures through symbols.

Wind explained humans communicated through sound.

There was a squawking chorus to indicate amazement and curiosity.

For the rest of the afternoon, Celandine sat on a boulder by the creek and answered the crows' questions. She was surprised with the complexity—multifaceted questions about human behavior and society. The one who’d asked about the symbols, Sapling, asked questions about writing and letters; they even convinced Celandine to draw some words in the mud for him to study. Wind asked the fewest questions, though they listened to her every word. They mostly seemed proud they were the one who discovered the Talking Human.

Going home didn’t even occur to Celandine until just before sunset, when she got a text from her mom asking where she was. She rolled her eyes and announced that she needed to return to her nest.

Wind volunteered to escort her.

When they reached the street however, Celandine rolled her eyes. The librarian assistant was sauntering down the street, headphones plugged in and oblivious to the world.

She grumbled, “She’s gonna get hit by a car if she keeps that up…”

Wind cawed, asking if something was wrong.

Celandine responded in the negative, stating there was just another human she found annoying walking past.

What, Wind wondered, was so annoying about this other human.

She wasn’t sure how to describe it at first, then indicated she and this other human were just very different people.

Wind looked at the librarian assistant for a long moment, then stated they didn’t think she and the other girl were more different than humans were from crows.

***

Celandine had a hard time sleeping. She skimmed The Language of Crows and Ravens she still understood, then remembered how the book alluded to the languages of vultures and rats. What if this author had written books about those languages as well? What if she could learn their languages as well? Excited, she flipped back to the title page and read the author’s name—Koronis Floros—resolving to see if the library had any more of his work in stock.

The next morning, she again hurried through her morning routine to get to the library as soon as she could. In her haste, she’d forgotten it was Saturday—the day the library opened late. And the librarian assistant had arrived early for her shift to sit on the curb outside the front doors.

Upon spotting Celandine, she smiled and greeted, “Good Morning, Celandine! Did you finish your books already?”

“No,” she replied, “I’m looking for more. For…research.”

“Oh, okay! What are you looking for?”

Celandine wasn’t about to reveal her discovery to her, “I wanted to see if the library had any more books by a certain author.”

“Maybe I can help once my boss gets here! What’s their name?”

“Koronis Floros.”

“Hmm. I can’t say I’m familiar with her work…”

“‘Her?’ I think it’s ‘he.’”

“Maybe? But Koronis is a character—well, several characters in Greek mythology. I’ve only ever seen the name given to women.”

“I’ve never heard of a Koronis in mythology…”

“Most people haven’t, actually! They’re not, like…super major characters. The most important one was the mother of Asklepios, the god of medicine.”

“I guess you know a lot about Greek mythology then, huh?” She was probably going to start going on and on about horoscopes or something next…

“Not really, I just took an elective on it one summer. I got, like, really into it for a while, though. These days I’ve been studying East and Southeast Asian folklore.”

“Oh.” Celandine didn’t expect her to have such…interesting hobbies. “That’s…kinda neat.”

The librarian assistant frowned, “You don’t, like…have to pretend it’s cool…”

“No, no! It’s…it really is cool, I just…I didn’t think—you didn’t seem like the type who’d…” Celandine trailed off.

“Oh,” the girl blushed. “I mean…my best friend lives in Korea, so, like…I started talking to them about it, and—”

Celandine felt her face heat up, “No no, I didn’t mean anything like that, either. It’s just…I don’t—um. I just didn’t expect it.”

The two girls stewed in their awkwardness for a moment. For the first time, it occurred to Celandine that she’d never learned the girl’s name.

The thought occurred to her just as Wind landed in a nearby tree and cawed a greeting.

On reflex, Celandine nodded in response. Realizing they might not understand the meaning, she opened her mouth to caw back, then closed it upon remembering the girl sitting right next to her. Not wanting to explain the strange behavior, Celandine looked at Wind long enough for them to (hopefully) understand she saw them, then sat down on the curb a healthy distance away from the librarian assistant.

***

“Hmm…” the girl began, staring at the computer monitor behind the check-out desk. They’d waited outside in semi-awkward silence before the head librarian showed up and unlocked the doors. Afterwards, the librarian assistant invited Celandine over to the front desk to look up Koronis Floros. “They should be right this way.” She walked out from behind the desk and towards the Foreign Language section before Celandine could ask for the Dewey Decimal number. Still tense about their interaction outside, she followed and wondered how the girl could already be over it.

She rounded the corner into the aisle where she’d found The Language of Crows and Ravens just in time to see the other girl crouch down.

Looking at the lower shelves, the librarian assistant hummed again then spoke, “They should be right here…” her sentence dragged out as she checked other nearby shelves, then standing up to skim the higher shelves. “But I…don’t see them.”

“Did someone check them out?” Celandine asked.

“No…Hm…They must’ve been mishelved…or maybe Ms. Mildred sent them out for restoration work and forgot to put it in the system again…” Again, she stood up and began walking off before Celandine could protest. She followed the librarian assistant back to the check-out desk, where she walked through the door behind it and called, “Ms. Mildred?”

A voice replied, “Katy.” So that was her name!

“Celandine is looking for our books by Koronis Floros, but they’re not on the shelf? Did you send them out for cleaning?” As she spoke, Celandine saw something flicker in her periphery. When she looked, Wind was perched on a decorative fence post outside the window. After taking one last glance towards the door to the office, Celandine stepped over to the window.

She kept her voice low, but stood close enough to the window for Wind to hear, then cawed a quiet greeting.

With some tilts of their head and soft chirps, Wind asked why Celandine hadn’t responded to their earlier greeting. 

Celandine stated they didn’t want to caw around the other human.

The bird’s feathers ruffled with indignation as they asked why not.

After a brief pause—wondering how to describe the situation to them—she explained the other human wouldn’t understand if she started speaking Crow Language, and would think she was just making sounds to be annoying or because she was stupid.

Wind tilted their head—indicating confusion—then how Celandine knew.

She responded with some quiet squawks and head tilts: that was just the sort of human Katy was.

This only further confounded the bird. They expressed Celandine didn’t seem like the sort of person who’d do that, and she didn’t seem so different from the other human.

Before she could formulate her response, Wind called an alert meaning “human!” and flew off.

Celandine turned to see Katy approaching.

“Wow!” the librarian assistant breathed, “I can’t believe that crow let you get so close!”

“They were probably just too focused on their reflection to notice me,” Celandine lied.

“Yeah, probably. Anyway! Ms. Mildred’s gonna check her records to make sure the books weren’t sent off for restoration or loaned to a different library. If not, then we probably just misshelved them and they’ll turn up. If you want, you can leave your phone or email at the desk and we can let you know once we figure out the status of the books.”

“Sure, thanks.”

***

During the walk home, Celandine couldn’t help but turn her conversation with Wind over in her mind. After a few minutes of irrational anger, she realized they could probably tell apart humans only a little better than she could tell apart crows.

Then she started to wonder why it bothered her so much. Celandine knew she and Katy were very different—Katy was effeminate, trendy, and shallow while Celandine had a more…niche style and way more complexity. But then she recalled Katy’s interest in mythology. That wasn’t shallow. And the way she seemed so determined to help Celandine, and the way she kept being nice even though Celandine tried to push her away, and the way she’d made a point to learn Celandine’s name even though she’d never reciprocated…

Celandine’s stomach transformed into lead and she stopped walking. After a moment, she turned and sat on the curb. After stewing in shame for several minutes, she heard a greeting caw. When she looked up, two crows were circling overhead. Wind and Sapling landed next to her.

She returned their greeting caw, and Wind hopped up to perch on her knee.

Wind squawked and gestured to indicate Sapling had more questions about human language and behavior.

Celandine smiled and indicated she’d be happy to oblige.