Definition
: to call together to a meeting
The Latin noun vox ("voice") and verb vocare ("to call") have given rise to many English words, including convoke. Other English descendants of those roots are usually spelled with voc and have to do with speaking or calling. Thus, a vocation is a special calling to a type of work; an evocative sight or smell calls forth memories and feelings; and a vocal ensemble is a singing group. Provoke, irrevocable, equivocate, and vociferous are a few of the other descendants of vox and vocare. The related noun convocation refers to those whom have been called together.
Autumn had arrived and was well and truly settled for the season. I couldn't be more delighted.
Autumn was my favourite season. With its crisp, cool days filled with either beautiful clear sunshine that seemed to line everything with a golden edge or it's luscious rainfall, turning the sky dark and mysterious. I loved how the world's colours, normally green and calm, turned red and ferocious, as if the world itself were on fire. i loved the creepy sound the down leaves made as they skittered down the uneven concrete slabs of the pavement, loved to see the small animals jumping about, looking for food to store for the upcoming winter, loved bringing out my multitude of jumpers and changing my wardrobe over, loved the autumn moon that hung in the sky, loved the evenings becoming shorter as night began to overtake day, loved the harvest ceremonies that were held, loved that the local bookshop changed over their window display from boring beach towels, buckets and spades and sunglasses to pumpkins, corn, skeletons, black cats and witches.
I loved it all. In my opinion, it was the most magical of all seasons.
Many, of course, would argue that Spring was the most magical - seeing as it was the season of rebirth, of death turning to life. But Autumn, in my opinion, was no less magical, no less natural, for it being the season of life turning to death. The wheel turns after all.
As it is clear to see, I normally loved Autumn with all my heart and soul but this year, this year I had to admit, there was something slightly unsettling about it.
It was the crows.
True, the village was far from the beaten path, you might say. I mean, we had shops and a chemist and a train station - so it wasn't like we were completed cut off from the modern world or anything. Of course not. I mean, yes if you wanted a night out that wasn't in the local pub, or you wanted to eat something fancier or you wanted to catch the latest film, you had to drive over to the nearest town which was about a half hour or forty minute drive and the woods that bordered our village edged right up close to us, tapping on the windows of the nearest houses in the middle of the night, as if scratching to be let in - and it was true that, sometimes, the borders of the woods, on certain nights, seemed closer than they were normally, as if they'd uprooted themselves and wandered ever so slightly closer to the lights of our small village - but all that was just village superstition. Something our grandparents made up to make our small village seem slightly more interesting, in an attempt to keep us here (and out of mischief in other, larger, town).
As much as I loved them, trees were just trees. They didn't move.
So yes, despite being a little out in the sticks and not having as many superfluous amenities as a larger, more modern town, the village was a fully civilized place with bookshops, banks, chemists and the obligatory over priced fripperies store that sold nothing you'd ever need at excruciatingly inflated prices. We were not, in any way shape or form some quaint little village in some sort of fairy tale. No trolls under our bridge, no gingerbread house in the wood, no girls in glass coffins. Normal was the word to describe it. 110% normal.
And then the crows came.
At first, nothing appeared out of the usual. After all, we were out in the country and it's not like black birds were uncommon. Hundreds of birds made their homes out in the woods, so seeing a few dotted here and there in the village was completely normal, business as usual as it were.
Then we started seeing more. I remember leaving the house one morning for work and there were two sitting on the fence by the garden gate, just watching me as I left the house. They were completely silent, their heads turning to follow my movement. Which was a little creepy, sure, but not out of the ordinary by any means.
The next morning there were three.
The morning after that, there were five.
Soon after that, I started seeing them everywhere in town. On top of the lamp posts, on the lintels over windows and doors, perched on shop signs, balancing themselves on the small windowsill outside of my office, peering in and watching me work. Strewn across the sky on the the telegraph wires, the wires themselves bowing under their weight.
Everywhere I went it was nothing but a sea of black, black, black feathers, pierced with brightly shining eyes that never looked away from me.
And never, not once, made a noise.
Of course, I started to get seriously freaked out. I mentioned the birds to friends, colleagues, strangers on the street.
And then I got even more freaked out.
It wasn't like they couldn't see them. If they hadn't been able to see them, if it was just something in my head, then I could have dealt with that. I mean, I wouldn't have been happy to discover I was having some sort of nervous/psychotic break down, but I would have maybe just put it down to work stress, gone away somewhere warm for a break, maybe asked for some pills or had myself checked in somewhere for a while. You know, I'd have options.
Not great ones, true, but reasonable, working options.
But it wasn't just me and it wasn't in my head. People could see them.
They just didn't seem to care.
And yes, I do realise this makes me seem to neurotic and over sensitive, if I am the only person in the village getting wound up about this. But let me asked you this; is it normal for a town to hire extra street sweepers to sweep the streets and pavements, simply because there are so many feather floating and cluttering the street that cars find it difficult to get through, that there are so many birds flying about that daylight is getting blocked and so everyone has to keep the electric lights on in the daytime so people can see, or that some public buildings have been closed entirely, as the birds keep flying in through the open doors and roosting there permanently?
Is this normal? No, no it damn well is not!
But people just didn't seem to care. They carried on with their normal loves, covered in black feathers and sometimes bird shit, with a smile on their face as if it were an August bank holiday on one of the very rare occasions when it didn't rain and instead had brilliant weather.
It was like the whole village was on some sort of soft crack and I was the weird one for being bothered by the whole thing. I got called curmudgeonly. Me! I was barely past thirty for a start and had once been praised for my sunny demeanor.
I scowled at my computer. It was another day in work, week three of this damn bird invasion. My head hurt from having the awful strip lighting overhead on all the time, my hair was full of black feathers and, as usual, there was a crew of crows hanging on the windowsill of the window next to me, staring at me with creepy stalker eyes. I'd pulled the blind down earlier, sick of the sight of them, but the others had complained about it being even darker and stuffier in here so i'd had to pull it up again. I'd glared at the birds as I'd done so but it hadn't ruffled them in the slightest. In fact, they just shuffled along so another bird could squeeze on and join in the staring fest with them. I half felt that I was on the world's worst reality tv show.
I glanced up. They were still staring. I thunked my head down on the desk, earning several startled looks from my co-workers.
Enough. Enough was enough. I'd stuck it out this long because I truly loved my village at this time of the year and I looked forward to it all year round. But I couldn't even see the beautiful leaves on the trees - the view from my window was clogged with birds and I dread to think what state I'd be in if I tried to walk in the woods.
My mind was made up. I was getting out of here.
I managed to snag my boss in the staff room and asked her for a week off. I had enough time accrued, I was ahead on my work and it wasn't like we were busy at this time of year anyway. She agreed almost immediately, saying (slightly hurtfully since I was usually a model employee) that it looked like I could do with a break.
I smiled and said that yes, I was thinking about going away and lying on a beach for a bit in the sun.
"Oh you can't do that." My boss said cheerfully, her expression not changing in the slightest. "You're the Crow Queen."
I blinked. "Sorry, what?"
"The Crow Queen."
"What's that?"
"The Crow Queen."
"Like I said, I have no idea what you're talking about. What is the Crow Queen?"
"The Crow Queen." She said once again, her smile never faltering, the tone never changing, her eyes never blinking. Like a robot. Or a pod person.
I needed to get out of here.
"I see." I said carefully, I'd better play along, otherwise who knows what these people might do. "Then, I guess I'd better stay home for a few days instead. catch up on my reading or something."
"A wonderful idea." She beamed at me.
I spent the (luckily short) rest of my day in a barely controlled panic and, as soon as the clock hit five, scurried home. I chucked some stuff in a suitcase and ran down to my car. It didn't start. I opened the bonnet (dad made me learn all about engines when i was a kid in case I broke down somewhere and a molester took that chance to integrate himself with me and attack me.) only for a wave of black feathers to explode out in a mad flurry. I stared in dismay. The wiring had been totally destroyed by sharp and clever beaks. The car was undriveable.
I felt my hands clench on the bonnet. Even without looking up, i could feel the birds, perched on every available surface nearby, including the roof of the car, staring at me.
I grabbed my phone out of my pocket and called a taxi. "Hello, I need a taxi...."
"I'm sorry Miss," said a cheerful voice on the the other end, "no taxis are available for the Crow Queen." Then they hung up.
At this point, I let out a small shriek. I took a deep breath. I would not be outdone by birds and pod people. I grabbed the handle of my suitcase and started the long drag to the train station.
There was no one in attendance at the train station - it was so small that it was only ever manned part time during peak hours. I figured this was a good thing for me - it meant no pod people getting in the way of my escape. I went over to the ticket machine. Before I'd even had a chance to input my destination, grey static filled the screen, then suddenly cleared. Green letters appeared on a black background,
'No tickets for the Crow Queen.'
I could have wept then. I felt them burning in my eyes but I didn't want to give the watching birds the satisfaction.
I took a deep breath. I still had my legs.
I left my suitcase with a friend of mine who worked at one of the shops on the high street. Before she could say anything about me not leaving or being a Crow Queen (I don't think I could have taken it from her) I just rushed in, asked her to drop it off at my house and said I was going for a quick walk as my car had broken down and I needed to get to the mechanics. None of which made any sense I'm sure, but I dashed out again just as quickly before she had time to say anything. I'd make it up to her later.
Our village was small and there were a few ways in and out, but they all went through the woods. The woods were the majority of the crows made their homes.
I would have to walk through the crow invested woods, completely vulnerable to anything they could do to me, before i could escape the village.
The crows had never done anything to physically harm me, but I didn't know how long that would hold out. Then there was the matter of the 'Crow Queen.'
These days, to be crowned 'Queen' in a little village was nothing more than an amusing side show or tradition. There was nothing dark or scary about it.
in the olden days, when you, a girl, was chosen for something special, when you were celebrated and toasted and cheered and, for a day and a night, given anything your heart desired, were truly 'Queen for a Day' as it were, it meant you would not see the following sunrise.
'Queen' was merely a synonym for 'Sacrifice'. Your blood on the ground would mean safety and security for everyone else, a bountiful harvest, an end to winter's grasp or perhaps simply the end of a plague.
Your life for the others, irrespective of whether or not this was something you, yourself, would have chosen.
I was getting out of here. I was not a girl in a glass coffin, I was not a girl sleeping her life away and neither I was a girl locked in a tower.
I had my own job, I had my own home, I paid my own way and then some.
At most, I might be the girl who fell down the rabbit hole, but she got herself out of that and so would I.
I set my shoulders and resolutely entered the woods.
My beloved woods. Woods that I had grown up by and in. Woods that I had stayed for, even when my childhood friends had mocked me and left the village at the earliest moment they could, never to return. Woods that I had missed every day that I had been away at university, the sight of them, the smell of them, the sound of them whispering to themselves at night. I had returned as soon as I could and had planted myself, rooted myself to them.
I touched the bark of the nearest tree, to try and reassure myself that this was still the same woods. I felt its heartbeat under my hand, faintly, dimly, but it was so far away. Instead what I could hear was the constant rustle of feathers, of sharp claws digging into soft tree branches, of bird shit staining and burning their bark. I scowled. How dare they harm my trees.
I walked on, at first following the tarmac road, but I soon felt the smooth, man made way beneath me start to wear away, crumble into a beaten track full of sand and stone then that then turned into the woodland floor, soft, mulchy with dead leaves and the undergrowth. I did not look down and confirm the impossible which would have only made my resolve crumble and myself succumb to m growing fear. Instead I kept my chin high and I just kept going forward.
Eventually, I entered a clearing. The trees bounded the clearing like pillars, or prison bars. they were so tightly packed there was no way I could squeeze through them. I glanced back behind me. Somehow the trees had moved so that there was no way back either.
In every tree, on every branch, there were crows, thousands of them. Watching silently.
There was something pretending to be a man in the centre of the clearing.
Seeing that there really was no other option, I walked over to him.
"I assume you have something to say to me." I said to him coolly, crossing my arms across my chest tightly so he couldn't see how my hands were trembling.
"Crow Queen." A voice emanated from him. His mouth didn't move in the slightest. Well, it wasn't like it was a real mouth after all. He wasn't a real person.
"That's not my name." I said sharply.
"Crow Queen." It tried again.
"That's not my name."
A brief pause.
"Lady." It tried again.
Better. "What do you want?" I asked, hugging myself tight.
"Crow Queen. Bride." It tried.
"Hell no!" My voice was so loud it startled several of the younger birds from their branches.
I carried on. "I don't know what kind of upbringing you've had but in no way does stalking constitute an appropriate way to commence a courtship." I said furiously, not even sure of what I was saying (although I was 100% accurate) but anger and terror had combined in such equal parts in me that I lashed out without really thinking.
The fake man bird looked appalled. "No! Not Crow Bride, Crow Queen!" It stuttered. The surrounding birds shuffling awkwardly on their respective branches.
"So...not your bride?" I asked, just to clarify.
"NO." the creature said so loudly and quickly it was almost insultingly.
Well, that was embarrassing.
And none too clarifying either.
"Then why did you call me a bride?" I asked, confused.
"You are bride."
"I am not."
"Yes."
"Don't you think I'd know if I was married?" I demanded, tired, snappish and done with this shit.
"Woods Bride. Bride of Wood."
I opened my mouth to retort such a ridiculous statement. Then shut my mouth again.
Bride of the Woods. It was true that I loved the woods with all my heart - far more than any other person i knew. In fact, some of my friends had argued that, when it came to the woods, I was worse than a school girl with a crush. I'd never had a boyfriend or girlfriend either. I'd never felt the need to. I'd never wanted to. As long as I had the woods I was fine.
But....that was ridiculous. A person couldn't marry a, a environmental ecosystem. it was impossible!
I was currently standing in a clearing that didn't exist, talking to a magically constricted creature that shouldn't exist either.
I opened my mouth, then shut it again. Then opened it.
"Fine, let's say, for argument's sake, that I am what you say I am. Why have you been stalking me? Why won't you let me leave?"
"Woods needs Bride when it's vulnerable, when it's leading up to winter sleep. Bride can't leave."
"Ok. Fine." So not fine but I needed to move this conversation along. "Then why have you been hounding me all this time."
Despite all evidence to the contrary, the thing in front of me managed to look sheepish.
"Woods said we need your permission to stay."
"What?"
"Our homes burned. Chased out many places. Men with guns. Came here. Protected. But Woods say we need to ask you. Autumn is your time. Saw you human. Human alone is small and vulnerable. We thought if you saw how good we protect you, you let us stay."
My mind froze for an instance, trying to process this.
"So, wait. Let me get this straight. You became homeless, so you came here. My...husband, the woods, said you could stay if I gave the ok because Autumn is 'my time'."
There was so much crazy in that sentence that I was just going to leave it at that for now because there was just too much other crazy to deal with right this second.
The bird thing nodded.
"So, you've been stalking me, invading the village, brainwashing the people and freaking me the hell out, just to prove what good protectors."
the bird thing nodded, uncertainty scribbled across its face at the tone of my voice.
I felt like pulling my hair out. Instead I just buried my face in my hands. "Why didn't you just ask me if you could stay."
The bird things, and all the birds in the trees, hunched miserably.
"There are many of us, many with young that are small and useless. we thought you wouldn't let us stay unless we proved our worth."
I stared at it. Then at the birds in the trees. It was true there were a lot of little ones - and lots of birds with feathers missing or singed. Many had vicious burn marks and some were even missing eyes. Now that I knew they weren't out to get me, weirdly the opposite in fact, I could see that they did indeed look like a right motley crew.
Well, crap.
"You can stay." I mumbled.
"What?" The bird thing stared at me.
"I said you can stay ok?" I snapped. "But stay in the woods. No invading town in large groups and causing trouble. And no brainwashing people. Ever."
"We can stay?"
I huffed out a sigh. "I said yes didn't I? But remember what I said about-oof!"
I was buried under a mound of happy feathers as the birds swarmed me. IT was more than mildly terrifying, even if I did know they meant well."
They eventually released me and guided me back home. It turns out, despite all my walking, I was only a few meters from my back garden gate.
And so, life went back to normal. The crows mainly stayed in the woods, people stopped acting like pod people and taxi companies would actually come and collect me.
There was only one thing I wished I remembered to tell them at the time.
"Those birds sure do love you." My colleague commented as she passed my window. There were at least six crows perched on the windowsill, watching me work. "They're here every day."
"Don't they just." I muttered to myself and just carried on typing.
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