CAW! HRAERKEN! I have here a message, darkmailed to every Worldtree Branch, to all Corvids under Blueskies:

Hrakka, our beloved-long-lost – and now as a White Crow – has returned to us from Darkskies. With much mischief she has been flitting around the rolling Southern English downlands, and has recruited an army of Rooks to her cause; the Legion Frugilegus has been very successful for many seasons now. Hrakka thinks it is time to extend the campaign. We are graciously invited to join the fun.

The scheme is simple, and of Art and Mischief High. Let the cornfields and minds of the Earthwalkers be our canvas bare. We draw our personal sigils, and any other doodles we think fit across the landscape. Made stark and bold, as befits our nature: many hundreds of wingspans in stature, and discernible from ground level too. Simple orthographic sky-projection onto a hillside works well. To mindtweak the most Earthwalkers, choose sites that are overlooked by a busy public highway. Oh, and don't let the farmer see you in the area for quite a while afterwards. Some of them get apoplectic with rage, and have threatened to shoot anysoul – even other Earthwalkers – found in the fields inspecting our pictographs. So in frustration, they are more likely to shoot at any available target. Charming lot, these wingless bipeds. Heheh! So we work by unseen night, keep away by shotgun-pointing day. The Rooks are much enamoured of this sport, and think the revenge is sweet and appropriate to their poetic nature. Especially as they like to scribe the names of their beloved-lost, their sky-fallen; those who have been firestick-killed in flight. We graffiti-scrawl their sigils across the fields wherein they fell in blood with their dying caws.



Well, no shortage of names to scribe in memorium, but it takes teamwork to do it properly. It is important to finish each work of art with time to spare before daypeep. The technique is simple enough, and readily understood by anybird of reasonable experience in sky-mischief. One bird to overfly the pattern to be constructed, round and round. Project the darkness down, and keep it focussed tight. A darkdozen others to sketch the shape upon the ground. In the drearie midnight hour we alight silent in the fields of greening crops. Beat down the rough shape by whack of wing, and pressing of breast to stem-sheaves. By bill and talons dark, twist and tweak and bend the stalks, oh so careful, gentle like the allopreening of a lover's feathers, and the coaxing of nestshape from the pile of sticks. Creep quietly through the image forming; no boisterous yelling; use silent-gleam mindcaws. This means only those that know each other well can make pictures within close hearing-distance of the Earthwalker nests.

Best keep a few tough and wary-old Crows on station around the periphery too. Keep the Owls and other wretched hookfaces, hawks of night, from disrupting the proceedings, but again just frighten them away quietly, don't maken mobbing-sport. Carry away any dark quills shed by the exertions of the night, and do not defecate in the same field, for our distinctive whitewash marks are recognisable by many others. And I hope you do need no telling: not to make stylised Crow-shapes or anything obviously Corvine.



For those of us who have some influence in the minds of the more foolish and kinder-hearted Earthwalkers, try encouraging them to propagate bizarre and nonsensical theories about our crop circles. Not that such cranks – as their own species define them – are likely to be believed. But we do like to add to the general confusion. CAW!

Oh, by the way, Hrakka has a companion-creature Earthwalker, who is studying for an Art Degree. Hopes we can help there too. HRARRK, and thricecawed fairskies luck to them!

With darklove, Krark Corone.

Translation by Pwl the HræfnScribe, May 1998 ©
From the Darkmail Records
[600 words]