“I’ll get the pouch.” She ran inside to get the “nest” they had used for the robin, a fabric pouch with a foam bottom lined with pieces of soft flannel that could be removed for cleaning. She slung the strap over her neck, slipped on her hiking boots, and went back outside.
Mama gently settled the jay into the fabric pouch. Raven closed the drawstring over her, leaving it open a little. The jay’s beady dark eye stared up at her through the opening. “She’s scared of me. I think she knows I’m Daughter of Raven.”
“Being afraid and staying still are her only hope of survival when she’s in the presence of a predator. You’ll have to win her trust and make her eat. Do you know what to look for?”
“Insects. Almost all birds feed them to their babies because they have lots of protein.” She didn’t know what protein was. She only knew it was something people and birds had to eat to live.
“What else will you need?” Mama asked.
“A beak.”
“How will you get one?”
“I’ll make it out of a stick.”
“Do you have your knife?”
Raven pulled her folding knife from her pants pocket and carefully put the pouch inside her shirt, settling the bird against the warmth of her chest.
Mama patted her cheek. “Go to it, Little Mama. I won’t see you until twilight. The bird’s mother feeds her until the light fades. She has to take advantage of every bit of light she can.”
Raven entered the forest with purpose. She must find food for her baby or it would die. She must keep her warm or she would die.
But first she needed a beak. She found a small, sturdy stick and whittled it into a rounded point. Then she rolled over a rotting dead branch. There was a centipede there. Maybe poisonous. She wouldn’t feed it to her baby. She rolled over more logs and dug in the leaves, catching a fat cricket. She squeezed its life away. Please forgive me for returning your spirit to the earth.
She sat in the leaves and squished the soft part of the dead cricket onto the point of her stick. When she opened the pouch, the nestling scrunched in terror. “I’m your mama. Don’t be afraid.”
She remembered how they’d gotten the robin to eat the first few times. They had to coax the nestling to open its beak by gently pressing on the hinge at the side of the beak.
She pressed the stick with the cricket on the baby’s beak. It wouldn’t open. The cricket kept falling off the stick. She tried again and again. “I’m not giving up, baby,” she said. “You have to eat.”
The bird didn’t understand her words. She tried the kissing sound Mama made to make baby birds open their beaks. But the baby was still too scared to eat.
When the bird at last opened her beak wide enough, she pushed the cricket a little way down her throat. The bird swallowed it. Raven smiled. She thought the baby looked surprised that she had been fed by a scary girl. She tucked the pouch nest back into her shirt and went in search of more insects.
She wandered over the land she’d been walking with Mama since before she could remember. The house Mama had built when Raven was a baby sat on ninety acres of woods and fields. There were forested hills they could climb, meadows, and a stream with salmon.
By the time Raven neared the stream, the jay had eaten five or six times. She wasn’t yet begging with a wide-open beak, but she didn’t fight the food as much. Raven used the kissing sound to tell her food was coming each time she fed her. Soon the baby would know this was the language of her new mama.
Laughter and voices drew Raven’s attention away from her search for insects. She crept through the thick shrubs and ferns until she could see who was there. It was three boys, two older, one younger. They were walking in the stream, all wearing shorts and gym shoes. The older boy with pale skin and orangey hair had his shirt off.
“When did this happen?” the shirtless boy asked.
“He came to his first practice two days ago,” the other older boy said.
“No way. Chris is a basketball and football guy.”
“And really good at baseball. I finally talked him into it.”
“What position will he play?”
“Probably third base. He’s got a good arm.”
“And he’s awesome at batting,” the younger boy said. “He hit two home runs during practice.”
“Our best pitcher was scared to pitch to him,” the dark-haired boy said.
The orange-haired boy broke into laughter.
Raven didn’t understand anything they were saying. But she wished she did.
The boys had reached the deep pool in the stream. The two wearing T-shirts took them off and tossed them onto the bank.
They all went under the water and came up flinging their wet hair.
“Hoo, that feels good!” one of the older boys shouted.
“Good thing the werewolf died,” the other older boy said.
“But may God rest his badass soul.”
“We don’t know for sure that the werewolf’s dead,” the younger boy said.
“Are you afraid?” said the orange-haired boy.
“No. I’m just saying we don’t know for sure.”
“You’re scared!”
“Shut up.”
The young boy didn’t know the other boy had slipped under the water to grab his legs. He screamed because he hadn’t been ready for it. The boy standing above the water laughed and shouted, “Werewolf’s got you, Jackie!”
Jackie was pulled under the water, struggling with the older boy.
Raven didn’t understand what was happening. She left her hiding place to help the young boy, but she didn’t know how.
The two boys beneath the water popped to the surface, the older one laughing, the young one shouting, “Jerk!” He splashed the big boy. All three started splashing each other and laughing. The big boy didn’t mean to hurt the smaller one, Raven realized.
The young boy called
