The Soft Wood
The smell was strongest at dusk.
She had learned this over the season. The dead tree held the grubs in the soft wood near the base, where the bark had peeled and the fibers had gone spongy, and the smell of them climbed the trunk as the air cooled and the thermals died. At noon the gradient was weak and spread out. At dusk it was a line she could follow with her beak open, down the bark, into the soft places, to the white curl of a grub turning in its tunnel.
She pulled the hook from the fork where she had cached it.
The hook was a strip of pandanus leaf, cut with her bill along the edge so that a curve remained at one end. She had made it by removing material, taking away the parts that were not the hook until only the hook was left. It had taken her most of the season to get the curve right. The first attempts were too thick and would not fit the tunnel. The later ones were thin enough but snapped. This one held.
She wedged the hooked end into the soft wood and pulled. The grub came out white and wriggling. She ate it. She cached the hook again in the fork, three branches up, where the bark was rough and the stick sat in the V without sliding.
Below her the forest was still. The other trees were green and alive and held nothing she wanted. This dead one held the grubs and the soft wood and the smell, and the smell was hers.
Haro came up the slope at midmorning with the camera trap in his pack. He moved slowly, careful of the ground, not wanting to surprise what lived on it. He was Kanak, from the village below the ridge, and he had been mapping tool sites for the university project for three years. The project was a dataset of crow tool use across Grand Terre, and it was unfinished. His mentor had died in February with the dataset at sixty percent, and Haro had promised to finish it. The promise did not let him sleep.
He found the camera trap on the stake where he had left it. The SD card was full. He swapped it, checked the battery, and looked up.
She was in the dead tree. He could see the hook in the fork from here, a pale stick against dark bark. She was watching him. New Caledonian crows watched people as they watched hawks: whole head turned, one eye fixed.
Haro did not speak. He set the camera on a new stake ten meters from the tree, angled at the fork, and he left. He would come back Thursday to retrieve it. Thursday was the day the crew came.
The foreman’s name was René. He had a truck and a quota and a delivery date, and the delivery date was Thursday. The quota was for six trees this week, and this dead one counted. It was on his map. He had walked the block Monday and marked it with orange paint.
Haro met him at the track below the ridge on Wednesday evening. The foreman was drinking coffee from a thermos and looking at his phone.
“One more day,” Haro said.
René shook his head. “I’ve got six. I need six.”
“The camera trap is up there. I need to film the hook being made. It’s the last piece.”
“I know what you’re doing up there. I’ve seen the orange paint on my trees.” René did not look up from his phone. “I’m not the villain here. I’ve got a delivery date.”
Haro knew this. The foreman was a man with a truck and a schedule, and the schedule did not care about a crow or a dataset or a promise to a dead man.
“Thursday morning then,” Haro said.
“Thursday morning.”
She heard the saw before she saw it.
The sound came up the slope in pulses, the engine note changing as the blade bit and released. She knew the sound. She had heard it at the far ridge two seasons ago, and the trees there had gone. The smell of cut wood had hung in the valley for days.
She was in the dead tree. The hook was in the fork. The grub smell was climbing the trunk as the air cooled. She pulled the hook and went to work on the soft wood, extracting a grub, eating it. The saw grew closer.
At the base of the tree a man in orange was felling a sapling for a skid road. The blade screamed and the sapling fell. Chips flew. The man moved to the next.
She did not fly to the next ridge.
She pulled the hook from the fork. She held it in her bill, curve down, the grip she used between trees. She looked at the young tree twenty meters to the east, the one that would not fruit for years, the one with the thin trunk and the smooth bark. She had cached things in that tree before. She knew the fork.
She flew.
Two hundred meters is not far for a crow. She flew low, below the canopy, between the trunks, the hook steady in her bill. The saw sound fell behind her and then grew again as she circled back toward the young tree. The fledgling was there, on a branch, watching her.
She landed in the fork of the young tree. The fork was shallow and the bark was smooth and the hook did not sit well. She adjusted it. It sat.
The fledgling came down beside her. It was young, still dark at the bill, still learning the weight of things. She had been teaching it for weeks. It had watched her cut the pandanus, watched her wedge the hook, watched her pull the grubs. It had tried to copy her and failed, because the motion is not innate, it is learned.
She pulled the hook from the fork and began to make another.
She cut the pandanus leaf along the edge, removing material, stripping away what was not the hook. The fledgling watched. She held the first attempt out to it.
The fledgling took it in its bill. It held it wrong. The curve pointed sideways, not down. The grip was too far back. It tried to wedge it into the smooth bark of the young tree and the stick slipped.
She did not correct it. She cut another strip and began again.
Below her, the saw stopped. She heard voices. She heard the truck.
Haro came up the slope at noon. The camera trap was gone. The stake was still there, the SD card in his pocket now, but the trap itself had been removed by the crew. He stood where the dead tree had been. The stump was fresh, the wood pale and wet. The grubs were exposed in the cut face, white curls in the soft wood, drying in the sun.
He looked up. Two hundred meters east, in the young tree, a crow was cutting a strip of pandanus leaf. Beside her, a fledgling held a crooked stick in its bill, the curve pointing the wrong way, wedged into a shallow fork in the sapling’s trunk where it did not quite fit.
The truck pulled away with the old tree on its bed, the trunk horizontal, the bark rough and dark. The grubs in the cut face were already going still.
Haro watched the fledgling adjust its grip. The stick slipped. It tried again. The crow cut another strip and did not look up.
The truck turned the corner and was gone. The saw was quiet. The forest was still, and in the young tree the fledgling held its crooked stick in the sapling and did not let go.