Sacrifice
Something is near death. Admittedly, that may be wishful thinking on my part, but I have a nose for this kind of thing.
Soaring in the gray skies, somehow expansive and closed in at the same time, I’m drawn to the graveyard where human folk plant their dead, usually not fresh enough for my tastes, and mark them with stones. A rippling field of green, colored gray today, spotted with trees and crisscrossed with little roads.
But today there’s nothing long-dead. Nothing tainted with strange chemicals and sealed in a box. No, today there’s something dying. How rare.
I circle the wind biting into my pinions, to see if I can zero in on this gift. And I can see there are some figures on the ground below, huddled around a small fire. How curious.
***
The bitch whines as the wind feels like claws along her rib cage. Mist plays among the tombstones. She doesn’t want to be here. It smells wrong. But The Man has brought her here and let her off the leash.
She knew The Man wanted some space, so she went wandering to smell who else had been here. The stones were damp this day, mildew and moss, but little in the way of interesting scents. And only unpleasant smells from the ground below them.
The trees were more interesting, rich scents escaping from seams in the bark. These ancient trees have arcane knowledge and they have been visited more
often by other dogs, the last one a young male a few days ago. She leaves her reply and wanders towards The Man.
He’s been joined by a stranger. They’re huddled around a small fire on one of the graves. Shadows cast and flicker around the stones and trees like evil things grasping. The bitch stays out of range, on the outskirts. She doesn’t like this stranger The Man is with, the shapes they’re making in front of the flames, or the strange droning noises they’re making.
She suppresses a whimper. She knows he’ll be mad if she interrupts him. As the wind shifts towards her from the direction of the fire she realizes there’s something else with the men. A bird!
She can hear it fussing and clucking in a bag at the feet of the stranger. For a second, her hackles rise up and a growl escapes her throat. Their droning noise is building to a crescendo as the stranger reaches in and brings a black rooster out of the bag.
***
She’s disturbed. A vibration shudders through the stone, down her silvery threads and back to her. Not a fly giving itself for her dinner but other beings, large stupid things as liable to wreck her weavings as anything else. The air is too warm, it wakes her up, it should be cold and sleepy. And now smoke.
It’s cold and moist, there should be no fire. There’s been no lightning. No. Everything about this is unnatural. Disturbing. She shudders to life. Crawling over her wind-rippling net, over to the cold stone. She climbs its shadowed spine and over the bowed top to see what unnatural things would dare disturb her little world.
It’s bright and oddly warm and the big clumsy things move around the fire. Wrong wrong wrong, everything is wrong. One of the big things holds up a bag and brings out a… bird.
She scrambles back into a recess, a letter E carved into the cold old stone. Safe at the moment, she again observes the looming shapes come together. The one with the black bird struggling in his hands holds it out and the other pulls a knife across its throat and catches the blood in a cup.
She cowers back into her shadows as far from this madness as she can manage. The big things make coordinated noises and the bird corpse is tossed aside. They make a mark upon their foreheads with the blood and she skitters back around the side of the stone to hide back in her home.
***
I circle above. There’s little doubt now, I’m getting a meal. The smells of dying have become the smells of death, of blood. The huddled figures below are going their separate ways, one of them taking that dog away. I spiral down and down, landing upon the stone. I smell the smoldering becoming ashes. And see my prize. I hop down with a happy croak and accept my offering.