Tok stretched his wings and tilted them against the gusty wind. Tightening his claws around the topmost branch of his favourite spruce, he rode the gale. It was a strange, spring-like wind for the Moon of Nestlings. Good weather for sky dancing, but he had no heart for it. There was no joy in dancing or anything else now, with Tarkah gone.

Just a year ago they had had their second nesting, raising a fine brood that spring and watching them disperse the following autumn. But after the youngsters were gone, Tarkah had grown restless.

“My heart longs to go a-journeying, as we once did,” she had said. “Why not fly east or south this autumn?”

“And abandon our territory?” he had asked, astonished.

Tarkah had given him a pleading glance. “I don’t mean abandon it forever. We can come back in the spring,” she countered.

“No raven lord abandons his chosen holding,” Tok had protested. “It would be unkora!”

“Would it?” she had asked wistfully. After that she said no more about journeys.

And then…

Not many days afterward he had left her foraging at the edge of a pond, while he flew in pursuit of a mob of strange ravens who had invaded their territory. They had swooped insultingly close overhead, then, ignoring his challenges, had fled. Enraged, he had taken wing and followed them far, so far that darkness had forced him to roost overnight. When he got back the next morning his mate was nowhere to be found.

“Tarkah?” he called, sure she must be somewhere nearby. Perhaps she was hiding, to punish him for having left her for so long, he thought. “Come out, Tarkah!” But still she didn’t answer. He took wing, calling and circling, thinking that perhaps she had followed him and that they had somehow missed each other in the air. But the skies were empty. Deciding she must have gone to forage in the forest, he descended and flew among the trees, still calling, his voice growing sharp with panic. At last he found her in a glade, or what was left of her. She had been torn to pieces, every delicate bone and glossy feather broken, and scattered across the floor of the forest.

“Tarkah!” he screamed. But only echoes answered. Numbly, he covered her remains with dead leaves. For days he perched, fasting, on a branch overhead, sunk in grief, his mind turning in helpless circles. What could have killed her? No owl or eagle, or any other predator he knew would have smashed and broken her body but eaten nothing. And behind his grief loomed the darker shadow of guilt. No raven lord should leave his lady, exposing her to harm. One who did was without kora and deserved to be a lord no longer.

Somehow Tok had survived the bleak winter that followed. Now other ravens would be busying themselves with their nests. Soon eggs would be laid, and new life would begin. But such things could never be again, for him. His heart swelled with sorrow. If he had listened to Tarkah, gone on a journey as she had asked, she would be alive today!

Suddenly harsh croaking sounds drifted down the wind, breaking into his thoughts and he glared upward. Ravens, high overhead, flying north in an angled flight, like a flock of geese. Tok roused his feathers angrily. It was the same formation he had seen on the terrible day Tarkah died! Could they be the same birds? And why were ravens flying like geese? It was unkora, he told himself. With a furious quork, he launched himself on the wind, angling his flight feathers to gain height, pulling himself upward with powerful beats of his great wings. He had failed to catch the strange flight of ravens before. This time he would succeed, and if Tarkah’s murderers were among them, he would kill them! He willed himself onward, into the teeth of the wind, which grew stronger the higher he rose. The flight was wavering, and when the leader dropped back, letting another bird take his place, Tok caught up with him. As he had guessed, the bird was a stranger to him.

“I am Tok, son of Rokan! I am a lord of these hills,” he screamed into the gale. “My mate has been killed. Do you know anything of this?”

The other bird gave him an insolent stare, and flapped on.

Losing his temper, Tok gave the bird a buffet with his wing. “Answer me!” he demanded.

The other struck out savagely with his claws, then with a half roll shot off across the angle of the wind to rejoin the flight, which beat on toward the north.

What use to pursue them? thought Tok, his rage cooling. They would not answer, and he could not fight them all. Sullenly, he glided down the wind, heading for the last of a gut pile left where a Two-Legs had killed a deer in the Moon of Hunters. He made a sparse meal at it, then as the light failed, returned to roost among the boughs of the spruce. Though what did his spruce, his territory matter now, without Tarkah? Here he and she had ridden out many a winter blizzard, telling stories, or talking of their previous year’s offspring, since dispersed, and wondering where they were in the world. Or saying nothing at all, but simply dozing pressed against each others’ sides. Now all his nights and days were lonely.

Morning dawned clear and bright. Tok noticed that at least it felt decently cold for once. He felt little hunger, so he only satisfied his thirst at a place he knew where a spring bubbled up among the roots of a pine tree. The water had never once frozen over this winter, he reflected. A creeping sense of unease added to the weight on his wings, a feeling that something was wrong with the world around him. He mounted the wind, and soared, thinking about it.

Three years had passed since Tok had led the wolves from the Lost Hills to the Raven Mountains. After that, he and Tarkah had departed eastward in search of a new territory, as kora required. For according to ravenlaw, young ravens must leave the territories where they had fledged. The first summer he and his mate had spent in these eastern hills had been perfect, but in the second summer the land had sweltered under a blanket of heat. There had been little snow the preceding winter, so creek levels fell and beaver ponds dried up. The leaves of the maples showed brown edges by mid-season, and living creatures panted for water. But there was almost none. The next year had been warmer still, and all the small forage of frogs and fish began to fail, though deer were plentiful because of the mild winters. But without wolves to kill them, what good were deer to ravens? Now the only time of plenty was in the Moon of Hunters when the hills echoed to the boom of the Two-Legs’ firesticks, and the carcasses and gut piles left from their kills provided feasts for ravens, foxes and coyotes. But the rest of the year, ravens knew hunger.

If only the wolves had come as they had promised! When Rokah and Parvah, his first-fledged son and daughter, had set out to claim their own territories, Tok had sent them to the Raven Mountains to find the wolf leaders Selaks and Durnál and beg them to bring their wolf pack here – the other wolves would follow their vór and vóra. But another year had passed, and the wolves had not appeared. The wolves had failed him, Tok thought bitterly, despite the friendship and gratitude they had shown him for leading them from a place of hardship to a land of plenty. As for the other ravens of the hills, they seemed a tame lot, with no thoughts beyond the cares of nest and young. He had tried to organize a Kort and find Tellers to keep the old ways alive as they were kept in the Raven Mountains, but there was little interest. Then, as times grew harder, ravens began to vanish from the hills. Great swaths of territory fell empty, with no one to claim lordship. Ravens no longer danced in the skies, only flapped north in the strange-shaped flights.

It was an insult to Skyah, who had given them wings for dancing, thought Tok. And he was no better than the rest. No longer would anyone call him Skydancer, for he too danced no more. Brooding on this, he forced himself to swoop and roll in the air. Then he dove steeply, the wind keening through his flight feathers, and circled up again. Remembering Tarkah’s dancing, he imitated her glides and twirls, then added his own movements, trying to weave the two of them together as an offering to Skyah. But his wings felt as heavy as his heart.

So absorbed was he that he did not at first notice the approach of a solitary raven who watched him make a twirling dive like a falling leaf and waited for him to rise again.

“Lord Tok?” said the other, when they came together. “Can I be lucky enough to have found you so quickly? Those who sent me said you would be dancing.”

By his voice and the tinge of brown in his feathers, Tok knew the newcomer was a ravenet. “I am Tok, son of Rokan,” he replied. “Who are you, and who has sent you?”

The ravenet did a neat little wing dip in the air. “Barek, son of Karek, at your service,” he said eagerly. “Selaks, vóra of the Mount Storm wolf pack, has sent me. She and her vór, Durnál, beg you to return to the Raven Mountains.”

Tok shook his wings impatiently. “I cannot!” he snapped. “A lord may not abandon his territory. Do you know nothing of ravenlaw?”

“Not much,” Barek admitted cheerfully.

“Even if I could leave,” Tok went on, “why should I? Long ago I sent to the vór and vóra to come here, as was agreed between us, but they failed me. Why should I do their bidding now?”

“I know nothing of that,” Barek replied. “But the vóra said it was urgent, a matter of life or death.”

“When did you leave the Raven Mountains?” Tok asked.

“Five days ago.”

“Then you have flown fast. It took me and my mate much longer to reach these hills. Come, you must feed and rest before we talk more.”

Down in the forest, Tok led Barek to the gut pile. While the ravenet stuffed himself on the last scraps, Tok stalked and killed a red squirrel, which the two of them shared.

“I must think more about the vóra’s request,” he told Barek. “Go, forage more. You can usually find me near that tallest spruce.”

Later, as they settled in to roost, Tok asked many questions about the Raven Mountains and how things were there.

“I have only lately come there,” the ravenet replied. “So I cannot speak of changes. There are many Two-Legs, as there were in the place where I was fledged. But the living is good. The wolves kill plenty of deer, and when they eat, we eat.”

“Many Two-Legs? Then the Mountains have changed much indeed,” said Tok. “But sleep now. We’ll talk more in the morning.”

The ravenet tucked his head under his wing. But Tok remained awake, his mind seething with questions. Why had Selaks sent for him now? Did she not realize that he could not come? He shook his feathers. No, of course she didn’t know. She knew nothing of ravenlaw. That law demanded that he stay here and hope someday to find another mate. But his heart shrank from that. It was his fault Tarkah was dead. He did not deserve or want another mate.

He drifted off to sleep at last, but some sixth sense woke him in the dead of night. Through the branches of the spruce he glimpsed moonlight glinting on lightly-falling snow. Then, startled, he roused his feathers. For at the end of the bough on which he perched sat another raven. It was purest white, and the light of the moon seemed to shine through it. Tok nudged Barek, perched on the other side of him, but the ravenet slumbered on.

The white raven gazed at him out of dark-shadowed eyes. “The Change is upon us,” it said in a silvery voice. “The world you know is ending. Go north.”

“I’m dreaming!” muttered Tok.

The white raven stretched its shimmering wings. “North,” it said again. “Remember.” And then it dissolved into crystals of snow.