He ran his forefinger along the beak, checking its sharpness, admiring the aerodynamics that started at its tip and ran the length of the body. He held it until the last of the warmth seeped from the carcass into his hands, then he began to pluck it – a longer and more complex procedure than he’d imagined. It was lucky he had the day off.

Wings and tail first, the easy bits, then the back and stomach, which was more difficult in such a small bird. He wanted it all, would have preferred it intact, but in the end he had to compromise with the head. Removing it with a single chop from a kitchen knife, he sat the bird’s watchful skull on top of the cactus on his kitchen windowsill. Perhaps the bird had a right to see what was happening.

Slitting from throat to belly, he removed the entrails then took off the legs. After that, he heated butter, sea salt and garlic in a frying pan, dropping the crow in once it was good and hot.

Cooking it took no time at all. Arranging it on a plate so he could still make out the shape of the creature, he sat cross-legged on the sanded floorboards and breathed deeply of the same air the crow had breathed until only an hour earlier. He looked through the window at the same sky the crow had flown. He listened to the wind in the tree the crow had used for a perch.

The first bite was ecstasy. It didn’t matter that the meat was stringy, or that the taste was unsettlingly like goat’s cheese. It was life. Life so recently being lived that he could feel its essence sliding down inside him. His transition to crow was complete. He was the crow, and every life it had ever consumed.

All the tiny birds fluttered inside him.

He was evolving at superspeed. He understood the very nature of nature.

That made him laugh. Then laugh again. Laugh so long and hard his sides hurt. He felt lighter than air, as if he could fly. He was a predator. A hunter. But not without purpose. He would consume only to improve his own strength, to live longer and become the best possible version of himself. He understood how precious life was. It wasn’t wrong to punish the people who toyed with it and took it for granted. It was justice. More than that. It was necessary to exterminate them.

Now that he’d found himself in the crow and become one with the world, he’d be an unstoppable force in upholding nature’s laws.

Chapter Twenty-Two

11 March