Winter Moon

flopped and shrieked on the grass but was dead by the time he reached it.
        Without looking closely at the crow, he picked it up by the tip of one wing.
        He carried it into the meadow, to throw it where he had tossed the four squirrels on the twenty-fourth of June.
        He expected to find a macabre pile of remains, well plucked and dismembered by carrion eaters, but the squirrels were gone. He would not have been surprised if one or even two of the carcasses had been dragged off to be devoured elsewhere. But most carrion eaters would strip the squirrels where they were found, leaving at least several bones, the inedible feet, scraps of fur-covered hide, a well-gnawed and pecked-at skull.
        The lack of any remains whatsoever could only mean the squirrels had been removed by the traveler. Or by its sorcerously controlled surrogates.
        Perhaps, having tested them to destruction, the traveler wanted to examine them to determine why they failed-which it had not been able to do with the raccoons because Eduardo had intervened and taken them to the veterinarian. Or it might feel that they were, like the.raccoons, evidence of its presence. It might prefer to leave as few loose ends as possible until its position on this world was more firmly established.
        He stood in the meadow, staring at the place where the dead squirrels had been. Thinking.
        He raised his left hand, from which dangled the broken crow, and stared at the now sightless eyes. As shiny as polished ebony and bulging from the sockets.
        "Come on," he whispered.
        Finally he took the crow into the house. He had a use for it. A plan.
        The wire-mesh colander was held together by sturdy stainless-steel rings at top and bottom, and stood on three short steel legs. It was the size of a two- or three-quart bowl. He used it to drain pasta when he cooked large quantities to make salads or to ensure that there would be plenty of leftovers. Two steel-loop handles were fixed to the top ring, by which to shake it when it was filled with steaming pasta that needed encouragement to fully drain.
        Turning the colander over and over in his hands, Eduardo thought through his plan one more time-then began to put it into action.
        Standing at a kitchen counter, he folded the wings of the dead crow.
        He tucked the whole bird into the colander. With needle and thread, he fixed the crow to the wire mesh in three places. That would prevent the limp body from slipping out when he tilted the colander. As he put the needle and thread aside, the bird rolled its head loosely and shuddered. Eduardo recoiled from it and took a step back from the counter in surprise. The crow issued a feeble, quavery cry. He knew it had been dead. Stone dead. For one thing, its neck had been broken. Its swollen eyes had been virtually hanging out of the sockets. Apparently it had died in mid-flight of a massive brain seizure like those that had killed the raccoons and the squirrels.
        Dropping from a great height, it had hit the ground with sickening force, sustaining yet more physical damage. Stone dead.
        Now, stitched to the wire mesh of the colander, the reanimated bird was unable to lift its head off its breast, not because it was hampered by the threads with which he'd secured it but because its neck was still broken. Smashed legs flopped uselessly. Crippled wings tried to flutter and were hampered more by the damage to them than by the entangling threads. Overcoming his fear and revulsion, Eduardo pressed one hand against the crow's breast. He couldn't feel a heartbeat.
        The heart of any small bird pounded extremely fast, much faster than the heart of any mammal, a racing little engine, putta-putta-putta-putta-putta. It was always easy to detect because the whole body reverberated with the rapid beats.
        The crow's heart was definitely not beating. As far as he was able to.tell, the bird wasn't breathing, either. And its neck was broken. He had hoped that he was witnessing the traveler's ability to bring a dead creature back to life, a miracle of sorts. But the truth was darker than that. The crow was dead. Yet it moved.
        Trembling with disgust, Eduardo lifted his hand from the small squirming corpse.
        The traveler could reestablish control of a carcass without resuscitating the animal. To some extent, it had power over the inanimate as well as the