There was once a great tree seated within a grassy field. In this field all manner of creatures thrived: in the roots of the tree lived a serpent and by its trunk a wild hound kept its den. Atop the tree a sparrowhawk perched, its watchful eye surveying all about it. The three quarreled to no end, but on this day the hawk sat the highest.

There was, also, a songbird. With feathers like oil under starlight and music like fresh fruit, it wished that all would hear its song, and so sought the highest bough. But with the sparrowhawk seated there, with its beak made for war, the songbird could carry no claim. And so days passed, as the serpent consumed the sparrowhawk's eggs, the hound bit the heads from the serpent's spawn, and the sparrowhawk drove the hound from his prey.

One day there came hobbling into the field a bedraggled crow, wings broken and feathers torn. Its cries carried the clamor of broken bells, wielded with such determination and creating such horrendous noise that any listening would descend into fury to silence them or insanity when they could not. The crow was discontent, dreaming of better than the carrion it fed upon, and sought a higher branch. It saw the songbird, feathers black as its own, and between the two a plan emerged cased in eggshell.

As the sparrowhawk sat within the tree, it spied the crow upon the ground, cawing as was its tendency. Down the sparrowhawk flew, driven to silence it as all creatures would be. The two of them met, talons against talons, as the crow continued its infernal screeches. Soon enough, serpent and hound emerged from the shadows of the tree, just as intent on the crow's silence as the sparrowhawk was, and fang and claw joined talon and beak.

The crow, learned as it was in living in filth, was the more experienced of the birds in writhing in the dirt and soon found an escape, hobbling off to continue its miserable life. But the sparrowhawk was caught, trapped by wrath due another. On that day it died, but not before it had torn from the tree the very branch upon which it had perched. Some say they have seen the spectre of the bird, wearing the feathers the mad crow shed that day and living in a grove where shadows are cast by darkness. But only the poor of mind would choose to visit such a place, and what they speak is nonsense through and through.

So did the songbird climb to the top of the great tree, to spread its song across the field below, only to discover that the tree too was not enough, and so the songbird climbed higher still. Into the sky it went and so disappeared. The crow, for its part, continued its life upon the ground, for in truth it had never desired more, but instead was content to caw to any who would listen, and indeed to many who were not.