Mrs. Crowe is the Nest's elderly storyteller and teacher; during the classroom shooting she slumps motionless in her wheelchair and is struck again.
Mrs. Crowe, known as the Crow or Old Crow, owns the school at The Nest and now teaches only its youngest children. She taught Mission Jones and Frankie, encouraging Frankie to pursue farming, and once caught Mission and Allie kissing. She punished Mission and Rodny's classroom misbehavior by making them sweep the Nest and clean blackboards. Mission carries friends' greetings to her without charging. Some say she is as old as the silo, but Mission regards that as legend.
The Crow can still make music and paint, skills few others remember. She tells Mission that the world was once beautiful, describing blue skies, green lands and animals larger than people. She favors vegetable pulp over water, avoids medication and distrusts the water. She says doctors have taken her blood and suspects they may be seeking a way to kill her.
Mission hopes she can approach the mayor about Rodny's apparent punishment and later looks to her for guidance during the crisis. On his climb to the Nest he remembers visiting her that morning and delivering her note to Rodny.
At the Nest, the Crow sings while Frankie and Allie arrange desks brought out of storage. She asks whether Rodny has made their enemies pay, claims he is safe with the old books and the people who took the world from them, and explains that her note was intended to strengthen him and tell him to begin. She believes he is positioned to hurt those she blames. When Mission insists Rodny is frightened, she says she has misjudged him if that is true.
The Crow tells an Old Time story about Atlantis, a lost city of magic beyond the hills. She insists Rodny ought to be fighting the people outside her classroom, and predicts that the dead will be buried or burned and her desks filled with children again. During the shooting she slumps motionless in her wheelchair and is struck again.
She has deeply wrinkled, dark skin and rheumy eyes. She wears a yellow flowered gown on Wednesdays and uses an electric wheelchair.
She is the teacher and storyteller who has been struck during the confrontation in her classroom.