by Paula Guran
“Oh?”
“Owl’s pupils were like holes in the fabric of your life, a reflection of the dismal future He foresaw. Dad did not answer the phone when you called. Something was wrong. You sped home, opened the garage door, and dragged his limp body outside. Another minute, he would’ve died.”
“If you know the story so well, why call?”
“Maybe I just wanted to hear your voice.”
Another pause. “It’s good to hear yours, too.”
“Next weekend.”
“We’ll be expecting you.”
“Mom?”
“Yes?”
“I love you.”
As Nina returned to Filly Lane, she drove past the Wordsmith teen and his dog. Slowing to a crawl she called, “Afternoon!” through her cracked window.
“Afternoon, Ma’am!” He pointed at a single gray cloud over the forest. “Looks like rain! Bad news for Memorial cookouts, right?”
Nina thought: worst drought of the century, the earth is kindling, barbeque overturns, neighborhood burns. “It’s smart to move everything indoors. There’s nothing worse than soggy burgers.”
“Yes, ma’am!”
She parked in her driveway and staggered inside. The all-nighter grogginess had transformed into a headache; left untended, it might reach migraine territory. She curled on her queen-sized bed. A nap usually helped.
Would the terrible thing happen as she dreamed?
Would a migraine render her helpless?
Would the terrible thing come during daytime?
Or, like Owl, would it emerge at night?
She should set an alarm. But she was already sleeping.
Six hours later, Nina woke to inquisitive knocks against her window-pane. Red streaks marked the glass and hovered in front of Owl’s faux human face. Nina opened the window wide. “Come in,” she said.
Owl hopped over the window ledge, His head swiveling side-to-side. His hands were bloody from fingertips to wrists. No blood on His mouth tonight; maybe the prey escaped.
“Why do you insult me and your mother?” He asked. “She all but begged you to visit. Pancakes are delicious, Nina.”
“How do you know that?”
“Pancakes? I once—”
“No. Our conversation was private.”
He pointed at His ears. “Every scream, every whisper.”
“So you are God.”
“There are no gods. I’m certain. Or I’d hear their voices, too.” He parodied a smile. Eyes too round, mouth too wide. “While we’re sharing secrets: your father should have died thirty-four years ago.”
“You’d love that, huh?”
“It’s what he wanted.”
“Dad’s very happy now.”
“Ha!” Owl wiped His hands on His formless cotton smock. “Why do you wear a hospital gown?” Nina asked. “It looks ridiculous.”
“It’s a uniform of infirmity. Nina, your ancestors never asked such obvious questions. They barely spoke to me at all! When did you forget to be afraid?”
“I am afraid,” she said, “of the badness you precede.”
“What if,” He said, “badness and I are one and the same?”
“Are you?” she asked. “That’s the only secret I need to know.”
Thunder cracked. The doorbell rang.
“It begins,” Owl said, and He fell into the night.
“Thanks.” Nina slipped into tennis shoes, grabbed her mini flashlight, and ran downstairs. Half the neighborhood stood on her porch. Nancy, Teen Wordsmith, the Wordsmith fathers, the German Shepherd, both Vaude parents, and the two youngest Vaude girls. At least none carried pitchforks. “Can I help you?” Nina asked.
“Have you . . . has the neighborhood watch seen Abigail?” Nancy asked.
“Abigail?”
Father Vaude held out his phone to show Nina a photograph of a ten-year-old girl with blond curls. “My daughter,” he explained.
“She’s missing? How long?”
“Abby went to her room after supper, around seven. We just noticed she’s gone.”
“Three hours,” Nina said. “Maybe less.”
“Her phone is missing, too!” Mother Vaude added.
“Well, have you seen her?” Nancy asked.
Nina rubbed her forehead. It felt bruised, and the ruckus threatened to revive sharper aches. “I . . . the neighborhood watch hasn’t noticed any unusual behavior tonight.”
“What use are you, then?” cried Mother Vaude. Her daughters clutched her knitted cardigan sleeves, their eyes wet. Nina felt moisture on her face, too; it was drizzling. A wall of strobe-light-flashing, rumbling clouds drenched the forest as a thunderstorm spilled up the valley.
“Call the police,” Nina said.
“Is Abby lost?” One of the children asked, her voice hitching from meek distress to wailing dismay between “Abby” and “lost.”
“What’s their number?” Nancy rummaged in her pink fanny pack.
“It’s in here.” Teen Wordsmith flipped through the safety booklet Nina had distributed earlier.
“Nine-one-one!” Mother Vaude shouted. “This is an emergency!” As both children wept, thunder hummed through Nina’s skull. Frankly, she was surprised that the German shepherd wasn’t howling.
He barked earlier that day, when Nina approached the Wordsmith mailbox.
He also barked the night she met Owl.
“Quiet!” Nina said. “I need to think! Please, shh!”
Whether influenced by her tone or respect for the neighborhood watch, everyone, even the children, hushed.
“What makes your dog bark?” Nina asked Teen Wordsmith.
“Doorbells, vacuum cleaners, the mailman—”
“Intruders. He never barks when I jog past your house, but the moment somebody crosses property lines . . . Does Abby have a treehouse in the forest? Maybe in a beech tree?”
“No,” Father Vaude said. “We don’t allow her to play there.”
Teen Wordsmith raised his hand. “I’ve seen one near the fire pit. It was just old planks wedged between branches. Something a kid might build. Maybe she sneaks out?”
“She’d have to cut across your backyard to reach the forest. Hm. The neighborhood watch has good reason to believe that Abigail does that often.” No time to waste: Nina sprinted toward the maelstrom. Wind-muffled voices called her name, demanding an explanation; half the mob followed her down the street. Was she leading them to the death Owl foresaw? Abigail’s death? Their own deaths?
Nina lengthened her strides to outpace them all. It was easy; she’d been training since seventh grade, driven by screaming thoughts, less escaping than coping. Running helped. Her pills did, too. She had to believe that she could help Abigail.
The forest met her like a wall. Its canopied bodies muffled the wind, the rain, the distant voices, and the pulsing thunder. “Abby!” she shouted. “Abigail! Can you hear me?” The storm responded with a mocking shriek. She leaped over a branch that had fallen across the path; its twigs brushed her legs, grasping. Thunder cracked. A flash quickly followed.
The lightning was near.
Across the clearing, near a beech tree, lay a pink-clothed body. Abigail: face-down, soaked, her blonde hair tangled with loam and cloying blood. “She’s hurt!” Nina shouted, running to the child. “Can anybody hear me? Help!” Aside from quick, wheezing breaths, Abigail did not move, and Nina was afraid to jostle her, lest she worsen a neck injury. It looked like Abigail slipped and fell from the ramshackle treehouse.
“Can you hear me, kiddo?” Nina asked. “Your family’s coming. Everything will be fine.”
That’s when she saw them: three punctures on the back of Abigail’s neck. As if she’d been attacked by a beast with claws. Or talons.
“Owl, why?” Nina asked, turning, finding Him waiting there, behind her, dressed in His human skin and hospital gown. The rain had washed the blood from His hands.
“Will you save a life tonight?” He asked. Bristling feathers
unfurled from His skin. Black talons filleted His wide feet as they emerged. “Yes? Then why am I here?”
His eyes moons, His feathers knives, Owl enveloped Nina and Abigail with circus tent wings. The forest trembled, bent. Nina saw her reflection in His pupils; the blackness swallowed her.
Rain still pattered against her upturned face.
“You’re just a bird,” she said. “All this time.”
Nina hefted Abigail over her shoulder and sprinted through Owl’s swollen, bladed chest. It parted like mist. She crossed the clearing. Paused to look over her shoulder.
Athene cunicularia, a wee burrower, huddled on the ground, nearly buried by slick leaves. He winked.
Cr-ACK!
Light engulfed Him. The lightning that struck the beech tree was so close, its voice and flash reached Nina nearly simultaneously.
In the silence that followed, Abby whispered, “I fell.”
“It happens,” Nina said. “You survived.”
“HOW TO SURVIVE AN EPIC JOURNEY”
TANSY RAYNER ROBERTS
Fill my cup with wine, girl. Pass the honey cakes, and I shall tell you a tale of adventure and heroes. I was there. I knew them all.
(1)
Meleager liked to think it was for his sake that I ran away from home and joined the crew of the Argo. Ours, he believed, was the kind of epic love that bards sing about from one age to the next.
He even believed this sober.
I loved him well enough, but I had no illusions about how our song would end. He had a wife at home, for all he pretended otherwise.
No matter. With Meleager warming my side at night, the rest of the crew kept their hands to themselves, and I was able to make the most of the adventure I stole for myself.
I signed my name to that enterprise for love, yes, but not love of a man. I fell in love with a ship: the Argo, a beautiful lady in the hands of a captain who never deserved her.
Jason is remembered as a hero, and I do not dispute that. But I think perhaps the definition of the word “hero” has shifted over the years.
We all know men like Jason. He was tall and muscled and golden: it was easy to believe he was favored of the gods.
The gods have shit taste when it comes to picking favorites.
I should have known there was something wrong with him from the first—you can tell a man’s worth by how he treats his servants. Our Jason was busy flogging an oarsman when Meleager first led me to the dock at Iolcus.
Young and thirsty for adventure, I ignored the warning signs. By the time I had the full measure of Jason as a captain and as a man, I had already fallen for the Argo: hook, line and sinker. I would have put up with any amount of bullshit to be part of her maiden voyage.
Jason ruined everything for his crew: the quest, the prize, even the legend that followed. We hoped to do great deeds, and be remembered as . . .
Yes, all right, I’ll say it. Heroes.
Instead we ended up as supporting characters in Jason’s tragic romance with himself. Sometimes, we are not even that. I myself am often cast out of the Argonaut legend because the idea that Jason might have allowed a woman on board a ship is beyond the pale. (Hesiod, I’m looking at you.)
Everything that Jason did, all those stories testifying to his selfishness and excess, and you fucking poets think risking a maid’s virginity is where he might have drawn a moral line?
I am Atalanta of Arcadia, and I was there. My life map allowed two possible roles: to be a spinster princess or a married princess. I chose a third.
I chose to be an Argonaut.
(2)
I did not care a wet fart about the Golden Fleece. To sail and to fight, to be a comrade alongside my fellow adventurers, was all I ever wanted. The Fleece was an excuse, a story to sail ourselves into: it could as easily have been a monster to slay, a crown to collect, or a stable to scrub clean.
It was Jason who believed that the treasure gave us purpose.
As the Argo neared Colchis, we rescued four sailors from a wreck and they asked us whither we were bound. We told them, and they were surprised.
“You know the king of Colchis is an eccentric host,” said one.
“He claims to be son of Helios,” said another, with a smirk that suggested he did not believe the tale. “And he punishes those who challenge that claim.”
“You’re not mocking the gods, are you?” my shipmate Perseus demanded. He was one of at least three sons of Zeus on the voyage, not including Herakles who had abandoned us weeks earlier.
“Nay, friend, but when a king wears a golden hat with spikes and regularly descends into his throne room on a string and pulley so as to pretend he is the sun itself . . .”
We all agreed that it would be hard to keep a straight face with such antics going on.
“My crew and I are on a quest to steal the Golden Fleece so that I can reclaim my father’s throne,” Jason declared proudly.
The four sailors stared at him a long while and then, in unison, laughed so hard they were nearly sick.
This did not bode well for our quest.
(3)
Jason claimed that Herakles jumped ship in pursuit of a lover. We knew better than to believe our captain’s lies by then.
There had been blazing rows between the two heroes, and not only when they were in their cups. Herakles believed a hero should do more than collect shiny trinkets and kiss up to royalty. (This was rich, frankly, coming from him.)
Jason, as royalty himself, took those insults personally, and insulted Herakles in turn for his treatment of women. (I know. Believe me. The hypocrisy did not go unnoted.)
A crew cannot survive with two captains. We owed Jason our loyalty even if most of us agreed that Herakles would make a better leader.
So Herakles left and the boy Iolaus scurried after him. The Argo was lighter and quieter with them gone. No one argued with Jason for a while, and the next time we slew a sea monster, we toasted the name of our good friend, Herakles the hero.
He met a bad end, of course, but not before Jason met his.
(4)
Let me tell you about this hero of ours, captain of the beautiful Argo (seriously, that ship was spectacular, it breaks my heart the way she ended).
On the isle of Lemnos, Jason seduced the local queen, only to abandon her with a thickened waistline. I don’t mean that he baked her a nice cake before we stole out in the dead of night without paying for a winter’s worth of bed and board. I mean he knocked her up.
It was a terrible winter. Our mast cracked in two places, and there’s only so much you can do to repair wind damage to sails before there’s nothing left of them at all.
Thus we arrived on Lemnos: the isle of women, surrounded by a stormy sea. All their men had left, in boats that never returned.
While Jason negotiated for us to winter on Lemnos, our heroic Argonauts joked that it was the women’s hairy legs, or their smell, that sent their men packing. This was a fishing island, and I can tell you now that the smell of fish scale and bone had nothing to do with the women.
We could have been happy there, Meleager and I. We learned to fish, and it was easy enough to forget about my lover’s own abandoned bride while we were so far from home. But adventure called, spring awoke, and thanks to Jason’s honeyed promises to the queen (who still believed they would marry before her babe was born) we had to slide the Argo into the water under cover of darkness and make away in secret.
Jason laughed that night about his narrow escape, and I seethed at him in silence. For love of the Argo and the quest ahead of us, I said nothing.
No hero ever claimed to be a good person.
(5)
Let me explain more about Jason.
You would think he had been born to the crown, that his childhood was all pomp and silk cushions and “your Majesty” and sweetmeats, every inch of wealth and privilege ever extended to a child. A life like the one I ran away from, as fast and far as I could.
In truth, Jason w
as raised far from all that. The son of a usurped king, he was hidden as a baby, raised by peasants or by centaurs, depending on which story you believe.
My money is on centaurs. There was nothing humble about our Jason: he was all piss and arrogance. Every step he took was in the expectation of an embroidered carpet sliding beneath his foot. No peasant-raised creature would ever behave thus.
When he came of age, Jason presented himself to the kingdom of Iolcus in Thessaly to claim his father’s throne, armed with fairy stories and a sharp sword. This was inconvenient for everyone, not least his uncle Pelias who was enjoying the job of king.
Jason had lost a sandal on his journey while helping an old woman (possibly the goddess Hera) across a river. Clytius of Troy reckoned it was more likely Jason lost the sandal while shagging a wine maiden. You can guess for yourself which version sounds more authentic to my ear.
An oracle had warned King Pelias he would be killed by a man with one shoe, so he was never going to embrace his nephew in friendship. Destiny and paranoia collided.
“What would you do, dear boy, if a man came before you whom the oracles had foretold would be your murderer?” the wicked uncle asked Jason over a cup of wine.
Jason, never the quickest ship in the fleet, wiped wine off his mouth and said “Give him an impossible task that will see him killed; or at the least, out of your hair for a year or three.”
How they laughed.
The next day, Jason was sent on his epic voyage to claim the Golden Fleece, and prove his worth.
Would I have joined the crew if I knew our quest was deemed impossible long before I even reached Thessaly? Hells yes. I would have fought a dragon for a chance to fly the Argo across the waves. I would fight a dragon for that ship still, if she was prepared to wait a little longer for me to lay my old-lady cane down and ready myself.
If she still sailed; the Argo never got a chance to become a crone like me. Putting up with Jason was a price worth paying, or so I thought back then. I had no idea how steep the price would rise.
(6)
So, there we were in the waters of Colchis, finally. We arrived, tired and hungry, presenting ourselves as friendly travelers seeking royal hospitality from a dangerous king. Our mission: to steal his most precious and beloved treasure.