by M. Raiya
Vin had me worried. There were so many places in that school building where he could be alone and… I just had to hope I’d given him enough to be interested in to stay alive. Back in his normal environment, it would be so easy to let his troubles get the upper hand. I wouldn’t rest easy until I knew he’d made a decision he felt okay with. And preferably come out to his parents.
Finally, I flew down to my favorite bathing place on the lakeshore where water flowed around the roots of a willow, and I splashed in the cool, shallow water. I scared a muskrat shitless, but hell, I figured he needed livening up a little. Then I settled on a dead limb and preened my feathers, smoothing everything out and drying in the sun. Once I had my act together, I flew across the swamp, through a stand of oak, over a low hill, skirted the town center, and dropped down into the pines outside Vin’s school.
I spent the day hanging out there. I missed two red squirrels but nailed a third, so I was well fed, and I dodged a couple asshole blue jays. I watched the building’s activities. I had no idea where inside the two-story, red-brick and glass structure Vin was. But there was no commotion, just the orderly ringing of bells every hour and a half, kids going out for PE class where they were whacking at a softball, and a few parents coming and going, probably picking up kids for dentist appointments or whatever.
God, what I wouldn’t give to read a book again.
I tried to doze up next to a pine trunk, but I couldn’t get settled. There was nothing I could do if he attempted suicide right now, except watch his body being carried away by ambulance. Damn, I had too much imagination. Firmly, I told myself this was just a hiatus in my sucky life and not the beginning of something awesome. I cursed the elan even more. Without it, Vin and I could have been real friends. Maybe even—no. I refused to think it.
And there was that blue jay again. Shit, he’d seen me. In a second, half a dozen of them were surrounding me, shrieking up a storm. Son of a bitch, I was going to eat all of them someday.
I had to fly off with my entourage in pursuit. It only took me ten minutes to lose them because I was seriously mad, but when I got back to the school, the buses were leaving, and I’d missed making sure that Vin got on. That meant waiting another twenty minutes to know that he was all right, unless I did something stupid like fly alongside the bus and look in, which I contemplated for a few seconds. Somehow, I didn’t think Vin would have liked that, and I knew like hell my grandfather wouldn’t.
I went up and over the hill, taking the direct line to the lake and Vin’s house. I was all worked up by the time I finally heard the bus coming down the hill, deathly afraid it wouldn’t stop. I had every possible scenario worked out in my head as to why he wouldn’t be on it, from him being dead, to one of his parents picking him up for an appointment, to him having flipped out in class and screamed that an owl was talking to him and he’d been rushed to the hospital and had a lobotomy because he was dangerous. Or maybe, even worse, he’d gone on a date with some hot guy who had suddenly declared his undying love for Vin.
I shook my head. If that happened, I would be very happy for him. When that happened, was more like it. Why every gay guy in the school was not in love with those eyes was beyond me.
The bus put on its yellow lights as it approached the house. I was never so happy in my life when the red lights came on and it groaned to a halt. After a second, Vin came down the steps alone. His dark hair shone silver in the light coming through the pine limbs. And his eyes—oh, they were as blue as ever. Still bright and alive and Vin. He turned to wave goodbye to someone as the bus pulled away. As soon as it was out of sight, I flew straight for him, coming in at an angle. I forgot I was soundless, I forgot he probably wouldn’t have been as worried about me as I was about him, and I scared him worse than I’d scared the muskrat. He yelled and batted at me, and I back-winged off. Hell, he’d probably spent the day convincing himself I didn’t exist, and here I came flying at him the instant he got off the bus. I should have—I didn’t care what I should have done. As soon as he stood still, I landed on his left shoulder.
I froze. I couldn’t believe I’d just done that. Last night I had gotten all freaked when he touched me.
Fortunately, he took it in stride. “Well, hi,” he said, laughing as he got his breath back. “I missed you too.”
Knowing that made me so excited I couldn’t help flapping my wings all over him and making ridiculous little happy owl sounds.
“Okay, you need to get a grip,” he said. “Calm down. I’m home.”
I reached up and gave his left earlobe a gentle nip.
“Ow! Damn, don’t do that.”
Mortified, I launched away from him. What the hell was wrong with me? He must think I was some kind of freaking puppy.
So I’d hung out in his room last night when he’d needed someone to listen. Now I’d acted like a fool. I landed on the porch railing and sat there as cool and collected as an adult owl was supposed to look, the personification of dignity. Vin just grinned as he came up the stairs. I had the feeling he had me figured out. Deep inside I suspected that this was fast becoming less about me keeping him from killing himself than it was about me wanting to feel safe and secure again. Or maybe there wasn’t any difference between the two any longer.
He got the front door open and I flew in behind him. I did a lap around the living room/kitchen area and then settled on the back of a recliner looking out over the lake. Typical kid, Vin dropped his backpack and went straight to the refrigerator. He got himself a can of soda and then dug through a cupboard for a bag of chips. He sank down into the recliner, and I dropped lower to the left armrest. I felt perfectly content to sit there as he popped the tab of his soda with one hand and took a long drink. Then he opened the bag and took out a chip.
“Want one?” he asked, holding the first one out to me.
Oh God. I took a delicate bite and thought I’d gone to heaven.
“I am so hungry,” he said, stuffing a handful into his mouth. Then he pulled his laptop out of his backpack and opened it on his lap. I turned my head so I could watch it boot up.
“All right,” he said. “I found this bird website today, but I want to make sure.” He typed quickly, and after a second, an ornithology site popped up. He entered “barred owl” into the search box, and a second later, a photo of a large brown-and-white owl came up.
“That’s you, right?” he asked, looking back and forth from me to the photo. “Yup. No ear tufts. I didn’t think so, but I wasn’t sure. Now, it says that the great horned owl is your only natural enemy.” He raised his eyebrows. “That’s insane. An owl would really prey on another owl?”
I nodded.
He shuddered. “That’s just sick. I had no idea. Are there any around here? Do we have to worry?”
There was a pair of great horned owls down by the creek at the edge of my territory who nested near a covered bridge every year, but after one brief run-in with them, we had agreed to leave each other alone. I was more aggressive than most barred owls, and besides, great horns usually only went after very young or very old owls, and only if they were hungry. They were no problem. I shook my head.
“Okay, phew. I was worried about that all day.”
He was so sweet.
“Now, it says you’re native here, you don’t migrate, and you eat mostly small rodents. And sour cream and onion chips.”
He fed me another. Bliss.
“Believe me, I know all about you and squirrels.” He laughed, then went on. “You need between three to five mice or the equivalent a day. You nest in tree cavities—hey, are you male or female?”
I sent him a look.
“Sorry. Are you male?”
I hesitated. I don’t know why, except it was kind of personal. I finally nodded.
He hesitated too, and then said, “Okay. Um, do you have a mate? It says you mate for life.”
I shook my head.
“No, you don’t have a mate, or no you don’t mate for life?” He caught hi
mself and pretended to smack his own forehead. “Dammit, do you have a mate?”
I shook my head again.
“Okay,” he said. He read on. “You have ‘soulful’ brown eyes. I’d say you do.”
Soulful? Good grief. This was a stupid website.
“That’s about it. Oh, you live ten years in the wild. About. Are you—ah—old?”
I shook my head. Shifters had a longer life span than normal humans. Though I doubted that would be true in my case.
“Right, then.” He logged off, that settled. I stuck out my head toward the chip bag. He gave me another and then turned to study me. “So you’re a barred owl. That’s what you are. But what I want to know is who are you.”
Good luck with that. I’d much rather talk about him the way we had last night. I blinked.
“Look, have you always been an owl?”
I didn’t dare even try to answer that one, my grandfather’s eyes glaring in my mind.
After a second he nodded. “Okay, is this stuff you’re not supposed to talk about?”
I gave a big nod, though I knew he had to be disappointed.
“Okay, sorry. I won’t ask. Just one thing. Are you safe? I mean, are you in danger?”
I kind of shrugged my wings.
“Shit, you are,” he said, and I felt his heart rate take off. I sensed mine doing the same. “Do you need me to do something? Can I do something? Is it worse than how a great horned owl is dangerous?”
I felt myself shiver. For the first time in three years, someone had offered to help me. My world rocked.
But there was nothing he could do. He couldn’t remove the elan—it was deep in my back muscle, put there by my grandfather’s magic. And even if he could remove it, I wouldn’t ask him to take that kind of risk. My grandfather would not be happy with him. Dangerously not happy.
“Will you tell me if I can help? Somehow? Promise?”
I nodded. I wished I could tell him how much he was helping just by asking. I only hoped it wasn’t going to make everything worse.
He stroked my back lightly. I twitched a little because it felt good.
“Oh, sorry,” he said, taking his hand away. “You’re so much like a cat. It’s instinctive to pet you.”
A cat? I looked at him, horrified. I was a wild animal, a predator high on the food chain. Not something that purred on someone’s lap.
“And you’re so crazy soft. I read that owl feathers are different from all other bird feathers. They’re softer so you don’t make any sound when you fly.”
That was true. I fluffed myself. I guessed there wasn’t any harm in being petted a little. If he really wanted to. So I bent my head and pressed it up under his hand.
“Wow,” he said and very carefully stroked me. “You are so amazing.”
Well, yeah, I agreed with that.
After we polished off the bag of chips, we went back into the kitchen. Without asking, he filled a cup of water for me and held it so I could scoop a mouthful from where I sat on the back of a chair. He watched as I tipped my head up to let it run down my throat—birds don’t swallow the way mammals do.
“That’s so cool, the way you do that,” he said.
Okay, I thought, amazed that he was amazed by what I took for granted.
“Could we go outside?” he asked. “I’ve been sitting all day.”
Well. That I could do. I gestured toward the door. We both knew without saying that it would be a long time before his parents got home.
“Hang on. I want to change into shorts.”
I waited in the kitchen until he came back down, wearing blue swimming trunks topped with a white T-shirt that made him look very tanned and healthy.
We headed for the lake. It was a bright, sparkling afternoon with a light north wind keeping the air fresh and cool and mercifully dry. The houses weren’t packed in along the shore the way they were in some places, so I didn’t need to worry about being seen by anyone else. Vin walked along a path near the water, stepping over roots and small rocks, and I flew ahead of him, pausing every twenty feet or so. He couldn’t take his eyes off me, and finally, after he’d almost fallen for the third time, I circled back.
He hesitated, and then held up his left arm the way people do for hawks in movies. As carefully as I could, not wanting to shred his skin, I back-winged and landed just above his wrist.
“Wow, I keep forgetting how light you are,” he said.
I knew I wouldn’t be light for long, if he had to keep his arm up. So I very gently moved myself up to his shoulder again. There was just enough room for me to sit there, and the top of my head was about the same height as his.
“This is better,” he said, and kept walking.
Yeah, it worked for me too.
We proceeded in companionable silence. The waves washed against the low, sandy bank, a ring-billed gull called overhead and sent me a very strange look, which Vin didn’t notice and I ignored, and several motorboats went past, far enough out not to be able to see me. A nicely trimmed red sloop also sailed by, but I ignored her, after one quick, painful, look.
Too soon, we came in sight of the next house, and Vin turned around. We were almost back to his place when I saw a frog. It was in a patch of low grass growing out of the shallow water beside the path. Total instinct took over. I launched off Vin’s shoulder and dropped like a missile onto the slimy green thing. In less than a second, it was dead and I’d swallowed it.
Vin gasped.
I froze and looked up at him. I was wet, bedraggled, and I’d just eaten a raw frog, whole, right in front of him. He stared at me in shock. Then he raised his right hand and covered his shoulder where I’d been. I’d hurt him—I’d forgotten he wasn’t a tree limb, and I’d pushed off hard.
Oh God.
This friendship—if I could call it that—was not only unrealistic, it was dangerous, especially for him. I’d just injured him physically without a thought. Who had I been kidding, thinking I could help him? I couldn’t even talk. And my daily reality was not all soft feathers and beautiful flight; it was raw frogs and bedraggled feathers and pain. He must not have read how owls barf up the undigested bits, or he wouldn’t have wanted me on his shoulder in case I suddenly did it. And there was absolutely nothing sexy about the way owls mated. I’d die of shame if he read a website that talked about that. Not that I’d ever, or would ever, do it, but still.
I spread my wings and flew away without a backward glance. Done. All swamp from here. In fact, time for a new swamp. Maybe in Australia. That was the other side of the world, I was pretty sure. I was a total, total fool. And soon I probably wouldn’t even remember once being human anyway.
That thought terrified me in a way it never had before.
“Hey, wait!”
Shit. I landed on a limb above Vin’s kayak, high above, and kept my back to him. But I stayed there as he ran up.
“Dude. It’s okay. Owls have to eat when they have the chance. I get that.”
Well, that didn’t excuse me from hurting his shoulder.
“Hey, it didn’t hurt. Honest.”
Liar. Mind-reading liar.
“Please.”
Damn.
I hesitated—what was this about not having to make choices?—and then slowly turned. He looked up at me and then held out his arm.
No way. I was wet, and there was mud on my feet. I flew to the edge of the water and splashed myself clean. Then I perched on the railing of the dock to preen. In a minute he walked out toward me. I kept my back to him and worked on my feathers, smoothing each one through my beak. I had to do that after they got wet, or I wouldn’t be able to fly well. I concentrated harder on it than usual.
Vin sat down quietly and let his feet dangle in the water. I took my time, and when I was finally done, I gave myself a good shake and then slowly turned. He looked up at me, and I couldn’t quite meet his eyes. I remembered the revulsion in them after the squirrel incident, and I really thought at least some of it would ha
ve come back.
But all I saw was—I wasn’t sure. Could it be admiration? That made no sense at all.
Well, I’d take anything that wasn’t abhorrence.
I looked at his shoulder, but there wasn’t any blood showing on his T-shirt. I must have not broken the skin. I knew I had to have left a bruise. But he didn’t say anything, and slowly, we settled back into companionable silence.
I gazed into the water. I did what I did because I had to or else I’d die. Yeah, the reality of my daily existence was most people’s nightmare, but it was my life. I hadn’t asked for it, I didn’t think I deserved it, but I’d made the best of it. And it hadn’t been all bad. I guess when all you had to worry about was your next meal, you could let go of a lot of the things that bound humans to their daily treadmill. And I never had to do laundry. I’d hated doing laundry.
“I was thinking,” Vin said quietly. “Last night, it sort of came to me that life’s all about choices. It’s not like there are right and wrong ones. You just make the best one you can at that time, and then you make more from there. Right?”
I shivered a little. Either he was telepathic, or I’d accessed my magic without realizing it and projected to him. Somehow, what I’d been thinking had communicated itself to him, on some level. Or maybe owl-smarts rubbed off. Hell, I could become a philosopher. A philowlsopher.
I just nodded.
“I mean, I still don’t know what I’m going to do, but it’s easier to look at it that way. Does that make sense?”
I nodded again.
“Thanks.”
I dipped my head a little.
Then I tensed. I suddenly got the feeling I was being watched. I straightened on the railing and looked around, turning my head all the way one way, and then all the way back the other the way owls are famous for doing. I couldn’t see anything. Maybe I was just feeling exposed out here in daylight. I was used to hiding in trees, in shadow. Then I spotted a bright yellow motorboat not too far offshore. At once, I dropped to the surface of the dock and scooted behind Vin where I wasn’t so visible.