by M. Raiya
Sensing my tension and following my gaze to the boat, Vin shifted his body to block me better. I heard the boat’s engine kick up a notch, and a few moments later, it was out of sight. Gradually the feeling of being vulnerable lessoned. But I stayed where I was. I needed to be more careful.
“I’m worried about you.” Vin shifted to look at me. “I mean, you’ve got natural predators like great horned owls, and you have to catch a lot of mice and stuff every day, and you have to avoid getting hurt or sick. All the things a normal owl worries about. But then there’s all the other stuff, the stuff you won’t answer my questions about.”
I tossed my head a little to show it wasn’t important.
We both knew I was lying.
“Look,” he said, “I’m already involved. Don’t you think I’d be better off knowing what’s going on? I mean, you wouldn’t believe the stuff I’m coming up with in my head.”
That all needed to stay in his head without adding anything more. Of that I was certain. If my grandfather found out we were sitting on the dock together…. On very rare occasions, shifters might tell a trusted human the truth. But not me, not after what I’d already done. The more Vin knew, the more trouble I’d be in. Besides exactly how was he expecting me to explain all that without words?
I shook my head.
Vin let out a sigh. “All right. At least tell me if I’m on the right track with any of this. At first I thought you were a domestic owl that had escaped captivity. That’s why you were used to being around people. But I realized in a hurry that wasn’t true.”
Unwillingly, I nodded.
“Then when I realized you could understand me, that made me wonder if all owls are a hell of a lot wiser than people think. I mean, they got that name somewhere.”
I rolled my eyes.
“But that’s not true, right? Most owls aren’t really smart, like you.”
I hated it when he made these double negative questions. I waited him out.
“Are all owls really smart?”
I shook my head.
“Are you really an owl?”
Dammit, now he was asking me tough stuff again. What the hell. I nodded. I really was an owl. For the rest of my life.
“But have you always been an owl?”
I glared at him.
“Sorry. So, I got to thinking that you haven’t always been an owl. That made me wonder about two things. How you got to be an owl, and what you were before.”
Neither of which he was going to learn from me.
“So just tell me one thing. Are you an owl by choice?”
I wasn’t about to get into that.
He studied my eyes. “I don’t think you are,” he said very softly.
I hopped up onto the railing again and turned my back on him. We were so done with this conversation.
“All right, sorry. Are you not telling me stuff to protect me?”
I nodded, not looking at him. Protecting both of us from whatever my grandfather would do.
“Could I get in trouble for knowing about you?”
I nodded again.
“I just want to help. You took a big risk to help me. I’m willing to take a risk to help you.”
And I could never live with myself if my grandfather found out about him and did something horrible to him. I shook my head adamantly and kept my back to him.
Suddenly, he got angry. “All right, fine,” he said. “If you’ve done what you came to do, then just go back, okay? I mean, I don’t want to keep wondering when you’re going to disappear and leave me clueless for the rest of my life.”
Shit.
“Don’t you trust me to keep your secret? Do you think I’ll blab all over school? Hey, dudes, this really awesome owl stopped me from killing myself, and now he rides around on my shoulder.” He hesitated, then kept going. “And here’s the last thing I’ve been thinking. Maybe I am insane. Maybe you don’t exist at all. Because this whole thing is really fucking weird.”
I turned around and started dancing on the railing, flapping and hooting.
He held up his hands, suddenly looking worried. “Hey, calm down,” he said quickly. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to get you upset.”
I tried, but the thought that maybe I’d made things worse and now it was too late was too much. And once I got upset, I didn’t get unupset easily.
Vin got to his feet, pulled off his shirt, and tossed it over me like I was a parakeet in a birdcage and would settle down if I thought it was nighttime. For some stupid reason, it worked. I caught my breath, then shrugged my head free from the shirt. I must have looked silly, because he grinned.
His bare chest was—well—all right to look at. Kayaking did interesting things to muscles. So I looked away quickly.
Then I saw the scratches I’d left on his shoulder. He had some deep welts, and a few had bled a little, just not enough to soak his shirt.
He followed my gaze, and then he snatched up his shirt and pulled it back on. “Dude, it’s not that bad. Really.”
I needed to fly away. Now. Forever. I opened my wings.
“No, please. Don’t go. I won’t ask any more questions. I promise.”
I felt terrible. Anything I did at this point would hurt him more. He’d never be satisfied without out knowing the truth about me, and I had no right or ability to share it with him. I looked into his blue eyes for the last time. How could I have ever thought I could save his life? All I’d done was offer him an impossible friendship and then wrench it away. As always, I had made things worse when I’d tried to help.
I heard an approaching engine. I glanced around and saw the yellow motorboat coming back, even closer than it had passed before. No time to fly off without being seen. I dropped down from the railing to the dock and sheltered behind his body again. At once, his hand found the back of my head.
The gentleness of his touch went straight to my soul. In that instant, I gave up, gave in, and let myself lean against him. Leaving would hurt us both more than anything my grandfather could ever do.
We were both silent as the motorboat sped away, and we stayed on the dock silently for a long time after its engine noise faded.
VIN CARRIED me up to the bathroom. I sat on a fluffy green bathmat on the edge of the tub while he dabbed some antibiotic cream on his shoulder, and then we went back to his room. I took my spot on the footboard while he powered up his laptop and dumped his book bag on the desk. “I’ve got to write a freaking essay for my civics class,” he said with a groan. “We just finished our big service learning project, and now we’re supposed to write letters to next year’s seniors about what wonderful experiences we had doing it. Like they won’t know we’re lying through our teeth? I tell you, teachers come up with the dumbest—okay, what are you doing?”
I was dancing from one foot to the other again, all excited, barely able to keep myself from scratching the wood. I had solved our communication problem.
I pretty much knocked everything off his desk when I flew up to it and picked up a pencil with my right talons.
“You can write?”
I chose an unsharpened pencil so I didn’t poke out an eye by accident. Vin was still confused until I turned it the wrong way around and nudged at the keyboard with the eraser. Then he got it and opened a blank document as fast as he could.
I balanced on one leg on the edge of his thick history book and stared at the blinking cursor. For a last, long moment, I wrestled with my conscience, and then I threw myself over the cliff and hit the h and the i.
“Oh God,” Vin breathed. For a long moment, he gazed at the screen. Then he pulled himself together and prepared to talk to an owl. “Um, hi to you too.”
I looked up at him. What did I most need to tell him?
Thank you chips.
He gave a strangled sounding laugh. “You’re welcome.”
Sorry shoulder.
“Oh, it’s okay. Really.”
It wasn’t, but I wasn’t going to waste energy arg
uing. This was hard work. I had four talons on each foot, two facing front and two facing back. I wasn’t used to grasping something in this position and poking at a keyboard, while balancing on one leg. I was going to have to get the important stuff across quick. And then delete this document.
“Listen, are you hungry? Do you want me to get you some real food?” he asked.
I shook my head. A few chips wouldn’t hurt anything, but I honestly had no idea what all the artificial crap in human food would do to my system, and I didn’t dare risk it. But I was deeply touched that of the questions he could ask me, the first had been for my well-being. It hit me that I’d been lucky I’d dropped the squirrel on him and not somebody else.
I refocused, then typed, Shifter. To owl.
His jaw dropped. “Whoa. Like a werewolf? You’re a wereowl? What happened? Did an owl bite you? Are you stuck in this form?”
I shot him a glance.
“Okay, I’ll shut up,” he said quickly. “Tell me what you want me to know.”
I wrote, Secret shifter clans all over world. Not just owls
“Wait. What did you shift from? I mean, are you human?”
I nodded. I’d thought that was obvious, but I forgot his brain was grappling with a lot right now.
“Holy shit. Really?”
I nodded again, and for a long moment, we just looked at each other.
“You’re human,” he finally said. “I mean, you were. You can’t shift back?”
I shook my head.
“Oh my God. That’s horrible. How long? What happened? Are you alone?”
I nodded and typed, I am from NY. Fucked up. Got locked in this form.
He was gaping at me.
“You know how to swear?”
I hooted so loud in laughter it was a good thing his parents weren’t home yet. I dropped the pencil, and he had to hand it back to me, laughing too. This was so typical of my life. Here I was having the weightiest conversation I’d ever had, and we were laughing like fools.
“Okay,” he said, running a hand through his hair. “Which are you really? I mean, which is your natural form?”
Human.
“Wow. And you’re supposed to be able to shift back and forth, but you fucked up and got stuck in owl form? How can you get unstuck?”
I realized he’d misinterpreted what I’d meant. I shook my head. Broke shifter law. Punish. Locked in form. Banished.
He was getting more serious the more I typed. By the time I wrote, Forever, he was looking a little pale.
“Are you serious?”
I nodded.
“Ah—can I ask what you did?”
I hesitated, then wrote, Reveled myself to humans.
“Oh.” Then he thought for a second. Then he said, “Oh,” again, with deeper understanding. “So that’s why you didn’t want to tell me? You could get in worse trouble now?”
I nodded.
“This is irrevocable?”
Have an implant. Only grandfather take it out. Or another leader with special magic. Like any would dare to, but I didn’t want to get into that. My foot was starting to cramp.
“Your grandfather did this to you?”
I nodded.
“That’s horrible.” He thought a moment, then asked, “How old are you?”
I could be eighty for all he knew. Though probably not since I had a grandfather.
19.
“Owl years, or human years?”
I sent him a look. I wasn’t a dog. And he needed to remember to phrase things so I could answer with a nod.
“Human?”
I nodded. My foot was really hurting, but I didn’t want to stop talking.
“Okay.” He didn’t look surprised. Had I been acting like a teenage owl? Maybe.
“How old were you when it happened?”
16.
That shocked him. “So you were a mostly human kid forced into owl form and banished? Has anyone been helping you? Making sure you’re all right?”
I shook my head. Nope. Not a peep from any of them. What my grandfather orders, we must obey. Magic.
He stared at me in shock. Then he said in a low voice, “That makes my problems look pretty trivial.”
I shook my head. Different. Lonely.
Unconsciously, he reached out and stroked my back.
I couldn’t go on much longer for now, but there was more I wanted him to know. I typed fast. Shifted to save friend’s life. Bullies at school. Hit him in face with rock. I attacked.
Vin reached out and took the pencil out of my foot. I don’t know how he knew I needed to stop. “Okay,” he said softly. “Give it a rest for now. I can’t imagine what you’ve been through.”
I nodded miserably and flapped myself over to his bed so I could hunker down and take the weight off my legs. Vin stared at the computer for a long moment, rereading what I’d written. I was content to nestle there and watch him. Sharing had taken all the strength out of me.
He turned to me. “We can talk tomorrow. It’ll be okay.”
A huge surge of relief swept through me, and I let myself fall asleep right in the middle of his pillow.
Chapter Five
HIS ALARM woke us just as it had yesterday. I’d slept deeper than I’d slept for three years, and when I realized I was in a bed, I had a strange overlapping juxtaposition of my owl and human selves that I’d never experienced before. For an instant I thought I could reach out and touch the shoulder of the young man lying next to me with my hand. But it was my wing that moved. Then I was awake and my owl self again.
Vin rolled over and looked at me. When he’d gotten into bed, he must have moved me over closer to the wall. He’d even made me a little nest out of a fleece throw blanket. It kind of made me want to cry.
He whacked his phone and groaned. “God, I can’t wait for this to be done. We’re all so over high school.”
I blinked sleepily. My internal clock was a mess. I should be falling asleep about now.
“So you’ve got to tell me about your past, your family, and all that,” he said. “As soon as I get home. I’ve been wondering—did you go to a regular high school? With kids who didn’t know?”
I just looked up at him. Had he never heard that owls were not morning people? And leaving the nice nest was not high on my priorities.
He laughed. “You know, you’re kind of adorable.”
I gave him the eyes and open mouth that was the last thing a lot of rodents saw. I guess I looked a little scarier than I’d meant. He fell over himself getting out of bed. “Or not,” he said from the safety of the floor.
I tucked my head back under my wing and went back to sleep to the sound of him chuckling.
A little while later, he nudged me gently. I emerged from my wing and cracked one eye. “Dude. I have to leave for school. My parents are already gone. I don’t care if you stay here all day—I’ll leave the window open, and nobody’s noticed the ripped screen yet.”
I stood up and shook my feathers into place. Staying here would be too comfortable. Besides, I had to hunt. I flapped myself over to the chairback. The laptop caught my eye.
“I deleted the file,” he said. “And emptied the trash.”
I nodded.
“Kinda hated to, though. It was real, right? Not a dream?”
I gave the pencil that was still lying on the desk a nudge in his direction. It was all chewed up from my talons. I’d just meant to prove that it had happened, but he picked it up and slipped it in his pocket. “Okay, I’ll see you later?”
I nodded, held his gaze for a second, and then slipped out the window.
THAT AFTERNOON, sitting in a pine outside his school in a light drizzle, I felt like the last bell was never going to ring. All day I’d been thinking about what I wanted to tell him and how best to phrase it as succinctly as possible.
Impatiently, I looked for the buses. They should be coming soon. It was going to be a lovely, calm evening after the rain cleared out. I’d make sure he
got his homework done right away, and then maybe I could go out with him in his kayak. I could fly above him, and then, if he wanted me to, I could land on it and ride with him. There was going to be a full moon tonight, so it would be beautiful. The world would be just water and stars and silvery light, the land dark in the distance. I was desperate to make more memories, as many as I could, to help me through what I knew would come eventually. Whether he chose a college that would lead to law school or whether he chose music, it would mean that he would leave Vermont. I would just have to deal when that happened, and I wasn’t going to think about it now.
Finally, the line of buses pulled in and kids started to come out. Before, Vin had been one of the first ones, laughing and talking with his crowd. But he wasn’t with them today. Instantly, I began to worry. This wasn’t right. I didn’t like it when things weren’t right.
He was one of the last ones to leave the building, and the first buses were already starting to pull away. He still stopped and gave the girl by the door a high five, I noticed. It was close—I was hopping up and down on my branch—but he made it. Thank goodness. His parents would not like to be asked for a ride, I didn’t think. Had he been getting extra help from a teacher? Had he been in the bathroom being violently ill?
Had he been giving someone a book at his locker?
No. That had been me, once. I locked the stray memory away hastily and flew home. Well, to Vin’s home.
There was a strange black car in the driveway. Instantly wary, I found a perch close by with good visibility. The car’s windows were tinted, so I couldn’t see in very well, but I was pretty sure there was just one person inside. My instincts said it was an older man. My heart started to pound as I heard the bus coming down the hill. What danger was Vin about to walk into? I flew a little closer, aware I was plainly visible, but I wanted a good angle on the driver’s door in case I had to dive-bomb whoever got out.
Of course, Vin’s parents weren’t home.
The bus stopped, and Vin got off. He didn’t pull on his hood despite the rain. He saw the car and me at the same time. I thought he looked more surprised to see me in plain view than he was about the car being there. I took that as a good sign, meaning he knew whoever was in it and had been expecting it. He jogged over to the driver’s side as the window powered down. The driver was, as I had suspected, a man in his thirties. He and Vin talked for a second. I heard Vin say, “I’ll be right back,” and then he headed for the house. Just before he went in, he turned and flashed his hand in my direction. First was a thumbs-up, and then a flat palm clearly meaning, “Stay put.”