by M. Raiya
I come from a small town in the Adirondacks of NY where almost everyone is some type of shifter. My grandfather rules us. My parents run a small boat-building business. She manages, he builds. He had a boating accident before I was born and is mentally impaired but very gifted with boats. I went to a large high school with half a dozen other shifters. My best friend Andrew was shy and awkward as human. Bullies targeted him. One day they got carried away. A guy hit him in the face with a rock. I tried to distract them, but only two of them came for me and the others went for him. Afraid they’d kill him. I shifted and attacked. Might have blinded one. Flew home. Told Andrew’s parents and girlfriend so they would go help. My grandfather hauled me into his office, furious. I tried to explain, but he wouldn’t listen. Never saw my parents. His last words were that he was ashamed and now I could be an owl since that was what I clearly wanted to be. Put in the elan and told me I was shunned, banished forever.
“My God,” Vin whispered, turning to me.
I’d been reading over his shoulder. Memory started to flow, details layering in, the sounds of Andrew groaning, the ugly panting breaths of the boys who knew they were in over their heads and not knowing how to stop. So they kept hitting.
If you want someone who is gay, come over here! I’d yelled.
And I realized I’d typed that, not just thought it.
I’d never forget Andrew’s girlfriend screaming at me, It’s all your fault! Andrew is a hero because he didn’t reveal himself. You broke the law and shifted because you were afraid they’d hit you in the face too. And they only targeted him because they thought you two were lovers, because you’re so fucking gay acting. You’re a coward, a coward! And I hope you suffer….
I’d typed that too. Vin was silent next to me.
My parents never stopped my grandfather. They let him put in the elan and send me away without saying goodbye.
Words, disjointed phrases, flowed out of me.
I wanted to go to veterinary school.
So cold all the time.
Always hungry.
Dreams gone.
Locked away my memories.
Alone.
I am losing myself.
Sea Foam
Oh, Sea Foam!
“What’s Sea Foam?” Vin whispered.
My sailboat. And then I put down the pencil and buried my head under my wing.
After a while Vin began stroking me gently. “I swear to you things will get better now. I swear it.”
I was crying so hard inside that I didn’t try to pull away when he gathered me close in his arms again, the way he had after I’d brained myself on his wall. Somehow, hearing his heart beating strong and steadily, I believed him.
Chapter Six
WE WERE out on the lake in Vin’s kayak at dawn the next morning. It was wonderfully warm and cloudy and misty and still. In the distance a loon called, mournful and mysterious. The only other sounds were the gurgle of water against the rocky shoreline, the engine hum of a fisherman farther out, and the rhythmic plunk plunks of Vin’s paddle. I perched on the bow amidst the folds of a brown towel which appeared like Vin had casually tossed it there. From a distance it would be impossible to tell that part of the towel was a really an owl, at least not in this light. No one would believe an owl would be riding around on the bow of a kayak, so no one would see an owl. I knew how people’s minds worked. Look how much that towel looks like an owl, honey!
Vin took us along the shoreline. Soon after the small development that his house was part of, the shore turned rocky and rose into a weathered gray cliff twenty feet above the water. Tenacious cedar trees lined the top, some even growing out of the bare rock part way down, held in place by roots that reached through cracks until they found earth and water. I couldn’t imagine how old those trees must be. I suspected they’d been there when European colonists lived where Vin’s house now sat.
“See that rock?” Vin nudged me with his toe and pointed at a formation jutting out of the cliff at the water’s edge. “It’s got a cave under it. I call it the Turtle.”
It did look a bit like a turtle, with a big domed head between two strong front legs. Underneath the head was the small, dark opening of a cave, half filled with water. I’d flown up and down the shoreline a lot, but I’d never seen it at this angle or noticed the cave. Impulsively, I took wing and flew closer.
“Be careful!” Vin called after me.
I wasn’t stupid enough to fly into that small a cave. I could feel cool, dark air inside and sensed that the space widened out beyond the narrow opening, but I wasn’t about to risk getting trapped in there should a motorboat wave come out of nowhere. I liked being able to breathe.
I lit on the turtle’s head and looked down at Vin. He couldn’t resist pulling out his phone and taking my photo. Ham that I was, I opened my wings and let him get a good shot before I soared back down to my towel.
“Nice,” he said, holding the phone out so I could see. “Don’t worry, I won’t put it on Facebook.”
I shuddered at the thought of someone from home seeing it on the internet and recognizing me. In fact, it probably wouldn’t be a good thing if he took any more photos. Having a bunch of shots on his phone showing that an owl was following him around could raise some questions if anybody saw them. I gave the photo a quick glance, then hopped closer and took a good look.
I stared. Damn.
“This is the first time you’ve seen yourself,” Vin said softly.
The screen timed out and went dark. I gazed over the water for a long moment. Last night I had written that I was losing myself. Looking into my owl eyes, I could see that. When I’d looked at other shifters, I could clearly see the humanness in them. In my own eyes, I saw mostly owl.
How much of me, I wondered, was already lost? Gone forever. Even if, as Vin seemed so sure he could manage somehow, he got the elan out of me, was there still enough human left? I’d already known I could never be who I used to be—the boy I’d been was long gone, lost in the cold of winter. But could I even be human again, at all?
The bow of the kayak bumped a rock. I lost my balance and tipped onto Vin’s leg as he quickly dropped the phone next to me and paddled us away from the cliff. I looked at the phone. An icy chill came over me for a second. How quickly I’d come to appreciate Vin’s laptop. Without it, the silence I’d grown so used to suddenly threatened to strangle me. The phone’s touch screen wouldn’t do me any good, but an overwhelming urge came over me to type, “I’m still me, I’m still Gabriel Lane,” just so that someone else would know it.
I went back to my towel, hunched down, and watched the water go by. Odd that Vin hadn’t asked what my name had been. What my name still was, I reminded myself. If it wasn’t for Vin, I might not still know it. I shuddered to think how close I’d been to it becoming too late. It had been so tempting, so seductive, to slide down into owlness.
“You okay?” Vin asked.
I straightened. “Yeah,” I started to say. Then realized I couldn’t. I shook my head to clear it. Vin was causing my world to spin. I spread my wings and flew ahead to get refocused. I dipped down to the water’s surface and then rose on the air currents. I couldn’t get myself back in control. I circled the kayak.
Someday Vin would have a relationship with a real human and make his own family. I could never risk a lot of people knowing about me. But we would deal with that when it happened.
Vin raised his left hand to me, beckoned. Immediately, warmth filled me. I’d already made the choice. I wasn’t alone any longer. Vin wasn’t going to cast me away. Whatever the future held, we were going to trust each other, and whatever happened would happen.
I glided down to him and landed gently. He whispered softly and stroked me, calming me until I walked up to his shoulder and relaxed. He even let me nip his ear very gently.
AFTER A while the ledges gave way to another beach scattered with camps. Vin paddled us along quietly, and we listened to the gentle hiss of the waves on t
he sand. We passed a cardinal singing his heart out in an aspen, and farther away, a hermit thrush voiced his ethereal notes through the fog. To our left a great blue heron flew over the water inches above his reflection.
Vin’s paddle kept up its rhythmic dipping on one side and then the other. He was good—the bow hardly wavered from its course set by the gentle and steady strokes. I felt both widely awake and sleepy at the same time. I looked up at him. He was looking down at me.
Half an hour later, the sun rose high enough to dispel the mist. We began to hear voices from the homes. Vin took us farther from shore, and I crouched down on the towel as we wove through a group of moored motorboats and sailboats. A breeze began to pick up, and the air filled with the sounds of bells—metal halyards gently tapping against metal masts as the moored sailboats swayed with the lake’s motion.
“I love that sound,” Vin said as we passed by the stern of a majestic white ketch. Then he asked, “Is this too close? Is it bothering you?”
He remembered what I’d written last night. Sea Foam.
Yeah, it hurt. But no more here than anywhere else. I gazed at the boat’s wheel and fought my impulse to fly up to it. Memory of how it felt to be at the helm of a boat like that swept through me. The wheel had felt alive in my hands, the boat sleek and responsive to every slight touch, heeling to the wind, free….
A head popped up over the side of the ketch. “Hi,” a little boy said. “I like your owl.”
“Thanks,” Vin said, and started paddling fast.
Shit, I thought. We’d never thought about there being people on the boats. I flattened myself, and Vin drew a fold of the towel over me. Okay, so we were being a little stupid here. We both held our breath, but nothing happened. No adults called after us to demand an explanation. Finally, once the boats were behind, I ventured out from under the towel again, at least a little bit.
Vin laughed. “That was interesting.”
I shivered. “Interesting” was one word for it.
At the end of the beach was a low headland with smooth, sloping rocks leading up to what was either a small year-round house or a large camp, I couldn’t tell which. It was old and run-down, the white walls peeling, the windows blank, the shingles curling. But it had a huge, inviting porch that wrapped around the whole structure and a lovely brick chimney rising from the center of the roof. I imagined a family sitting in the shade on the porch in the summer or gathered around the fireplace inside on a snowy winter night. I sighed.
“This is a really nice place,” Vin said, taking us in close. “I know the old guy who owns it. I used to mow the lawn and shovel snow for him when he started having problems. He lives in a retirement home now—his kids live a long way away. He’s a great guy. He taught me some cool stuff on guitar.”
We drifted slowly past. I saw an old swing hanging from a maple in the backyard. Other people’s memories weren’t always easy, either, I thought. At least I was certain I’d never end up in a retirement home.
“I was imagining something like this when I said we could rent a cottage,” Vin said. “To me, this is way better than the house my parents bought. I love how old it is. And can you imagine the light in there from all those windows? And the acoustics?”
The rooms looked so big that I could easily fly around inside them. Yeah, I liked. It beat a hole in a tree, for sure.
“My parents never go outside,” Vin said. “The only reason they bought their house was so they could brag to their New York City crowd they lived on a lake. We’ve only been here about four years. But I’m really glad we moved.”
Me too, I thought.
“Old Joe always joked that he was going to leave me the place in his will since his kids didn’t care. But then he said they’d give me such a hard time that he figured it wouldn’t be worth the hassle.” Vin laughed. “But we’ll end up with a nice place.”
Not from playing in church basements, I thought. Maybe better rethink the prelaw program. But I liked to hear the dream in his voice. And I really liked his use of the word “we” whenever he said it.
“It’s really pretty back here.” Vin paddled us into a deep cove beside the headland with the cottage. The mouth was narrow, but it opened into a wide, shallow expanse of water with a small crescent beach at the back. It was utterly private. The water was so still and clear we could see the sandy bottom as we floated over it. There were a few clams, their dark shells standing upright on the bottom as they fed. A couple small perch swam under us, startled at our shadow, and took off.
I saw a little painted turtle and pointed it out with one wing. We watched it in silence. The cove was mesmerizing. We floated in the liquid glass for a long time, and then Vin paddled us up to the beach and landed.
“Time for a break,” he said, and hopped out.
I flew over the beach a little way and landed on a piece of driftwood. He pulled the kayak out of the water and brought his waterproof bag over to me, then smiled a little sheepishly and headed to the back of the beach. I had the same thing in mind, so I flew off to some pines and took care of my messy stuff. I saw a trail below me that led, I assumed, to the cottage on the headland. I spotted a frog in some seaweed washing at the edge of the water and in a second, he was in my gullet. I’d gotten up part way through the night and hunted awhile. The two moles I’d caught were long gone, but I was used to being hungry, and I didn’t want to leave Vin on our day together. I flew back to the driftwood, shaking water from my feathers.
Vin rejoined me in a minute, spread the towel on the sand, and sat down on it with a sigh, leaning on the log next to me and stretching his long legs out. I watched him bury his feet in the sand. I used to like to do that.
“I brought some food,” he said, digging around in his bag. “Can you eat roast beef?”
I probably shouldn’t, but I moved closer eagerly as he took out a little, soft-sided cooler big enough for a couple sandwiches. In a plastic baggie, he’d packed some plain roast beef. And potato chips. I couldn’t resist. He broke off some meat and held it out to me. I took it gently from his fingers. It was delicious.
“I love it when you squeeze your eyes up like that,” he said.
It was from the glare on the water, I firmly told myself, and straightened my wings. Dignified owl at all times, that was me.
“I hope it’s not affecting you, not being nocturnal,” he said, feeding me another bite. “I meant what I said last night, about making sure your needs are being met.”
Oh, they were. Roast beef bliss underway.
Vin laughed, opened one of his colas, and took a long drink. I hopped over to the bag of chips and opened it with a talon. A few spilled on the sand. I looked at Vin guiltily, but he just laughed. I picked up a chip, hop-flapped back to the log, and then, on impulse, offered it to him.
He bent and took it with his lips.
I gave a soft, happy hoot. He laughed too, and fed me another piece of meat.
We spent the day in the hidden cove. Vin fell asleep after we’d polished off the roast beef and the chips, sprawled out on the towel. I perched on the driftwood above him, next to the stub of an old limb, and kept watch. A few boats passed the mouth of the cove, but only a canoe or small rowboat or another kayak could come in, and none did. I knew that someone would have to get really close to me to know that I wasn’t part of the log. Since I spent most of my life just sitting around when I wasn’t hunting, I was used to it.
Vin woke in a little while, and together we explored the beach, he walking in the water, me flying ahead. After a while, he picked up a short stick and tossed it to me, which I caught in the air with no trouble and sent flying back at him. In no time we had a game of catch going. No matter how high he threw it, or how low over the water, I grabbed it with my talons every time, my reflexes well honed. The one benefit of the past three years was that I knew my skills in the air surpassed those of any other shifter I’d known. Normally, I wouldn’t have wasted energy like this, but with my stomach full of food, I could a
fford to goof off a little.
It felt so good. I hadn’t enjoyed flying that much since I’d been a little kid.
At last, worn out but happy, we returned to the kayak. Vin picked up his phone where he’d left it on the towel. He checked the time, and then went tense. I flew to his shoulder and saw that he had a new email.
It was from Bill Allard. Vin was in the band, if he wanted to join.
“Wow,” Vin said. “Shit.”
We looked at each other. If he accepted the offer, he wouldn’t be going to Cavendish and the cornfields next year, anyway.
“I didn’t really think they’d take me,” he said.
I watched his eyes closely, but they didn’t go pinched. That was good. I cuffed him lightly on the head with one wing.
He looked at me. “Should I do it?”
I leaned forward and nipped his ear. His choices were his. He could do anything he wanted to. And he should.
He drew a deep breath. “I’m not going to tell him anything until we’re home and we can talk on the computer. I want to make sure you’re okay with this, because it’ll mean some travel. Not at first, but eventually.”
I felt the new world tip out from under me a little, but I steeled myself and nodded. No way could he smuggle me around in his luggage. Way too much potential for disaster. I’d be in my tree whenever he came home to visit, for sure. Unless he was gone too long, and I became fully owl and forgot him.
“So that means we don’t have a lot of time.”
My insides suddenly went hollow. I was such an idiot. Clearly, all I’d been thinking about us being together somehow forever had just been coming from my enormous loneliness. Fuck. I was such a stupid idiot.
“Hey,” he said. “Don’t look so depressed. We’re going to get your elan out. Not sure how yet, but this just means we need to do it sooner rather than later. So you can come with me on tour. If you want, of course. I mean, you might be in college, becoming a vet.”