Owl

by M. Raiya

  “What—what if he can’t be released? Will they—”

  “Oh, no. He can stay there in captivity for the rest of his life if he needs to. They have huge outdoor cages. It’s quite a place. And they do a lot of educational programs with live birds, at least, the ones who are suited for it. I know it’s not as good as being free, but he might go into schools and teach kids what you already know—the importance of respecting wildlife.”

  “Tethered?” Vin whispered. “With those straps on his legs?”

  “Hey, let’s just get him through the next few weeks,” the vet said. “Now, you really need to go home and get some sleep.”

  I didn’t know what to do. There was something damned appealing about being taken into a school, interacting with kids again…. No danger of great horned owls…. Vin didn’t understand. Wildly, I thought maybe he could become my handler. I could ride around on his shoulder, and no one would care.

  No. Vin didn’t want to become the caretaker for a crippled owl. He was still thinking about the cottage on the headland. That dream was gone now. He didn’t know I was too damn scared to fly. I couldn’t imagine hunting again. I would go into my hole and never come out. That would be a true prison for me, then.

  Vin would become a world-famous musician. There was no way this could have worked, anyway. No way we could have worked. He was a young man with a future. I was an owl. Time to accept that. Trying to appeal to my grandfather would have been a hopeless disaster.

  I couldn’t help but give a soft hoot in the memory of our vanishing dreams.

  “I love you too,” Vin called.

  My heart leaped. He loved me.

  “Don’t you give up, okay? I’m going to make this work.”

  I cringed at the thought of Vin facing my grandfather alone. Damn it, he’d get himself in so much trouble.

  I opened my mouth to hoot a negative when the vet said, “I’m sure you will. Oh, before you go, I almost forgot. Do you have any idea how this got in the poor guy’s back?”

  There was a slight pause.

  I froze.

  “Ah, no,” Vin said, his voice guarded.

  “I dug it out of the deepest puncture. I guess it must have been on the ground and it got into the wound while he and the other owl were scuffling.”

  “Probably,” Vin said.

  God in heaven. Could it be?

  Was the elan out?

  “I mean, I’m not even sure what it is,” the vet said.

  I felt a wash of emotions surge through me, sending me soaring into the sky even though my wings were closed.

  “It’s a guitar pick,” Vin said.

  My emotions crashed, and I fell back into reality. It was one of Vin’s guitar picks. Not the elan. The vet was right. It must have been on the ground and got into my wound. What had I been thinking? Not that I had any idea what an elan looked like, but….

  Still, I couldn’t help but turn inward and focus. Other than the pain, I felt no different than I had been feeling. I knew it would be lunacy to attempt to change inside a cage, and that was the only way to tell for sure. It had been so long since I’d tried, I would have to really concentrate, and I couldn’t do that in this state anyway.

  “It’s just that it was really deep in, past the muscles. He doesn’t have any bands, so I don’t think it was part of some high-tech tracking program. I’ve never heard of anyone embedding chips in guitar picks, but people do crazy things today. Here, do you want it as a keepsake? I can tell this owl means a lot to you.”

  “Thanks,” Vin said.

  His voice was as hollow as I felt.

  “Go home, get some rest, kid. You did a good thing today.”

  “Thanks,” Vin said again, but I could tell he was crying.

  SO I went to rehab.

  The car ride was bad. Two hours in the crate. I was exhausted and slept for most of it, fortunately. Except that I kept having nightmares about being taken farther and farther away from Vin. And all I wanted was to curl up on his pillow next to him.

  By the time I arrived at my new home, I was hurting so bad that I didn’t remember being transferred from the crate to a metal cage. I heard women talking, I felt gentle, gloved hands, and then I ate a fresh dead mouse I was offered through a slot in the back of the cage so I wouldn’t know that humans were feeding me. I had no appetite, but I knew I had to get some antibiotics into me. Then I slept long and deeply.

  When I woke, something had changed. Deep down, I knew an infection had started, but what that meant to me was a kind of weary hopelessness. The future, any future, was too much effort. All I had to do—all I could do, really—was lie on a nice soft towel and let myself drift closer and closer to….

  I dreamed about the kayak and the brown towel. And the cottage on the headland. Anton haunted my dreams as well. I could see him, all tanned and strong, embracing Vin, who was limp and compliant. No, that had been when I’d been worried about Vin with Mr. Allard. Vin would become a famous musician, and the old guy—Joe?—would leave the cottage to him in his will, and Vin would spend summers there, and sail on my Sea Foam in the sun….

  I missed Sea Foam. For some reason the thought of my beautiful boat was the only image that anchored me. It was the one thing that I simply missed like hell with no complications.

  “All right,” a woman said close by. “Yeah, you can see him through the window. It’s one-way glass. I’m sorry things worked out this way.”

  “Thank you,” I heard Vin say brokenly.

  “Stay as long as you like.”

  “Is he in much pain?” Vin asked.

  “No, honey. He’s comfortable. The vet will be here in an hour or so, and if he’s still with us then, we’ll make sure he doesn’t suffer. Okay?”

  Vin was crying softly.

  “I’ll be in the other room, sweetie,” she said. “He’s been a very good owl.”

  “Yeah,” I heard Vin say in a choked voice.

  There was a long moment of silence. I couldn’t bear to make myself look up at the small window where I knew Vin was watching me. I closed my eyes and drifted. Soon it would be over.

  After a while I heard footsteps. My gate opened. Was it the vet? Something deep inside made me struggled to consciousness. I wasn’t going to go unaware. Hands, bare hands, lifted me. And then Vin was cuddling me under his chin.

  Oh.

  I wanted to go then, with him holding me. But part of me, some deep, inner part, refused to let go of life. I listened to his heart, let it fill my world.

  “I wish I knew what your name was,” Vin whispered. “I can’t believe I never asked. I want you to have a stone down by the lake, but it just doesn’t seem right to put ‘Owl’ on it.”

  I shifted form without even thinking.

  “I’m Gabriel Lane,” I said.

  Vin screamed. I fainted.

  Chapter Eight

  I WOKE. The first thing I was aware of was that my back was on fire and something horribly painful was stuck down my throat. I gagged and vomited, and I saw bile pass in front of my eyes in a clear plastic tube a moment later. I freaked out.

  People held my arms down so I couldn’t rip out whatever was down my throat. But I wasn’t supposed to have arms. I had wings!

  “Okay, calm down! My name is Dr. Locere and you’re in the hospital and you’re going to be fine.”

  Hospital? Hospital?

  Oh God!

  “You need to relax.”

  I opened my eyes and tried to focus. My perspective was all off. I couldn’t tell where I ended and the world began. My body was huge and heavy. The only thing that felt familiar was the pain in my back. I opened my mouth and tried to scream, but there was a tube down my throat, and I couldn’t breathe!

  “Easy, stay calm,” the voice said, and then everything faded again.

  VIN. I needed Vin. I wanted Vin.

  I didn’t know what was happening, and I needed Vin.

  So ironic that what the vet had said was true. Birds could go
into cardiac arrest because they were afraid. I might be human, but I was still a bird, and I was scared that I was going to die because I was scared. And that made me even more scared, and….

  “Hey. Dude. Do I have to throw a towel over your head?”

  Vin. He was here.

  The relief was intense. I saw a blurry form next to me, so out of focus I couldn’t tell if it was him or not. But when his hand took mine, I recognized the tenderness. I clung to him, though I wasn’t sure I remembered how to move my fingers instead of angling my wingtips. Vin. I heard myself make a noise deep in my chest and felt tears in the corners of my eyes.

  He was talking to me. I quieted so I could hear.

  “…need to stay calm. You’re all right. You’re going to be fine.”

  I focused on each word, made them slip into my brain. Calm. All right. Fine.

  “That’s working,” a stranger said. “Gabriel’s heart rate is coming down. He’s hearing you.”

  I was still scared, so scared. I wasn’t breathing right. I couldn’t control my own breathing.

  “You’re on a ventilator,” Vin said. “It’s doing your breathing for you right now. So you can just relax. Everyone’s taking care of you.”

  A ventilator? God, I’d seen people on those on TV. Tubes stuck down—aha. That’s what I was feeling. Oh. Okay.

  “That’s why you can’t talk. But you’re doing great. You won’t need it much longer.”

  I didn’t want it any longer, but I didn’t want to die either. I kept as tight a grip on his hand as I could.

  “Nice job,” the stranger said. “Keep talking. He may not be able to understand you, but he’s comforted by your voice. Tell me if he moves his hand.”

  I was moving it. I was squeezing as hard as I could. Vin couldn’t feel it? He wouldn’t leave, would he?

  “Easy, easy,” Vin said. “I’m not going anywhere. I may towel you, though.” He gave a faint, desperate laugh.

  Why couldn’t I move? Holy fuck, did I have nerve damage in my back? Is that why I couldn’t move? Why everything was blurry? I thought I remembered moving and seeing a little while ago, but now I couldn’t. What if I couldn’t ever move or see or speak or breathe? That would be worse than death!

  “Hey,” Vin said sharply. “I told you, you’re going to be fine. The doctors gave you some medication to keep you still so you could heal. It’s wearing off now. God, you are so hysterical. Trust me, okay?”

  Well, fuck, I thought. You could have told me that to start with. I steeled myself, gave it everything I had, and squeezed his hand hard enough to break it.

  “There!” Vin’s voice was elated. “His fingers twitched. You can hear me, can’t you?”

  I squeezed again.

  Vin burst into tears.

  WHEN I next surfaced, Vin was still holding my hand.

  And I still couldn’t move. My body was impossibly big and heavy. I felt like I was an owl trapped inside a strange, huge body. I fluttered wildly, unable to become part of the body or break free. Always when I’d shifted before, I’d felt like both bodies were equally me. But now everything was wrong. Had I lost the ability to be human after so long? Could I shift back to owl? Certainly not with tubes stuck in me. Though a panicky part of me wanted desperately hard to try and fly!

  Vin didn’t know I was awake again. I heard him talking to someone. I focused on his voice to try to stay calm.

  “Are you sure there isn’t nerve damage to his spine or something?” Vin sounded heartbreakingly plaintive.

  “Nothing that the scans showed,” a gruff, older voice answered. “He’s young and strong, and that’s in his favor.” The voice paused. “Surviving an attack like that—being mauled by a bear—has got to be terrifying. Then for the wounds to become infected while hiking alone…. He’s been through emotional stress as well as physical. No everyone responds to that the same way.”

  Bear attack? That must be how the wounds in my back were being explained. Damn, I hoped no innocent bear had been tracked down and killed over this.

  Vin sniffed. “I know. It was so lucky I was down here with that owl when—Gabriel—came out of the woods. I had no idea anything had gone wrong.”

  It felt weird to hear my name in Vin’s voice. It must seem equally weird to say it, because he’d hesitated. I tried to make myself concentrate, knowing I’d need to know what the official explanation for my presence was if I survived.

  “I heard your story,” the doctor said. “Hiking alone is so dangerous. In some ways having a phone makes it even more dangerous because if the stupid thing quits working, everyone assumes that everything is going fine, because they haven’t gotten a call.”

  “Tell me about it,” Vin said. “I was supposed to meet Gabriel at the Massachusetts’s border. I never expected him to come bursting into a wildlife rehab center while I was visiting an owl I rescued. Naked, no less.”

  “Sometimes a severe infection like this causes delirium,” the doctor said. “Gabriel must have felt more comfortable unclothed. I wouldn’t worry about that. But your story is one of the craziest coincidences I’ve ever heard.” I could imagine the doctor shaking his head. I agreed it was damn improbable, but I was impressed Vin had come up with anything on the spot. “Poor owl got away, you said?” the doctor asked.

  “Yeah, flew out the open door and was never seen again. Guess he wasn’t as bad off as everyone thought.” Vin cleared his throat. “It’s just taking so long….”

  “I know it feels that way. Do you know any reason Gabriel might have for not wanting to come back? Something psychological going on?”

  I hoped Vin wouldn’t blurt out the truth. But at the same time, part of me wanted him to order me unplugged from everything and let me shift. Firmly, I reminded myself that they’d been going to let me slip away when I’d been in owl form. It wasn’t until I’d become human that they were making these heroic efforts.

  Panic edged closer. I felt wings pounding the inside of my skull.

  Scared. Fly.

  An image of an owl bursting through my eyeball seared into my mind.

  I screamed in soundless terror.

  Then lips pressed against my forehead. “I love you,” Vin said.

  That was all it took. I sank gently down into my human body and filled it. It became mine again. I drew a deep breath, a breath of my own choice, despite what the machine was doing. I drew another one, felt a surge of warmth spread through me, and opened my eyes.

  “Oh God,” Vin breathed. He came into focus, blue eyes so close to mine.

  I gazed up at him.

  “Are you okay?”

  I nodded my head and felt it move.

  “Well, there you go,” the gruff voice said. I could see someone in a white jacket somewhere behind Vin, but all I could focus on were those blue, blue eyes. I squeezed his hand for real, and Vin gasped and looked down. I laced our fingers together and drew both hands up to my chest, all the movement I had strength for. But it was all the strength I needed.

  Vin let his head fall to my chest and pressed his lips to my fingers.

  I put one hand on the back of his head and smoothed it, his hair soft as silk beneath my fingers. The other hand, I raised to my face. But before I could touch it, the doctor gently pulled it away.

  “Welcome back, my friend,” he said. “I’m Dr. Locere, and you’ve just had a very close call with sepsis, which means an infection got into your blood stream. But you’re on the mend now and should recover fully in a few weeks. You just keep breathing on your own a little longer, and we’ll have the ventilator out.”

  I managed a nod that tried to express that I understood and appreciated all he’d done for me. I couldn’t tell him that I hadn’t been about to pull out the ventilator, and he wouldn’t have understood that all I had wanted was to feel my face again. My human face.

  There would be repercussions to all that had happened, I knew, on many different levels. But for now, I was human again. I’d done it. I’d survived three
years as an owl and become human once more.

  DESPITE WANTING to stay awake, I drifted in and out for a while, always anchored by Vin’s hand. Finally, I heard a nurse insisting that Vin go to the bathroom across the hall and take a shower while I got a bath too.

  “Can’t leave him,” Vin said. His voice was groggy and rough, and it dawned on me that I had no idea how much time had passed and how long he’d been sitting there.

  I opened my eyes. Vin looked pale, his face hollow, his eyes shadowed. Stubble covered his chin. I squeezed his hand and then firmly drew mine away.

  “But—”

  “Let me take care of him for a while.” A young man moved into my field of view. He was dark-haired and had a kind smile. “I’m Charlie, your nurse for tonight,” he said to me, then turned back to Vin. “Shower.”

  “But—”

  Quite honestly, Vin might have seen me helpless and naked and being gone over by a nurse’s washcloth before I’d woken up, but he didn’t need to see it while I was aware he was seeing it. I still had some dignity left. I gave him a look that let him firmly know I wasn’t going anywhere.

  He still didn’t leave.

  “Don’t make me call Priscilla,” Charlie said with a laugh. “No one disobeys her, believe me.”

  I looked toward the door firmly. Finally, Vin rose and staggered off behind the curtain.

  “That is one dedicated dude,” Charlie said, running water into a plastic basin. “He’s hardly left you for days.”

  That was my Vin.

  “It’s good to see you awake. The doctor says the ventilator will be coming out soon, and then you’ll finally be able to talk.”

  I wasn’t sure I was ready to talk yet. But I was damn ready to get the tube out of my throat. I also discovered under Charlie’s gentle and capable hands that I had two heart monitors stuck to me, something called a central line IV that went directly through my chest into a vein near my heart, which was necessary because I would need it for more than a few days, through which I was getting fluids and antibiotics, and I had an even nastier line going into a part of me that definitely didn’t want a line going up it.