“That’s cold.” How could she say such a thing, knowing what she knows?
“I am being serious,” she squawks. “Did she teach you anything? Because that is not how we birds of prey hunt. Do you think I stomp around in the grass hoping to pierce a meal on my talons?”
Wait.
Did she screech “hunt”?
Mother never would have sunk so low as to bob along the grass after a meal. No, she dropped down like the night sky itself, her talons invisible until they sliced into their target.
That’s it.
I have to smother this egg. That’s the trick of it.
I flap up, fix my eyes on the egg, stretch forward with my talons, and dive down onto it. Four toes grip its smooth surface and squeeze. THE EGG IS MINE!
I peck it for good measure.
It is very hard. I will not do that again.
The Brown Frizz is giving off Good Feelings, so apparently this egg hunt is what she’d been hoping for.
“Nice catch,” Red screeches from her perch. “Now try it again.” She turns her head away toward the space between our nests and the human nest, or the perch meadow, as I like to think of it.
If I can hunt this egg once, I can do it again.
Releasing my talons, I let the egg roll. I hop after it, but my talons keep slipping off each time I reach out to grab it.
Have I learned nothing?
I flap up, sight the egg, extend my talons so they’re nearly at the tip of my beak, and crash down on the egg.
IT IS MINE!
I release it again. And smash down upon it. I do it again. And again. I AM MASTER OF THE EGG!
The Brown Frizz is practically buzzing with Good Feelings. She comes inside the web and calls me to her paw with a scrap of mouse, which is just the thing I’m needing about now after all that egg hunting. As I swallow it down, she attaches the infernal tails and vine to my leg sparkles and walks us into the perch meadow. She lifts the paw and I fly to the nearest perch. I glance around the space, taking in the late afternoon light, the rush of the day noises, which are mostly the furless creatures’ growling monsters. The Gray Tail has come out of the human nest and walks across the perch meadow. A crow flaps far off, its caw like a talon through my ears.
My ear tufts flatten; I really hate crows. Just hearing them brings back that long-ago day in the woods, the swarm, having to walk, humiliated, through the leaves . . .
The Brown Frizz cries out, interrupting my dark thoughts, and suddenly I see a rustling in the grass.
Is the Brown Frizz warning of danger? Tufts up!
The grass rustles again, and now I see what appears to be a mouse with a large green wing sticking out of its back.
The mouse hops.
If I can catch an egg, I can catch this mouse.
Okay, first steps: prepare for flight, open wings, get some air, take aim, talons out . . . Now DIVE! I am like a bolt of lightning shooting down from the clouds. I stretch my talons wide and smash down onto that mouse and—oh, it’s dead.
This green wing is hard and shiny and definitely not a normal part of a mouse. There is a vine coming off the green wing, and—ah, yes. The Brown Frizz is holding the end of the vine.
So, we are both on vines, eh, mouse? But you are dead and I am not, so I’m calling you dinner!
I rip off a beakful, and the Brown Frizz shuffles over in her little toe covers and removes the green wing. Because I know she won’t take my mouse, I let her.
After I eat, I flap up to a perch. Red swoops down from a tree. When did she get out of her nest?
“You’re catching on quick,” she chirps.
“I’m a great horned owl,” I say. Even the Absolute Worst Great Horned Owl is a still a great horned owl.
Red raises her crown, feathers fluffing. “Oh, are you, now?”
“I am a GREAT HORNED OWL!” I screech.
The Brown Frizz tweets and holds up her paw, and I soar across the perch meadow. As I pass the forest, I hear the thrum of life—heartbeats in the grass. I could catch them all, I know it. I twist, I flap.
The Brown Frizz whistles again. I glance back at her. She shakes the paw. There’s mouse on it.
Ah, the forest can wait.
I bank again, flap, and soar over to her paw. She’s giving off waves of fear, her heartbeat pounds. Did I do that?
“I’m sorry, Brown Frizz,” I peep, nibbling at her frizzy head fur. “I just heard the call.”
“You heard it?” Red sits atop the Gray Tail’s paw. Her amber eyes bore into me.
I turn to look again into the deepening black of the forest. The heartbeats pound, the darkness pulls me. “I feel it.”
Red fluffs her crown again, then rouses. “That’s good,” she chirps. “Very good.”
The Brown Frizz puts me back in my nest, and I flap up to my favorite perch. Something has changed, though. The roof feels so much lower, like it’s pressing down on my tufts. The walls feel so much closer around me, though I can still flap as far.
How can the world change without actually changing?
* * *
As the dawn breaks, I hear the sound of squeaking. The Brown Frizz is nearby but outside my nest. The squeaking is definitely inside.
Glancing around in the half day, I see movement across the dirt.
I twitch my feathers. The heartbeats sweep and swerve and then stop. The dark patch of dirt below me is no longer a stretch of black: in the corner, the noise of the heartbeats glows slightly. I can see the heartbeats, I can see the mouse.
This is just like the egg.
This is hunting.
I lift and stretch my wings, and drop silently. I extend my legs forward, talons near my beak.
The mouse scuttles along the wall.
I hear you . . . I see you.
I flap, swerve, and adjust my feet, all silently, like a movement of the night itself. I dive, dropping like rain.
I hit the mouse. Squeeze my talons. The heartbeats stop.
I caught the mouse.
“I did it!” I screech.
Red squawks, flaps loudly. “What skunk! Where?!”
“No skunk, Red—I caught a mouse! Right here! It snuck into my nest!” I grab the meat in my beak and gobble it down in one gulp.
I haven’t tasted anything like it since . . . since Mother.
“Well done, Hatchling,” Red tweets.
The Brown Frizz is clapping her wing-toes and hooting with joy. The Gray Tail is with her and is giving off Good Feelings.
I did it.
I hunted.
I am no longer the Absolute Worst Great Horned Owl in All of Owldom.
If I can hunt, I’ve definitely moved up to being one of the Marginally Capable Great Horned Owls Who Probably Still Won’t Survive the Winter.
And that’s a start.
21
Reenie
How can so many good things make me feel so terrible? Mom called this morning to say she’s looking at an apartment and that soon I could start doing overnights with her at our new place.
Our new place.
A place where I’m going to have to start all over again.
And Rufus caught a mouse on his first try. Aunt Bea couldn’t believe it.
“He’s a prodigy!” she cried out.
I knew he was a genius. I’ve always believed in him. But to have it be real, to have him be so close to finished with me . . . It’s all happening too fast and all at once.
And what if it doesn’t work out? What if, when we fly him free, he flies away? What if he’s not ready? What if he starves and it’s my fault? It’s good to know that, worst case, we keep him. Maybe even not just worst case . . .
“Maureen?”
Mr. Brown is standing over me, tapping his arm.
“Um.” I have no idea what’s going on.
“Your team? How far along are you guys on your project?”
“Um.”
“We’re going to get together this weekend to finalize everythi
ng,” Jamie says, nudging me with her foot under the table.
“Yes.” Did we actually agree to that? What if I have to do this overnight with my mom?
“Sounds great,” Mr. Brown says, walking on. “I’m really looking forward to your presentation.”
“We can meet at my house!” Jamie says, practically vibrating with excitement.
“I’m supposed to go to my dad’s for the weekend,” Jaxon says.
Do I tell them about my mom getting better? About me possibly moving, maybe next week? Before we even get to do the presentation? No. That’s just too much to explain, too many maybes. “Can we do it today, after school?” Then, even if I have an overnight, it won’t matter.
Jaxon shrugs. “My dad isn’t picking me up until six. I could text my mom.”
“Can I text my aunt?” I ask, holding out a hand for someone’s phone.
Jamie says, “I’ll go get my phone from my locker. This is the best day ever!” She heads to the hallway.
Jaxon and I take off for recess and our spot behind the bushes. What if it’s my last day? What if this overnight with my mom goes well and the state sends me away from here? Jaxon would be fine. But Jamie? She’s already lost two friends . . . but now she has Jaxon . . . Would they even notice I was gone?
I scratch my wood so hard, it splits in two.
Jaxon gasps, his face contorted like he’s just witnessed a murder. “We can glue it.”
I drop the pieces. “It wasn’t working anyway.” I spend the rest of recess piling up pebbles and knocking them down.
* * *
Aunt Bea texted back while we were outside that she can pick me up at Jamie’s house, and Jaxon’s mom offers to give us a ride after school. Jaxon told her we could take the bus, but she insisted. She shows up in scrubs with messy curls springing from her updo. She took a break during her shift at the doctor’s office.
“It’s great to meet you girls,” she says, pulling out of the school’s parking lot. “I’ve heard so much about you.”
Jaxon’s turning a shade of red last seen on a beet. Jamie and I glance at each other and have to choke down a laugh because just the thought of Jaxon saying anything at all about us—let alone “so much”—is too funny.
“Maureen, Jaxon says you have an owl you’re rehabilitating? He helped his dad with a rescued hawk once.”
He told her about Rufus? “Um, yeah.”
“She’s setting him free soon,” Jaxon says.
“If he gets better,” I correct. “If not, we might have to keep him.” Perhaps Jaxon is not aware of this fantastic option?
“You said he’s hunting,” Jaxon says, eyebrows crinkling.
“Turn here,” Jamie interrupts—thank goodness for needing to give directions. I don’t want to argue with Jaxon about my owl.
We pull into this development where it looks like a giant machine plunked down identical houses one-two-three along the stretch of road. Jamie points to one that’s sort of bluish, and we pull up to the door.
“Is your mom home?” Jaxon’s mom asks.
“She’ll be home soon,” Jamie says, noncommittal.
“Oh,” Jaxon’s mom says.
“It’s okay,” I say. “We have Jamie’s cell phone.”
Jaxon’s mom eyes the house like it’s trouble. “All right,” she says. “I’m going back to the office, but it’s just a few blocks away, so I can be here ASAP if you need anything.”
We slide out of the car and walk up the driveway.
“Your mom never leaves you home alone?” Jamie asks.
Jaxon shrugs. “She told me not until I’m thirteen.”
“I turned ten and my parents were like, Here’s the key. We’ll see you at five.” Jamie brandishes a key and jams it in the door.
It’s funny to think of Jaxon being babied like that. He seems so independent, so self-contained, like a hermit crab. But maybe his mom doesn’t see him that way.
Will Mom give me a key to her—our new apartment? Will I come home on some strange new bus to some strange new place to wait for her to come home from some job? If she gets the apartment . . .
Jamie lets Jaxon and me into the foyer.
“Whoa,” Jaxon says. His voice echoes around the cavernous rooms, bouncing off shiny glass and polished wood. Jamie flips on lights as she walks down a two-story hallway into a white and blue kitchen of curving plastic cabinets and glass tile that looks like it was designed for a space station.
We huddle around a massive round white stone table reminiscent of King Arthur’s. Jamie grabs a box of cookies from this huge closet full of food and then a gallon of chocolate milk from the fridge and three glasses. I’ve always wondered what family buys not milk and chocolate mix, but the whole gallon of premixed chocolate milk. Tasting the rich yumminess of it—a fullness of chocolaty goodness that I’ve never achieved with my powdery additives—makes up somewhat for the imposing, off-putting wealth of the place. I’ve lived in apartments that were smaller than this kitchen.
“Your house is really shiny,” I say. The stone of the table literally glitters.
“My mom has a scrapbook filled with pictures of kitchens like this,” Jaxon says, gulping chocolate milk. “Some nights, she takes it out during dinner and pretends.”
Jamie runs her fingers over the tabletop. “It’s too big. When we eat dinner, my mom and dad and me, we’re so far apart, it’s like we’re eating alone.” She hefts her bag onto the table. “But it’s perfect for projects. Plenty of space.”
She produces a laptop computer and a tablet and her phone from her bag, then goes over and opens another closet, which is stacked with labeled plastic boxes filled with things like “ribbons” and “markers” and “duct tape.” A whole box full of different colors of duct tape. When Jamie told me she liked making stuff, I hadn’t quite understood the scale of her operation.
She digs a tall trifold presentation board out of a corner. “I was thinking we could put all our research on this.” She unfolds the cardboard, spreading it flat on the table.
Jaxon stares into the cavern of boxed craft supplies. “You have a whole box just for buttons?”
Jamie glances back at the closet. “That’s old,” she says, picking a cookie from the carton. “When I was little, my mom and I used to do crafts a lot. But that was forever ago. The other day I asked her if she wanted to melt some crayons with me, and she said, ‘Aren’t you too old for that?’”
The hurt and lonely look on Jamie’s face is only there for a second, but it’s one I know too well. There are so many ways to lose a parent. Even when they still live in the same house.
“I like doing crafts,” I say. “I’ll melt crayons with you anytime.”
“Whittling’s a craft,” Jaxon adds.
“Maybe that should be our team name? The Crafty Hunters?” I say.
“The Whittling Woodsmen?” Jamie offers, a tiny smile peeking through.
“Perfect,” Jaxon says.
Jamie looks like she’s about to cry, but instead, she turns on her tablet. “I made this chart to show how many people hunt in Vermont.” It’s a neat rectangle with different bars for each kind of license: fishing, bow hunting, duck hunting, falconry . . .
“I did these,” Jaxon says, laying a stack of drawings on the table: pictures of a kid in hunting fatigues, a hunting rifle, people in a boat covered in grass for duck hunting, with labels for the specific parts of each.
“We can put them on the poster around the chart,” I say, holding one up.
“I also made flash cards for the debate.” Jamie hands me a stack.
“Did you know that hunters were behind the early conservation movement?” I read. “President Teddy Roosevelt wanted to save the land and the animals, in part so he could keep hunting them.”
“Hunters are still a big part of conservation efforts,” Jaxon says, sounding defensive already. “And it’s even good for the deer. If hunters didn’t keep the deer population down, they’d starve in the winter.”
“I don’t think you can say it’s good for the deer who get shot,” Jamie says. “The audience has seen Bambi.”
Jaxon blushes and begins shading a corner of the hunting rifle. “Bambi is rough. But it’s also a lie. You’re not supposed to shoot does.”
“Law says you can shoot does.” Jamie taps away on her keyboard.
“But isn’t that just nature?” I ask, thinking of Rufus and the white mice I’m sacrificing to him. “Hunters eat the deer meat, right?”
“Some do, some donate it to food pantries.” Jaxon switches pencils, continues shading.
“But the point is that hunting can be a part of the ecosystem,” I say. “We don’t have big predators, so there has to be some way to fill that role in the food chain.”
“So, like, hunters can balance things out? Here,” Jamie says, handing me a note card. “Write that down.”
“Speaking of food chain,” Jaxon says, reaching for another cookie.
“I just can’t get past the dead animals,” Jamie says, pushing away one of Jaxon’s drawings.
“It’s not why I hunt,” he says, still scribbling on a sketch. “I guess there might be some people who do it for the killing. But my dad and I, we do it to be together in the woods. He hunted with his dad. And it’s nice, to be together in the quiet, watching for a lucky shot. And when you do kill something, you don’t let it suffer.
“It’s why you do falconry, right, Reenie?”
I’m about to blurt, No, it’s because of the birds, but then I see me walking through the woods with Red . . . and with Aunt Bea. Training Rufus . . . with Aunt Bea.
“It started with Red,” I say, “but even that’s all because of my aunt.”
Jamie begins scribbling on another new card. “Here,” she says, sliding it across the table. She wrote, Hunting is about family.
Tears squeeze out along my eyelashes. Before reading that, I’d forgotten that Aunt Bea really is family and completely missed that, over these past few weeks, it’s what we’d become.
Jaxon peeks at the card. “That’s better.”
I wipe my face with the back of my hand and nod. “Yeah.” I place the card so it’s the finale.
* * *
Of a Feather Page 14
