Avenging the Owl

by Melissa Hart

  The merlins shrieked. High above us, the bald eagles screeched. Now, owls began to hoot—their calls bounced off trees, echoing around us.

  WHOO-hoo-oo-oo-oo-WHOO-WHOO!

  Artemis’s warning call.

  I pulled Eric behind the shed. “Turn off your bike lights!” I hissed. “All of them!”

  Footsteps crunched down the gravel path. Minerva’s ears were as good as any owl’s. She knew something didn’t sound right.

  “What is it, Edgar?” she asked from somewhere above us.

  “Well …” Edgar said. “Well … ha ha ha ha!”

  Eric giggled. I clapped my hand over his mouth. “Hold your breath!” I hissed.

  He puffed out his cheeks and nodded.

  Minerva walked down the driveway. The long white beam of her flashlight swooped through the night, just missing the toe of my hiking boot. She wore a robe, and a towel covered her hair like a turban. She stood with her back to us and shook her fist in the dark. “Leave my birds alone! And if you’re dropping off another cat, this time leave a bag of cat food!”

  She headed up toward her house. Eric’s teeth chattered under my hand. “Mmmhngw,” he said.

  I pulled my hand away. “What?”

  “I hungry.”

  “Here.” I pulled the apples out of my backpack and opened the can of Coke under my jacket so the crack and fizz wouldn’t give us away. I gave him the can and reached into my backpack. “Dessert.” I held out the two gummy worms wrapped in paper.

  “Those for birds.” He put the gummy worms in his pocket.

  Every time we crunched into our apples, I cringed and waited for the flashlight to blast into my eyes. If Minerva found us, what would she do? I’d be in a juvenile correctional facility by morning, and Eric would have to return to his father.

  We had to get out of here before daylight.

  The wind rose. Fluffy white clouds drifted across the moon. I put on my jacket and hugged my knees to my chest.

  We could hike to the top of Spencer Butte and live in the woods until our parents stopped looking for us. Then we’d build a tree house. We’d scavenge for food, and I’d write screenplays on bark and leaves. I’d publish them under a pseudonym … John Muir.

  Already, I had a good scene in my head.

  FADE IN

  EXTERIOR. DENTED OLD TRAILER IN FIELD SURROUNDED BY FOREST - DAY

  INTERIOR. SMALL ABANDONED BEDROOM - DAY.

  Yellowed surfing posters on the walls. A Darth Vader bank overturned and empty on the bed. MOM and DAD sit on the floor, weeping in each other’s arms.

  MOM

  We used to have a wonderful son. But we only thought about ourselves. And so he disappeared.

  DAD

  I wish I’d spent more time with him. We could have gone hiking or biking, but now it’s too late.

  CLOSE-UP of a photograph in Dad’s hand. A tear falls, smudging the picture of a black-haired kid in shorts and hiking boots.

  FADE OUT

  I closed my eyes. What was wrong with me? Two months ago, I would have been packed and waiting in the car to return to Redondo Beach.

  Surfing is your bliss, remember? Don’t you hate Oregon?

  A yawn snuck up on me. I leaned against the shed, feeling my mind slow down.

  People can have more than one bliss. Minerva said so.

  I don’t know how or when I fell asleep. I woke up to the sound of hooting—owls calling all around me. I recognized the frantic burble of screech owls, the Who-Cooks-for-You hoot of a barred owl, and the lower alarm call of a great horned owl.

  “Eric?” I reached out in the dark to see if he’d fallen asleep, too.

  No one sat beside me.

  I leapt up. If Minerva found him, she’d ruin my plans. I stumbled on stiff legs through the trees. “Eric? Eric?” I whispered. “Get back here! ”

  I peered into the spotted owls’ mew and heard the nervous clack of beaks in the dark.

  “Sorry, girls.”

  I ran toward the screech owls, slipped, and fell backward into blackberries.

  WHOO-hoo-oo-oo-oo-WHOO-WHOO! Artemis called.

  I yanked vines off my legs. Thorns tore my skin; I barely felt them. Suddenly, I knew exactly where Eric was. The thought made me shiver with terror.

  Some Native Americans believe that great horned owls cry out the names of people who are about to die.

  “No!”

  I raced up the path just as the moon slipped out from behind the clouds. It beamed down like a spotlight on Eric right as he turned the key forgotten in the padlock and walked into Artemis’s mew.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  SOLO’S KRIYĀ

  Artemis shrieked and soared across her mew, wings and legs outstretched. Huge feathered feet seized Eric’s arm. Pain crumpled his face.

  “Stop!” I shouted. I leapt inside and grabbed the leather jesses around Artemis’s legs. She let go of Eric and pulled away from me, launching herself to the other end of the mew. I stumbled to the door and pushed Eric outside. Wings rushed toward my head. Talons raked my back like lightning bolts. A scream tore through the darkness.

  My scream.

  Artemis whirled and rushed toward me again. Just in time, I burst out of the mew and slammed the door behind me. The owl smacked into the wire. She dropped to the ground and lay still.

  Oh, no! No! I have to go back in, try to save her.

  But in the distance, a door slammed. Footsteps pounded toward us.

  “Run! ” I grabbed Eric and pushed him down the hill. We fell, ripping through blackberry vines to the dirt path below.

  “Ouch,” Eric whispered.

  Above us, Minerva’s flashlight swung wildly. “I know you’re out there!” she yelled. “I’m calling the police!”

  I clutched my ankle, barely feeling the sprain.

  Is Artemis dead?

  She’d hit the door hard enough to break her wings, or worse, her neck.

  “Why’d you go in that mew?” I clutched Eric’s arm.

  “Wanna give the owl my worm.”

  He opened his hand, revealing a mangled gummy worm. A trickle of blood ran down his wrist. In the moonlight, I saw his shredded jacket sleeve.

  I pulled him through the trees to a clearing hidden from the path. We leaned against a log. “Take off your jacket,” I commanded. “Oh … crap.”

  Eric’s arm dripped blood from six gashes where Artemis’s talons had dug in. “You gotta get to the hospital.”

  He shook his head. “I run away with you.”

  “You’ll get hurt worse. Can you make it down the hill on your bike? You can call from the market at the bottom. I’m sorry, Eric,” I whispered. “This is something I’ve gotta do myself.”

  “Solo.” Eric moved so close that his nose almost touched mine. “You … not … alone.” He spoke slowly, like he was trying to make me understand. “I … your … friend.”

  My throat stung. I took a deep, ragged breath.

  “Okay. We’d better get going. Can you make it to the top?”

  I helped Eric slip his jacket sleeve off one arm and tie it around his neck to make a sling.

  “Solo? You hurt, too.” He pointed to a dark stain on the log. I craned my neck to look over my shoulder. The back of my T-shirt hung in ribbons. I glimpsed bloody trails and gritted my teeth against the sudden searing pain.

  Eric found the path and began to walk. I followed, stumbling on rocks and roots in the dark. My back throbbed and my ankle ached with every step. I talked to distract myself, babbling anything that popped into my head.

  “When I moved here, I didn’t even know what a raptor was,” I mumbled. “Couldn’t tell a hawk from a falcon. Last week, we got a sick kestrel in the clinic. I fed her by hand. Minerva says if her wing doesn’t heal right, we’ll keep her as company for the other kestrel. You should hear her squawk when she sees me come in with her morning mouse. I like kestrels better than owls—they’re funny and friendly and …”

  Suddenly, a wild
great horned owl hooted above us. I ducked, and the gashes on my back seared with pain.

  “Let’s go!” I cried. We scrambled up the boulders, slipping on damp lichen.

  At the top of the butte, the wind was blowing like crazy, howling through the trees. We climbed toward the pine tree we’d sat under with Mrs. Miller. “No picnic?” Eric panted.

  I searched my jacket pockets for the granola bars I’d stashed. “The rest of my food must’ve fallen out.”

  We hunched down behind two boulders, trying to block the wind. The sky spread over us, speckled with stars. At last, my heartbeat slowed. I gulped cold air like water.

  Eric cupped his ears with his hands. “I hear stars.”

  I snorted. “Stars don’t make a sound!”

  Still, I listened, trying to hear what Eric heard. All I could make out were the frogs and crickets holding a choir rehearsal in the bushes.

  “Falling star!” Eric pointed.

  “Where?”

  I followed his finger to a white flash across the sky. “Aren’t we supposed to wish on it?”

  Eric nodded. “I wish I have cookies. What about you?”

  I wish … I wish Artemis wasn’t dead.

  Eric hugged his arm to his side and jabbered something about a meteor shower. “The Perseid shower. We got good seats.”

  He was right. We sat there against the boulders and watched meteors shoot across the sky like our own private screening of Star Wars. For a while, I tried to wish on every one.

  I wish for Artemis to be okay.

  I wish for Eric to be okay.

  I wish for Mom and Dad …

  What did I wish for my parents?

  Minerva said she’d called the police. Would they find us, and would Mom and Dad tell them to throw me in jail for running away?

  How could I explain that I didn’t really hate my father? That sometimes you can love somebody so much, but you can’t live with him anymore, watching him give in to the dark side?

  I wish for Dad to be okay.

  Eric yawned. “I sleepy.”

  I examined his arm. Blood had seeped through his jacket and dried to a crust on the fabric. “Take a nap. I’ll keep a lookout.” I knotted our jacket sleeves together in case he decided to take another hike.

  “I stay awake,” he said, but in a minute, he was snoring.

  I sat there shivering, staring up at the stars. Was this what Minerva meant by a kriyā—a spiritual emergency? Any second, the police could haul me to jail for going AWOL, for kidnapping a disabled boy I’d once shot, for murdering an owl.

  Mr. Miller was right. I was a criminal.

  Tears burned my face—tears that had been locked deep inside. They’d refused to come out even when I’d seen my father stretched on the hospital bed with tubes sticking out of his nose and mouth and I tried to hold his hand but he turned his head to the wall so he wouldn’t have to see me. Now, they poured hot down my cheeks, twin waterfalls of sorrow.

  “Artemis didn’t mean to hurt you, Eric.” I wiped my nose on my sleeve.

  Eric snored, but I kept talking. “Okay … well … maybe she did … but don’t take it personally. She’s a wild animal. She thought you were invading her territory. How would you like it if someone threatened a place you loved?”

  I stared down at the gummy worm clutched in Eric’s hand. “Artemis is a beautiful bird … she’s smart and powerful, and …”

  My words floated off into the wind, and I fell asleep.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  THAT OWL MUST BE DESTROYED

  Ah-choo!”

  “Bless you,” I whispered.

  Beside me, Eric groaned. Even through a fog of dreams, I could tell his arm hurt. My own body ached with cold.

  Slowly, I opened my eyes. The sky above the trees glowed pink. In the half light, bushes and rocks made shadowy silhouettes. I squinted at a figure with a backpack below us, slowly making his way to where we sat.

  An early morning hiker? Some evil dude eyeing my backpack full of quarters and dimes? My fingers inched out and clutched one strap.

  The man kept climbing, straight toward us.

  I poked Eric in the side. “Wake up!” I hissed in his ear.

  What if he was a kidnapper? If he tried to grab us, we could leap off the rocks and roll to the field below.

  I could get away. Could Eric?

  Eric opened one eye. “Breakfast?” he mumbled.

  My eyes locked on the man. He sprang toward me, and I yelled.

  “Dad!”

  In an instant, I blew my cover and any hope of running away. My father stood in front of us clutching a bunch of bananas and a bag of cookies.

  “Solo.” He dropped to the dirt beside me. Warm hands cupped my cheeks. “Oh my God, son. I thought you were … Minerva heard a commotion in an owl’s mew and found your bike. Are you hurt?”

  I bit my lip to keep from confessing. One look at the talon marks on my back, and he’d know who’d killed Artemis. But now Eric was wide awake, too, eyes glued to the bag of cookies.

  “Solo’s back hurt,” he told my father.

  I tried to shrug. “It’s nothing.”

  Too late. Dad walked behind me and gasped. “What the …”

  Carefully, he peeled away a piece of my T-shirt. I ground my teeth as cloth tore away from raw skin.

  “We’ve gotta get you to a doctor.” He draped his jacket over my shoulders. “Put this on and zip it up.” He pulled two blankets from the backpack. “Wrap yourselves in these, boys. You’re lucky it was a warm night.”

  “Ouch.” Eric clutched the blanket tight around his neck. Dad shot a question into my eyes.

  “He’s hurt, too,” I mumbled.

  My father examined Eric’s bloody arm. “His parents are going to want an explanation. They’re waiting down at the raptor center.”

  I nodded, miserable. What was the point of trying to keep secrets if Artemis was dead? The minute Minerva saw our injuries, she’d know who’d been in the mew.

  Dad gave Eric the bag of cookies. “You look hungry, young man.”

  His voice rang out solid and strong. I stole a glance at him. He sucked in big gulps of the cool morning air. The pink sky deepened to orange, and birds began to chirp in the trees around us. “We’d better head back,” he said.

  Back to California, away from this place.

  Good-bye, butte.

  I peered into the sky, hoping to spot the bald eagle again.

  Nothing.

  My father helped us down the boulders. Eric didn’t cry. He just held tight to his cookies. My stomach growled, but I couldn’t eat the banana Dad offered. My guts churned like a storm-tossed ocean.

  “Your mother’s at the raptor center, too,” he told me. “Quite a place you’ve got there.”

  I don’t have any place.

  I stumbled behind him down the switchbacks. Finally, we turned and climbed the steep path to the center. A knot of people stood on the lawn. I untangled them, searching for the police. Mrs. Miller … Mom … Minerva … Lucas and Leah holding hands.

  Leah spotted us first. She rushed over and hugged me. Pain shot up my back, and I bit down on my tongue to keep from crying.

  “I told you they’d gone camping!” she said to Lucas.

  Sergeant Bird Nerd tried to scowl, but it didn’t work. “It’s good to see you two,” he sighed.

  My mother threw her arms around me. “You could have been killed!” Her eyes looked teary and bloodshot. Her hair hung limp, and a worried crack jutted between her eyebrows like a fault line. She looked awful.

  Beside me, Mrs. Miller hugged Eric. “See, y’all? I told you they just went on a little overnight.” But her hands shook as she clutched him to her chest.

  Minerva draped another blanket around Eric’s shoulders and handed me one. I searched her eyes for news of Artemis. She peered back at me, her face grim.

  Mr. Miller stalked down the hill, coming from the direction of the great horned owl’s mew. In spite of
two jackets and two blankets, a chill prickled my spine. He hovered over us in his long black trench coat.

  “What happened to your arm?” he rasped and caught hold of Eric’s bloody wrist.

  Eric blinked at me. “I fall down the hill,” he said. “Solo save me.”

  Did he lie on purpose, or had he already forgotten what had happened?

  Mr. Miller’s face froze in a mask of rage. He dropped a chewed-up gummy worm into Minerva’s hand. “I found this outside that owl’s cage.”

  Minerva pinned me under her gaze.

  “We didn’t mean to kill her … honest,” I whispered.

  But what was the point of arguing? Jail seemed inevitable.

  Mr. Miller untied the jacket sling and tore fabric from the gashes in Eric’s arm. He unclenched his teeth just long enough to let loose five words—words that pierced my heart, and from the look on Minerva’s face, pierced hers, too.

  “That owl must be destroyed.”

  Lucas and Leah stared at Mr. Miller. Mom gripped Dad’s arm.

  “No.”

  Minerva stepped toward Mr. Miller. She stood a good six inches shorter than he did, but I swear she looked him right in the eye. “Artemis has a right to defend her own life. Raptors protect their territory.”

  “Protect it from whom?” Mr. Miller growled.

  Minerva’s words hung in the air so clearly I could almost see them.

  From people like you.

  But she never got to speak them because my father grabbed my hand. “I’d like to see this owl, Solo.”

  Eric nodded. “I feed her my worm!”

  I hung my head. Again, I heard the thud of the bird’s body against the mew door. Artemis is dead, and it’s all my fault.

  But now everyone rushed up the gravel path toward the mews. Even Mr. Miller stumbled along, sandwiched between me and my father, and Lucas and Leah. Eric led the way, wrapped in blankets.

  We crowded in front of Artemis’s mew. Her perch stood empty.

  Minerva stepped in front of us and spread her arms, warning us away. “She’s feeling territorial today. Leave her alone!”

  Feeling territorial … today?

  “Artemis is alive?”

  “I’m going to get my shotgun.” Mr. Miller turned, but Eric grabbed the sleeve of his coat and held on.