A Perjury of Owls

by Michael Angel

  Shelly nodded. “I see the ligature marks. Bad scrapes there, you’ll be needin’ some cream for that. So long as the feeling returns, you’ll be okay. You really should get some food and water in you, Miss Thea.”

  “Perhaps, but above all I wish the twin blessings of warmth and sleep.”

  “Then we’ll get you that right away.” Shelly looked over to me. “Dayna, you got anything that we can convert into a nest of sorts for my patient? I want her in the room you gave me for a spell. And do we have a space heater?”

  I nodded. “The space heater’s in the garage, I’ll go fetch it. As for a nest…how about you look in my hall closet? There’s a couple things you might be able to use.”

  “That’ll be fine, Dayna.”

  With Shelly’s approval, I went out to the garage and located my old space heater under a pile of bric-a-brac by the chest freezer. I coiled up the cord around it and lugged the boxy item back into the house. I found my two impromptu house guests in the spare bedroom.

  Shelly had pressed my shallow, dish-shaped laundry basket into service as Thea’s nest. The woven-reed oval was just big enough for her, especially after Shelly had swaddled the Albess in a selection of my spare blankets. I plugged in the heater, spun the dial to ‘on’ and with a low buzz, waves of warmth began to fill the room.

  Thea sighed. “There was a time where I thought I would never be warm again. Thank you, Dayna. Thank you, Shelly.”

  “Rest easy, Albess,” I replied. Shelly and I left the room and quietly closed the door. I don’t think my hand had left the knob before the elderly owl’s snores cut the air.

  Shelly and I made it into my kitchen before collapsing at the seats around the dining table. My friend rubbed a finger under the dark bags that still smeared across the bottom of her eyes. She scowled critically at her fingers, as if noticing for the first time how raw and scabby they’d become. Sighing, she looked over at me, with my disheveled hair and swollen lower lip. She laughed merrily. “We cut quite the figures right now, don’t we? All ready for an early morning sermon at the Church of Hard Knocks.”

  “I’d say that we’d be welcome in the first set of pews,” I agreed ruefully.

  Even with how drained I felt, I couldn’t help but be cheered by Shelly’s humor. It felt like I’d gotten a little of my old friend back. For her part, Shelly still seemed scuffed and dinged up by her recent experiences, as well as too thin. But the bone-tired, semi-conscious woman I’d pulled out of the barrio was harder to make out.

  “You don’t have to tell me everything about where your owl friend comes from yet,” Shelly allowed, “But I need to know her health history, at the very least.”

  I decided to tell her about Thea’s past complaints to me regarding insomnia, difficult urine flow, balance issues, and arthritis. Then I quickly sketched out the role of the Hoohan in the world of Andeluvia, my suspicions of a power-play made against Thea, and the likely length of her recent captivity.

  Shelly took this all in with aplomb. As I talked, she got up and went to the cupboard. She filled two cups with tap water and then set them to heat in the microwave.

  “At least I know what I need to help Miss Thea now,” she said. “It’ll sound strange, but…doin’ stuff for people has been the only thing that has put my mind halfway to ease lately.”

  “It doesn’t sound strange. Thea’s world is why you’ve been having that recurring dream as of late.” My friend looked up sharply at that. “It’s your mind’s way of handling memories that were half-erased. I’d brought three of my friends to work a few weeks ago: Galen, Liam, and Destry.”

  “Galen’s the hunky one, I recall that well enough.” The microwave pinged, so Shelly brought the steaming cups of water to the table. We each took a chamomile tea bag from a decorative box I’d stuck next to the napkin holder. “Where I come from, a hard man like that is good to find.”

  “He’s a good man. He’s also a wizard. And a centaur.”

  Shelly paused for a second before letting out a snort. “So that’s what you meant when you said he was ‘hung like a horse’! Good lord, I don’t know if I can take any more. Who were the other two?”

  “Liam’s the ruler of the Fayleene, a race of magical deer.” Shelly nodded with understanding as we both dunked our packets of tea in the water. She followed hers up with a couple scoops of sugar. “The last one, Destry, looked like a big black horse, but he’s actually a ‘pooka’ – an ethereal being who can manipulate minds. We got backed into a corner by Bob McClatchy, Destry did some spell work that knocked his gears askew, and you got caught in the backlash.”

  Shelly chewed that over for a moment as we sipped our tea. The warm water felt good flowing down my pinched throat. It didn’t feel like it was going to be bruised the next day, but it ached all the same.

  “So I got…ensorcelled, kind of?” Shelly asked. “That’s why I’ve been goin’ a little loco in the coco?”

  “I wouldn’t put it like that–”

  “Oh, horsefeathers! Dayna, I’m no shrinking violet. This is the first time anything’s made sense to me in a month!”

  I nodded. “You’re taking this…well, better than I thought you would.”

  “Oh, I don’t know.” Shelly finished off her tea in a gulp. “I still feel like my wits are half-scrambled. I don’t rightly know how to think about any of this. Whether I should be angry at you for gettin’ me spell-shocked, or grateful for rescuing me. But a talking owl? That I can understand, at least.”

  “You can?”

  “Sure. I’ve read or watched everything from Winnie the Pooh, you know. Been a big fan of it since I was a kid.” A thought occurred to her. “If you had to keep me from learnin’ about this dream-world, I figure that I better keep quiet as well. So no takin’ Thea to the vet unless things get desperate, right?”

  “Well, not everyone reads Pooh.” I looked at Shelly more seriously. “I do feel responsible for what happened to you, though. It’s why I haven’t told anyone that you’re here, yet. Only Esteban knows for sure, and he’ll keep things quiet.”

  Shelly looked down at her lap for a moment. “That’s probably a smart thing to do at this point. Till I get my head screwed back on straight, at least.”

  “Or you’re not as sleep-deprived. I have more pills if you need them.”

  “Don’t think I will. Now that I have someone to care for, it puts me at ease.” Shelly reached across the table and held my hand in hers. “And you need some care, too. Sleep for now, food for later.”

  Shelly herded me back to my room over my weak protestations. I shrugged off my clothes and set aside my still-wet boots and socks in the bathroom, and lay on the bed. My brain was awhirl with the events of the day. I’d never get to sleep.

  At least, that’s what I thought right before my eyes closed and I passed out before I could count to five.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  The alarm clock I had by the bed buzzed me awake at seven in the morning. Which was interesting, because I didn’t recall setting it. I groaned, rolled over, and smacked the damned thing with my palm.

  I got a click from the ‘off’ button, as well as the rustle of paper under my hand.

  That got my attention. I pried my eyes open, rubbing the sleep sand from them, and switched on the light. A note had been taped to the alarm clock.

  Frowning, I stood up and looked out the open bedroom door. All was quiet. Dim light filtered through the door jamb of the adjoining guest room. I pulled the note off the clock and then squinted to read it.

  Dayna –

  Sorry to wake you. You can’t miss the OME Department Roundup. The directors will notice if you’re not there.

  I got breakfast for you. Found just enough for lunch for me and our owl friend. Bring home some food for dinner we can all eat. Something that will stick to ribs.

  I checked your cupboards and frigid-air. Don’t you ever SHOP for food? I am going to teach you how to cook. For real. You have no butter, bacon, or flour ANYW
HERE.

  Don’t worry about me and Miss Albess Thea. She is in good hands with an old sawbones like me, ha-ha.

  We will talk when you get home. That owl is one wise lady.

  – Rochelle

  To my credit, I’d gotten used to enough strangeness in my life that my first thought was: Shelly’s first name is actually Rochelle? We’d been friends for years now, and I’d never seen her sign a note that way. It seemed so out of place on my down-home friend, a name fit more for a French noblewoman.

  Of course, what it really told me was: Shelly trusted me with her secrets, the way I was now trusting her. And I wouldn’t let her down for any reason on earth.

  That made me feel pretty darned good for the first time in a while. In fact, except for a few aches and pains, I felt better rested than I’d been in days. And no wonder. While night had fallen when I’d brought Thea back from Andeluvia, it hadn’t been the wee hours in the morning. Thanks to Shelly, I’d gotten ten hours of pure sleep.

  I headed for the bathroom to take care of my morning toilette. The first thing I noticed was that my stinky, wet socks and boots had vanished. A freshly laundered set of bath towels had appeared in their place. I took a peek behind the shower curtain. Not only was the tub clean, the faucet gleamed in a way that I hadn’t seen since I’d first moved into my place.

  After a quick rinse-off I examined myself critically in the mirror. I was able to change my hair style so that my impromptu trim thanks to a Noctua warrior didn’t make me look like a mental patient. Even better, my throat didn’t show ligature marks from Wyeth’s choke-spell, so no one would be calling Suicide Prevention to intervene on my behalf. My lower lip was still swollen from where I’d bitten it, but everyone would think I had a fever blister or something.

  I went over to my closet and selected clean clothes for the day. My Andeluvian duds had vanished into the same Shelly Richardson Twilight Zone realm as my socks and boots. Of course, the worst that would happen is that they would end up cleaned and pressed.

  That ‘worst’ segue made me stop and think for a moment. I took out my medallion, looking at it closely. At my request, Galen had added a little ‘marker’ to the spell that carried me and others between worlds. The medallion took on a very faint glow when I had less than three charges left, and the ‘low battery’ light was definitely there this morning.

  I considered. I knew that Shaw and Liam could handle themselves, but it was terribly temping to blip back to their world to check on them. The problem was, if Galen wasn’t around, then I could be stuck in Andeluvia with no way home – precisely when Shelly and Thea needed me the most. So I tucked the medallion back under my top. Then I grabbed the sandwich that Shelly left for me and tucked one of Perrin’s remaining feathers into a plastic bag to bring into work.

  The traffic gods of Los Angeles decided to be kind to me this morning. I made it to the office with enough time to stop by the chem lab. One of the technicians working there owed me a favor, so I asked him to do a quick analysis on the feather as I left for the OME Department ‘Round Up’. Once a month, the directors called an all-hands meeting to go over ‘departmental concerns’ that could range from specific caseloads to the brand of diet sodas in the vending machines.

  It turned out that Shelly’s disappearance was a net benefit to me that day. No one asked me to present anything. The department heads simply gave me an awkward set of ‘condolences’ and hoped that the LAPD was up to the task of finding her. For my part, I did my best to look simultaneously worried and brave until the meeting let out, just before lunchtime.

  I went back to my office at a fast walk and spent the morning plowing through the piles of paperwork threatening to engulf my desk like a carnivore made out of wood pulp. Finally, I sent out a trio of emails.

  The first was to notify the admin staff that I was leaving a couple of hours early today for ‘mental health reasons’. The next went to Detective Cohen (with a carbon-copy to Esteban). I let Max know that, while we didn’t find Shelly at the soup kitchen in the barrio azul, I’d asked the supervisor there to let me know when she showed up again. The final one was a roundabout thank-you to Esteban to let him know that everything at my house was ‘going fine’.

  Plausible deniability was the watchword of the day.

  I was feeling pretty good about the way I was handling things by the time I got two messages in return. Detective Vega thought it worthwhile to tell me that Bob McClatchy’s people were ‘going to the mats’ to help him unseat his rival for the Police Commissioner job.

  The other message came from the chem lab. It made my heart sink like a stone.

  That was enough work stuff in my head for the day. I shut everything down, locked up my office, and put in a call to a place on Sunset that would fit the bill for some ‘stick to your ribs’ takeout.

  Shelly typified the ‘meat-and-potatoes’ kind of eater. Technically, I suppose that the Albess was one as well, but I wasn’t about to visit the local pet store to pick up some mice for her, let alone bake them into a tart. Instead, I drove down to one of the few Swedish places I knew and picked up a king-sized order of meatballs in brown cream sauce, potato dumplings, a selection of side dishes ranging from yellow pea soup to gravlax, and a chilled bottle of lingonberry juice.

  I beat the rush hour traffic home and managed to balance the heavy tray of food in my arms as I pushed my way back into the living room. To my surprise, I heard conversation and even laughter from the kitchen.

  I made my way to the counter and sat my burden down, curious as to what I would see.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Shelly sat at the dining table looking as happy and relaxed as I’d ever seen her. Thea perched on the back of one of the chairs, also looking remarkably improved. While both women still looked frail and drastically underweight neither had the stretched look of nervous exhaustion anymore.

  “Oh, sit yourself down and let me take care of all that!” Shelly fussed, as she got up and began fussing over the mass of bags, plastic containers, and tin foil that I’d set aside. I bowed to the inevitable and pulled a third chair over to the table.

  “You look much improved, Albess,” I ventured.

  “My thanks must go to your friend,” the Albess said, adding a delicate, thankful coo. “I only wish that she had been Court Physician many years ago. She is most skilled.”

  “Oh, that wasn’t nothin’,” Shelly demurred. “Just old-fashioned medicines and a little judgement on when to use ‘em.”

  That surprised me. “Medicines? I don’t have much here at the house.”

  Shelly explained as she dug out my casserole spoon and began transferring contents onto platters and plates. “I called in a favor from a local vet tech I know. And don’t worry, she didn’t know I was missing so our secret is still safe. Most all of Miss Thea’s symptoms were caused by chronic dehydration and inflammation, so I had my vet friend drop off a ‘script of avian-equivalent prednisone, which knocked out the latter.”

  “A miracle substance,” Thea declared, with a bob of her head. “My feet and wings do not ache anymore!”

  “As for the dehydration, I found that you actually have some food, or at least ingredients for food, hidden away in your kitchen. A little baking soda, salt, and clover honey in water, and I whipped up some homemade Pedialite. That not only addresses the water issue, but it’ll make most anyone feel more even-keel.”

  “You have my thanks as well as Thea’s,” I said honestly. “And you look a lot better as well, Shelly.”

  “I feel a lot better,” Shelly agreed, as she set out glasses of juice, napkins and silverware. “I thought I was helping Miss Thea, but she ended up helping me much more. Matter of fact, I feel like my old self again. Right as rain and full of ginger pop.”

  I gave the Albess a hopeful glance. “Did you…”

  “We owls do have a small amount of magic,” Thea admitted. “Yet, I did very little. Your friend has a practical mind, and a healthy one. All that was needed was
to make clear what had been unclear.”

  “All that was needed was to make clear what had been unclear,” Shelly repeated, with a sigh. “You make it sound like a Sunday song, Albess. I once was lost, but now am found; I once was blind, but now I see.”

  I beamed at that. “I guess I was wrong not to let you know about Andeluvia before. You’ve handled the knowledge surprisingly easily. I thought…well, that you might have found the concept of Andeluvia difficult to square.”

  Shelly brought over plates heaped high with golden potato dumplings and Swedish meatballs. She sat down and let out a chuckle. “Well, I’m not sayin’ that I expected this. But what are magic ‘owls’ but one more piece of God’s creation? I mean, it ain’t in the Bible, but then I figure that there’s got to be room in the Good Book to add an appendix, or something like that.”

  Thea let out a series of ‘hoos!’ as she joined Shelly in laughter. Then the Albess dexterously took up a spoon in one foot, scooped up a sauce-drenched meatball, and took a cautious bite.

  “Delicious!” she pronounced, finishing off the rest in three more snaps of her beak. “Next time, all we need is to add some ground mouse, and it would be perfect.”

  I shuddered at that, but decided not to comment.

  My decision to go for Swedish smorgasbord turned out to be a good one. Not only did everyone devour portions of the dumplings, meatballs, soup, and cured salmon, both Shelly and the Albess went for thirds. Even though I’d skipped lunch, I called it quits after a second helping and stuck with the occasional sour-tart sip of lingonberry drink. I had news to share, but I hated to break the good mood that prevailed at the table for a change.

  “The Albess has been kind enough to fill me in on a lot about her world,” Shelly informed me, as she polished off the last of the gravlax. “That kingdom you work with, it sounds nice and all, but maybe a little bit big for their britches.”