“No, dear, headfirst. They slide down the gullet easier that way,” my mother counseled. Once I got the creature oriented right (I believe it was a dwarf rat), I took it down with one gulp followed by a very loud belch.
“You sound like your old man, lad.” My da laughed, and gave a loud belch himself.
“Honestly, Rask!” Mum sighed.
And then, of course, it was time to sing the belching song that celebrates the first time an owlet eats his first whole animal with meat, fur, and bones. The song is called “The Uuul-glutch,” a word that looks almost unpronounceable here on the page and resembles the sound of a deep belch that can only be made by animals with gizzards. Owls essentially have two stomachs. The first is a stomach like that most animals have. The second is the gizzard, a thick-walled and very muscular stomach made for grinding up grit and packing in small bones and fur. Uuul-glutch is the sound made when something passes from the first stomach to the second one, the gizzard.
Gundesfyrr started the singing:
Uuul-glutch! Uuul-glutch!
Let the sound ring out.
There’s a little critter that
No longer scampers about.
Lodged in the gizzard
Fast and cozy it does lay.
And soon a pellet is on its way.
And very soon it was. Mum and Da led me to the edge of the hollow and I yarped my first real pellet. I was growing up fast!
It was a fine pellet. “Exquisite,” Mum said. “Manly,” said my father. Then they had a nice little spat, where Mum said that there was no such thing as a manly pellet any more than there could be a feminine or girlish pellet. But to me, the most thrilling thing of all was standing on the rim of the hollow and looking outside for the first time. I felt the cold air, the flurry of snow in my face; I saw the slender limbs of the pine tree in which we lived and the beautiful green needles poking through the snow-laden branches. And in a neighboring tree, I saw an owlet teetering on a branch.
“What’s he doing, Da?”
“Learning to branch.”
“I want to do that!”
“You will, you will.”
“No! I mean now. Right now!”
“You haven’t fledged yet, silly,” my mother said. “You have to have at least a few feathers before you can branch. Now, come inside. You’re shivering.”
“No, I’m not!”
“You’re cold, dear,” Gundesfyrr said.
“I am NOT cold!” I said. But in truth, the skin between my ugly patches had turned almost blue. What a beauty I was!
From that moment, I was on high alert for any signs of budging. Every day, when my parents weren’t looking, I would creep to the edge of the hollow and watch the owlet across the way. His name was Moss, and I was insanely jealous. He was a Snowy and had hatched out the very same night I had. Perhaps he beat me out of the shell by an hour or two, but no more. I would say he was a big owlet, but he was not unusually large for a Snowy. It was just that Snowies are naturally much larger birds than Whiskered Screeches. And that hour or so seemed to have given him a feather up. Yes, he was fledging out fast.
When I asked why Moss had fledged so quickly, all the grown-ups around me replied, “Well, Snowies just do that.” It was one of those irritating answers that adults give and expect young’uns to take on faith. Well, not me. I take very few things on faith. Not then. Not now.
To my grim little eyes, Moss, swathed in these gorgeous fluffy white feathers with several dark splotches, seemed huge. And he was branching beautifully. Budging, branching, flying — these were all called “flight marks” in an owlet’s progress toward wing mastery.
I knew it was only a matter of a few nights until Moss would be actually flying. FLYING! And I would be stuck in this ferschtucken hollow. Unfortunately, I had the stupidity to blurt out the word “ferschtucken” one evening when I was complaining about not being a fledgling, and I earned myself a firm swat on my tail fluff from Mum. “Ferschtucken” is a curse word. I didn’t know this at the time, but when I stood on the rim of the hollow and observed the world outside, I heard a lot of things from warriors on leave, a lot of swearwords. I had even heard my father say “ferschtucken” when he was talking with an old Kielian League buddy about the action on the front.
Then there was a terrifying story I heard one evening when my parents thought I was sound asleep. They spoke in low, hushed voices, and maybe it was the very softness of their voices that alerted me.
“Did you hear?” my mum asked.
“Hear what, Ulfa?” Da’s voice was tense.
“The news from over in the Bay of Fangs — a Snowy family.” My mum did not wait for Da to answer. It was as if she had to get her story out. “They say it was in a pine grove, maybe just like ours. Quiet, you know.” Her voice dropped lower, and I had to strain to hear. “He comes up with two of his lieutenants. And there were these Snowies —” She seemed to gulp. “Well, their young’un had just hatched out, maybe the night before, and he was trying to recruit them for the Ice Talons League. I guess they refused and he went mad, yoickers, completely berserk, then seized the young’un. Stuffed him in a botkin and screamed, ‘I’ll make a soldier out of your babe if not you!’ He killed the parents in front of the owlet’s very eyes. He did that, Rask, and it isn’t just a rumor. It’s the truth!”
I felt my own gizzard freeze when I heard this. “He!” I knew already who he was: Bylyric, the commander of the Ice Talons League. They said he was not simply ruthless, but completely mad. There were many names for him — the Tyrant of the Ice Talons, and then the Orphan Maker. I wrapped my wings around myself and tried to go to sleep.
I wanted to be a soldier like my mum and da, but their conversation had shaken me. Bylyric was evil. Every owlet knew that from the time he or she hatched out. Bylyric was the reason that the war was fought. But Bylyric was not that old. He had not always been around, and it seemed as if my parents could barely remember why the war had begun more than one hundred years ago. If Bylyric was killed, would the war keep going? Had something been set in motion a long, long time ago and no one knew how to stop it? But before I could draw any conclusions, I suddenly had an itchy feeling in my starboard wing. I ran my tongue — yes, owls do have tongues — over the itch and, by Glaux, there was a tiny bump. It can’t be! I thought. It can’t be! But it was. “I’m budging! I’m budging!” I screeched.
Mum came running over. “Really!” she exclaimed with delight. “Let me see, Lyzie.”
“Don’t call me ‘Lyzie.’ I am about to fledge! When can I go to Dark Fowl? When? When? When?”
The flight to Dark Fowl Island marked the end of the owlet moons. It was when an owl proved his or her wings and could start to train to become a cadet. This island to the southeast of Stormfast in the Everwinter Sea was practically all one ever heard about on Stormfast for many reasons. First, Dark Fowl Island was where some of the best weapons in all of the Northern Kingdoms were forged. Orf the Rogue smith presided over the forge that had come down to him through his forebears, a long line of Great Grays with an uncanny ability to understand not just metal, but ice as well. He was as much a hero as any soldier.
It was just going to kill me if Moss got to go to Dark Fowl before I did. By this time, Moss had fledged out gorgeously and was now doing an admirable job of branching — branching and bragging! Every time I looked out from the hollow, he was carrying on about how by the next dwenking of the moon, when it was as thin as the finest filament of down, he would be winging his way to Dark Fowl. I couldn’t stand to watch his progress, and yet I could not tear myself away.
I hopped over to the Hollow’s entrance just in time to see Moss’s father toss a dead vole to the ground. Moss went into a plunge, called a kill spiral. It was a game known as “lob and gob.” Owlets who had just learned to branch played it all the time, as it was the best preparation for hunting. As soon as a fledging owlet learned to fly, he or she would hunt for food. I had only played lob and gob in the hollow with
Mum or Da, or sometimes our new nest-maid snake, Gilda. They would fling about a dead mouse and I would try to loft myself into the dim hollow air, get as far as I could, and then pounce on it. Talon placement is very important. One needs to grasp the creature immediately, secure “talon lock,” and then puncture its lungs or heart.
“Watch this!” Moss hooted across from the tree where he lived. “This is going to be great, Da.” But it really wasn’t his father he was addressing, for he always looked my way. Then he would do something rather spectacular for a branching owl, and his father would flap his own huge white wings in approval. Moss’s wings were not pure white. Not yet. Immature Snowies have a dappling of black feathers mixed in with the white ones. They are actually quite striking, especially in comparison to a Screech like myself.
When I finally fledged completely, I would be of a rather drab plumage — grayish-brownish. “Ish” — that’s me, not quite one thing or another. One might even say we Whiskered Screech Owls are rather dingy looking. The one feature that redeems us from this drabness is, ironically, our call. I say “ironically” because, after all, we are named Screech Owls, but our calls can be the most mellifluous sounds you have ever heard. Some say our voices are like starlight or like the sound of the stars singing. Some have compared the lower register of our hoots to the sound of a wooden flute, like those found in the ruins of the Others’ castles and palaces. Our calls are nothing like the harsh gruff barkings of a Snowy Owl, of which I had been hearing quite enough, thank you very much.
But at last came the fateful night that was to mark the beginning of a most unlikely friendship. It was the night that Moss flew for the first time and I took my first tiny little jump from the branch just outside the hollow to another that was no distance at all away.
To me, this little jump was a triumph. But the hoots that clawed the air to herald a great feat were not for me, but for Moss! Moss had completed his first circumnavigation of Hock Point at the far end of the island. I was furious that Moss’s flight eclipsed my little jump. To fly to the Hock, rest, and then come back was one thing, but to fly around the tip of the point and all the way back was extraordinary for an owlet. Moss might as well have flown to the moon. “Can’t be long now, son! Next stop, Dark Fowl!” his father boomed.
“Ever see anything like it?” An uncle came up and thwacked Moss with his port wing. I blinked. If anyone had thwacked me like that, I would have fallen off my branch. My mother alighted on the branch next to me.
“You did an admirable job, Lyze. Very graceful.” I shrank down at her words. She was so obviously trying to boost my spirits in the shadow of Moss’s spectacular achievement.
“What are you wilfing about, dear? You just branched, for Glaux’s sake!” She nodded her head vigorously as if to drive this idea home. Her bandanna slipped a bit, exposing the eyeless, crinkled pit.
“Mum,” I whispered. “Your bandanna.” She flicked me a rather harsh look from her good eye and adjusted the bandanna. I felt terrible for even mentioning it.
Meanwhile in the next tree over, Moss was absolutely wallowing in the accolades his relatives were showering upon him. There was much talk about how it was such a shame his mum could not be there to witness his great achievement. Repeatedly, he lifted off from a branch to demonstrate how, when she finally arrived, he would show her a certain maneuver he had made when kitibit winds were swirling about the tip of the Hock.3 The kitibits often picked up bits of debris, seaweed, and even the odd, tiny flying fish or minnow. Moss was now brandishing a small bunch of sea grapes that had a dead minnow entwined in them.
“Would you look at this!” he exclaimed. “And a minnow!”
“Eat it! Eat it!” his older sister cried out in an awful grating hoot. “It’s good luck.”
“Old wives’ tales,” someone barked.
“Old wives! Speaking of old wives!” It was Moss’s father, his beak dropping. “Glaux, is it really? Hrenna! My dear Hrenna!”
Just then a Snowy landed, shouting, “Moss! Moss! My dear son!”
All I remember from that moment is that Moss suddenly seemed to wilf. All the bluster went out of him, and oddly enough, he cast a glance toward me, a sly, almost frightened glance. Moss and his immediate family disappeared into the hollow, but outside the celebration continued. It would be a few nights until I saw Moss again.
My father suggested that we accept the invitation to visit Moss’s hollow since his mum had returned now. All returning warriors liked to exchange news from the front. Mum asked me if I wanted to join them.
“Is Moss going to be there?” I asked. I really didn’t relish watching him brag about all his accomplishments.
“Well, yes, of course, dear.”
“Isn’t it high time he flew off to Dark Fowl? I mean, he did all the steps. Proved himself,” I said rather dismissively, perhaps without gravitas, the dignity required when speaking of such things. My mother cocked her head and made no attempt to adjust the bandanna that had slipped with this sudden motion.
“Lyze, I’m not sure what your problem is here. But I don’t like your attitude. We’re invited over, and you are coming. Fledgling jealousy is an unbecoming trait.” She paused. “Some say it can even make your barbules grow crisscross.” That, I was sure, was an old wives’ tale. On every flight feather there are tiny, nearly invisible hooks called barbules that interlock to produce an even surface over which wind can glide. A favorite scolding for young owlets was “Don’t do that or your barbules will come out ‘whiffy skew.’”
Mum squared her shoulders and gave me a harsh glare with her one eye. “You shall be coming with us. You shall congratulate Moss on his magnificent flight, and you shall behave yourself in a manner that becomes the son of the supreme commander of all the allied forces of the Kielian League, and the commando of the Ice Dagger unit. Is this understood?”
I lifted my starboard talon and gave what I hoped was a crisp salute even though I was shaking terribly. Neither my mother nor my father had ever spoken to me this way. I felt a terrible crinkle in my gizzard, and I tried to avoid my mother’s gaze, but she thrust herself toward me and shoved her face so close to mine that her feathers swept my cheek. She cocked her head so that terrible, scarred pit where her eye had been filled my vision. It loomed like a burnt crater.
“Take a good look, my dear. You want a perfect mother, do you? One that is not scarred. You know what did that?” I remained silent. She took a deep breath. “You know what took my eye?”
“No, Mum.”
“An ice splinter. And an inferior one at that. I flew right into it. Never saw it coming. Had I not been flying at fever speed, the damage wouldn’t have been so bad. But it was, and now you have a flawed, imperfect mother.”
“Flawed in body,” my father added. “But not in spirit. Not in valor.”
“Is … is being a soldier … the … the only … uh … way one can fight?” I asked. My parents blinked at me. Their large yellow eyes seemed to dull with incomprehension. I might as well have been speaking a foreign language.
“What in the name of Glaux are you talking about, son?” Da asked.
“Uh … uh … nothing. Forget it.”
“Yes.” Mum nodded emphatically. “Forget it!”
I looked down at a bark worm that was creeping across the hollow floor. I felt lower than that creeping, spineless, soft-bodied piece of squish that the nest-maid snakes feasted on.
My mother spotted it as well. “Where is that new nest-maid snake? What’s her name?”
“Gilda?” I ventured.
“Yes, that’s the one. She’s not as good as Mrs. Grinkle. I can’t wait until Mrs. Grinkle gets back from visiting her relatives. Gilda!” she called out.
“Yes, ma’am, yes!” Gilda slithered in and gave a salute much crisper than mine, which, considering she was a snake, was rather impressive. “Sorry. Just out. Another Snowy from the tree across just took flight and is heading toward the Point. Guess young Moss has set a new standard.”
<
br /> Would this never stop? Everyone except yours truly here seemed to be progressing in the speediest manner — fever speed! — toward true flight and Dark Fowl Island. And now most frustrating of all, we were off to visit Moss’s hollow. The new local hero in flight accomplishments. I would probably make a mess of even this brief flight, which, truth be told, wasn’t more than extended branching.
Mum and Da went out on a brief hunting foray. They said it was gracious when visiting neighbors to bring a rodent. I could hear Gilda’s swishings as she slithered about, swiping up vermin with her forked tongue and neatening the hollow. I watched as Mum and Da lofted themselves onto a gust. Wings spread, they carved tight elegant turns until they were over the crowns of the trees that made up our small grove. They angled their wings so the tips seemed to brush the sky. I envy them; if I could only fly so beautifully.
“So do I,” a voice behind me spoke softly.
“Gilda!” I wheeled about, nearly losing my balance on the rim of the hollow. I thought the words were in my head, but I must have whispered them aloud.
“Yes. Your parents are beautiful fliers. It stirs me deeply.”
I blinked. Gilda had twisted herself into a neat coil and had been peering over my shoulder out into the night, tracking my parents’ flight.
“But how can you envy them? You’re a snake.”
“I know. Odd, isn’t it? But I can just imagine what it might feel like to fly.”
“You can?”
“Yes,” she answered with a wistfulness to her voice as she gazed out the hollow.
I looked at her as she slithered off. Something struck me about this snake. Mrs. Grinkle was nice, but Gilda was much more interesting. I was drawn to her from the time she first arrived, for some reason. I think it was her stories — she told the best twixt-time stories as the dawn came and I was supposed to be settling down to sleep. But now I knew what it really was that captivated me. It was her imagination. Any snake who could imagine flying had to be special in some way. That’s probably why Gilda wasn’t a very good nest-maid. She thought deeply and didn’t pay attention to bark worms and wood beetles and such.