Silent wings

[Dark Sky Singer]

In the First Times, there was nothing but water. The Great Spirit took up a handful of mud and let it drop into the water, bit by bit. After a time, the Spirit formed the land. Then the Spirit made the world for the People, and for the animals. For seven days, the Great Spirit worked.

One by one, the People and the animals fell asleep during the long Making. At the end of the making of the world, only the Owl and the Jaguar were still awake. For this, the Spirit blessed them with the ability to see in the dark. The Owl became a herald of healing, and of sickness. The Jaguar became a herald of unpredictable strength. Both the night-dwellers respected each other.

That is why the Owl can see at night.

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Aaron opened his eyes, his grandfather’s words echoing in his mind. How many times had he heard the story? Anything about owls, grandfather told him about it. He sighed and shifted, sitting upright in a small, steam-filled room.

He hadn’t been able to find a good place to build a steam lodge. Finally he’d settled on one of the saunas at a local health club. He’d explained the situation to the sympathetic owner, paid for the privilege of hogging the small sauna for most of the night, and had entered after chanting for a bit.

He didn’t believe in all this crap, was the thing. He sort of understood that the Owl spirit probably talked to him...but that was a long way from faith. Aaron just didn’t know. But he DID know that when he was feeling lost and scared, the ceremonies of his childhood sometimes comforted him. So, the sweat lodge. Or sauna.

He settled back, listening. He’d thought the sweat lodge was crap, too, but then when he’d turned fourteen and gone through it for the first time...something had happened. He’d felt like he was flying, and something had spoken to him. The words weren’t familiar, but the images they invoked were. He was the vessel, this generation. The Owl had marked him.

He’d carried that in his heart for two years, and finally he was ready to find out what the hell it meant. The Owl had been stirring inside, causing him to feel strange desires and sensations. The hunger when he’d seen Matt for the first time had particularly surprised and worried him...suppose he attacked the rabbit-boy without realizing what he was doing? That and so many other things had finally driven him to take this step tonight.

He sat, and waited. An half hour went by, and then another...finally, he opened his eyes and stared straight into the raptor eyes of an enormous Owl. The creature was perched on the opposite bench, and so big that it was nearly touching him. Aaron just stared into the killer eyes, not startled. The Owl did not blink, and finally it opened its mind to him once more.

Aaron felt Owl’s domain...the whisper of snow on the nighttime ground was as loud as breaking glass. He stared at the moon, the silent sentinel that watched his every move as he searched for the meal that would carry him through one more night. There...a heartbeat. A rabbit moved quietly in the grass, out well past its normal time and aware of it. Owl tensed and then dropped into the air, embracing the wind with wings softer than spiderwebs. The rabbit didn’t hear anything, had no suspicion of its death until it was all over. Owl feasted, and Aaron feasted along with it.

When its hunger was sated, Owl opened its mind further. Not just a killer, a beast of prey. Owl was sickness and healing, blindness and sight, flight and swift death. Words formed in Aaron’s mind, his brain translating Owl’s thoughts into something he could understand. “I have shared blessings with you, who are my vessel. Now take another. Be my fingers where I have talons. Be my voice where I cannot speak.”

Aaron snapped his eyes open, sweating and breathing as if he’d run a marathon. Something rustled in the stifling heat, and he wondered if Owl had followed him into the real world. He squinted and then saw a huge, hooded shape behind him somehow. He cried out and scrambled out of the sauna, but no matter what he did, the huge form followed close behind. Finally, exhausted, he froze in the middle of the locker room and stared into the huge mirror.

Behind him, attached to his back and shoulders, a pair of huge wings flexed and fluttered. He stared in shock, open-mouthed like the biggest idiot in the world. His eyes were sharper, able to pick out every single color and feather without squinting.

“Oh, shit,” he whispered.