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Isa hugged her knees against the silence and emptiness of her home. Outside the trees stood still, without even a flutter of motion to give hope of life. The owls were gone and her family gone with them, out to hunt on silent wings.
She held her hands in front of her—featherless flesh undeserving of flight. In the breeze that whispered through the window, and slapped the shutters on raw wood, she imagined the air pillowing beneath her wings as she lifted off the ground, soaring in the night with those she loved.
The wind died away, the trees went still, and she sat alone on the wooden floor.
Isa remembered her mother's voice as she rubbed tears from swollen eyes. "Hush, Isa," she had said. They crawled beneath the floor joists, boards creaking and groaning under the weight of those who went with her. "Don't cry. You'll join us someday. I promise."
"Why can't I go with you now?" Isa had asked, voice a whisper between dirt and dust.
"Shush, my dove." The floor creaked above her mother's head, and in a crack of light there was worry in her eyes. "You will, sweetie, you will. Just not yet." Tears dripped down her cheek. "Just be brave. Can you be brave for me?"
Isa nodded.
But she wasn't brave. That was why they had let her behind. She wasn't brave enough for the hunt.
A white blur landed on the window sill and Isa rubbed her eyes. An owl perched there, white as snow and watching with tilted head.
Why are you still here?
The owl didn't speak, but she saw the words in its eyes.
Fly with us. Hunt with us. We are waiting for you.
"I don't know how," Isa said and the owl turned its head back. Her heart rose in her chest and she spoke with a quiver. "Can you show me?"
The owl fluttered across the room and landed on her shoulder. Sharp talons dug into her skin. She winced for the pain and the cool blood that dripped down her bare front. The owl turned its head toward her, yellow eyes meeting her own.
"Where do I go?" Tiny points dug into her shoulder and she stood from the floor. Forward.
She walked out the door and into the blue of the moonlit night, past the still trees. Her eyes kept to the ground, not daring to look at those who had left her to join the owls in the sky. The claws dug deeper and she gritted her teeth. They left her because she was a coward. She could have gone with them. She could have been brave and her mother wouldn't have hidden her away.
And now she was alone.
One of her family brushed at her shoulder as she walked close to a tree, calling her to join them. And oh she wanted to. Tears dripped down her cheek, cool as the blood down her shoulder.
She walked from tree to tree, her once-family brushing at her shoulder or hovering above her head as she walked. She went to the tree by the pond where her parents would be, and where the snowy on her shoulder guided with painful insistence.
She reached the tree and stared into the water, refusing to look skyward. A tear fell to the water below, rippling the moon. "What now?" she asked and the owl leaned its weight back. Her gaze raised from the pond, to the tree, to the long branches above. To her family, floating in the sky beneath a sturdy branch.
Their feet swayed over the ground and the toppled chairs. Her mother's makeshift wings fluttered in the breeze and her head hung to the side, nearly upside down, staring into the sky.
Into the sky, where the moon floated like a round leaf in an endless sea. She tilted her head and the owl's talon scratched a line across her neck.
This was the way the owls saw the world. The sky, a turning sea. The trees, the roots of the earth.
She turned her head to the side, staring up and put a hand beneath her chin. Blood dripped from the thin line upon her neck.
Just a little further.
She put one hand on top of her head and twisted gently.
If she turned her head a little further, she would see as they did.