I suck the cool air in through my beak. Smoothing my chest feathers, I align my facial disk, twitching each tiny feather, coaxing the night sounds toward my ears. Silence blooms into patterns of noise: the wind in the branches; the sharp scratch of a late summer leaf against its neighbor; the prickling of tall, dry grass in a nearby field. Bugs thump and chitter inside the dead bark of a neighboring trunk. Heartbeats dance in the darkness.
I’m going for it.
I lift my wings, spread them wide, and drop silently off the branch. I think there’s a vole . . . just there . . . maybe? Yes, a vole. Or a vole-ish creature somewhere in that pile of grass.
I glide toward it. Bob my head, try to lock on to the heartbeat. Where was it? Which tussock?
Now I’m too low.
I flap.
Something skitters near the tree. Mine! I swerve, stretch my talons, crash down into the grass like a stone, and—
Nothing. I’ve got a footful of straw.
“Forget it,” I say, and flap back up to the branch. We’ve been at this all night, have flown far from the nest to a strange part of the woods, and every single hunting strategy I’ve come up with has failed. I hunch my head down between my wings and fluff my feathers, laying my ear tufts flat back.
“Second,” Mother peeps softly. “Quitting is not an option.”
I burrow my head deeper between my shoulders. I know she’s right. But it’s not my fault. I’m doing everything she says. “My ears are broken,” I squeak.
She hoots softly, “Second.” Even my name is an insult: second egg to hatch, forever destined to be behind. Mother nips my feathers and steps closer on the branch. “It takes time to learn how to hear the world.”
“First got it on her first night.”
“First was a week older.”
“First fledged three weeks ago.” Tonight, Father flapped away to hunt on his own. Mother stayed. But for how long?
She clacks her beak at me. “Enough of this feeling fluffed. You’re a great horned owl, master of the night forest. You own the darkness. And you will catch that mouse, so help me.” She tromps down the branch, opens her wings, and disappears into the shadows.
It was a mouse? And I was so sure it was a vole! An entire moon’s worth of studying and I still can’t tell a mouse from a vole . . .
I clack my beak back at her. It’s not as if I want to be a bum owl. The only owl in the history of owldom who can’t find food in the dark.
Far off, a saw-whet tooh-toohs. Even that tiny bug of an owl is having better luck hunting.
I have to stop feeling sorry for myself. I am a great horned owl. Master of the night forest. Master.
I bob my head up and down, turn it, bob again, do a full circle, am beginning to feel dizzy, but I still can’t pinpoint where in the grass around the bottom of the tree the mouse is rustling.
I go for it anyway.
I swoop, glide on a warm current of air, then drop, talons out, wings folded.
Gah! Leaves! Nothing but dead leaves . . .
“They’re too fast,” I screech, flapping up from the dust. “I need some slower food to hunt.” But then a better plan hatches in my mind: we could hunt as a team! Why does hunting have to be a solo effort? Who says owls have to live alone?
“Mother, I have a new plan! Let’s hunt as a team, in a pack, like the coyotes. Maybe you catch something and then leave it for me to finish off? You know, maybe only half kill it, or stun it a little. What about that plan?”
I land on a branch. “Mother?” I twist my head around first one way, then the other. Her silhouette must be hidden in shadow.
Or she left me.
She wouldn’t have left me.
Would she?
“Mother?” Fear grips my beak and my hoot comes out as a warbling squeak.
Something coos from a nearby tree. Not something—Mother.
Mother is perched a swoop or two away near a space in the woods. I can almost feel her frustration from here. She’s cooing softly because she doesn’t trust me to hear her heartbeat on my own.
My feathers begin to fluff. I didn’t hear her. I couldn’t. Because I am broken! My ears are full of down and I’m never going to catch a meal ever and—
“Calm, Second,” Mother coos. But she doesn’t fly to me. She doesn’t hoot anything more.
She thinks I can do this.
No.
I can do this.
I breathe in the cool air again. Let it calm the frustration and anger building in my gizzard. My feathers smooth. Realign. The noise map of the darkness flickers back to life. Mother has stopped cooing.
She believes I can find her.
She believes I can survive.
I stretch my wings down and back, prepare for flight.
But there’s a new noise. A rumbling, coming closer, fast.
Mother hears it, she has to, but instead of waiting to see what it is, she dives from her branch into the clearing in the trees.
“Second!” she screeches. “I caught two mice! They were just out in the open, eating an apple core!”
Two mice! We haven’t eaten yet today—Mother’s been trying to use my hunger as motivation and won’t let herself eat until I catch a meal. But two mice out in the open? That is too good to pass up, no matter if it ruins a night’s worth of educational starvation.
I open my wings to swoop down to her, but blinding light blazes over the crest of the small hill. The low rumble I heard is now a deafening roar. I screech, “Mother!”
I see her lit in the brilliant light: wings out, ready to fly away.
But the rumbling monster is faster than even her. There’s a thump and a snap of bones breaking.
Mother screeches.
“What’s happening?” I squeak.
The rumbling monster squeals, stops. Its side flaps open like a stumpy wing and a smaller creature—long-armed and -legged, and thin like a young tree—comes tumbling from its belly. The lanky creature clicks on a small light, yelps, and tries to pick up Mother.
Mother flaps, but one wing lies still. She stumbles, escapes the lanky creature’s grasp. “Second!” she cries.
“Mother!” I shriek. My talons seize the bark.
“Fly away!” she screeches. “Save yourself!”
“No!”
The lanky creature throws a thick skin over Mother, muffling her cries. The creature picks her up inside the skin, carries her to the back of the huge hollow monster, lifts its tail, and places Mother in its belly. The lanky creature then scrambles to the open wing, climbs into the belly of the beast, closes the wing, and rumbles on, faster now than before.
“Mother!” I shriek, regaining my voice. I fly after her, blindly flapping through leaves and sticks. “Mother!”
The beast is too fast for me. It kicks up dust, blinding me, filling my lungs. I cough and sputter.
It races away toward distant bright lights. Mother told me to never go near those lights.
I collapse onto a branch. I clack my beak and pant, flap my wings to free myself of the monster’s dirt.
Mother’s been eaten.
My heart pounds, drowning out all other noise in the night.
She’s gone.
The wind rushes through my feathers, reaching my skin. I shiver. I’m alone outside the nest. For the first time.
Alone in a strange forest.
I creep along the branch until I hit the tree’s trunk. I huddle down inside my feathers, which are all out of place after crashing through the brush. What does it matter? Father warned of predators—other owls, eagles, hawks, coyotes, even skunks—but he never described anything like that monster. And now I’m left alone in its forest?
Alone, alone, alone. Alooooooone, a coyote cries.
The cold moon glares down. Shadows crawl. The darkness crackles with things on the hunt.
With monsters. Hungry monsters.
“Oh, Mother,” I chirp.
But Mother is gone.
I close my eyes tight. Shut my ears to the noises. Maybe if I keep perfectly still, maybe if I turn into nothing more than another patch of darkness, into nothing at all, all the evils of the night will slither by me. Maybe then, I’ll be safe.