Day passes, night too, but I stay huddled inside my feathers against the rough bark of the evergreen tree. The thick thatch of its branches is like a nest, almost feels like home. But then I remember that Mother is gone—I see her shadow in the growling monster’s lights—and I feel like there will never be a home for me again.
A little after dawn, something snuffles in the leaves around my tree’s roots. It doesn’t matter. Let whatever it is pass.
But it doesn’t pass.
The tree shivers as claws scrape the trunk.
I crack open my eyes, bend my head around. I can’t see the climber, but something breathing in raspy breaths is definitely hitching its way up my tree trunk.
I shuffle away from the trunk but get tangled in the web of branches. I slash at them with my talons, break a twig.
There’s a high-pitched yip followed by a growling grumble, and snot sprays my wing that’s closest to the trunk. I dare to turn my head.
Great Beak! It’s a giant rodent covered in sharp spines. The spines bristle and flex—this animal has the most dangerous fur ever imagined: owl-piercing fur! This is the nightmare beast First used to hoot about, the Revenge of the Rodents! And I’d thought she was just making things up to scare me out of my skin. Alas, no!
The gargantuan rodent opens its mouth, bears its beaklike orange teeth. I don’t wait for it to strike. I burst through the thicket of branches and escape into the misty morning air. I fly, but my wings feel wet and heavy. A dizziness clouds my eyes.
How long since I last ate?
I sink on a cool draft of air and find the nearest branch.
I’m tired, so tired.
I sleep.
A loud noise growls to life somewhere nearby.
My eyes crack open to a gray dawn—a half day, as Mother used to call them. There’s a monster in the field that stretches out in front of my tree. Its lights cut through the mist. It’s bigger than the one that took Mother. It has a mouth of claws that spin and slash, cutting the tall, sweet grass that grew happily in that field.
The monster’s growling drowns out all other noise, but in the dim light, I see movement between the stalks. The ground undulates, like the dirt itself is fleeing the monster. As it gets closer, I see that it’s not dirt, but mice and voles and rats and . . . FOOD!
I swoop down, talons extended and ready to grab whatever they can. As I get closer, I can hear the heartbeats: a roar of life nearly as loud as the thrashing monster. My foot feathers sense a vole beneath me. My claws snap.
I caught it!
I don’t bother to try to carry it someplace more private. I tear with my beak and gobble a bite.
A rat squeaks as it crashes into me.
And then a mouse clambers over me like I’m just a lump of feathers.
I should fly away to escape being trampled by the crowd of angry vermin, but my gizzard is growling and they’re everywhere, the little meals-on-feet. I can’t decide between snatching another mouthful from my vole or stretching my talons to catch a second breakfast. It’s too much! I try to do both at once, bending in half to grab a bite while reaching my other claw at a passing mouse, extending my wings to balance.
A screech from above cuts through the noise. A talon pierces my shoulder.
“Poor little owl,” the goshawk says, beak right against my ear.
Cold terror silences all other sound. I swivel my beak around and slash at the goshawk’s face. She screeches, digs her talons in deeper. I drop my vole, fold in my wings, and roll onto my side, slashing at her with my talons. But her grip is too strong. She flaps and screeches, lifting me up with her. I scream and slash with my feet, flap my wings, anything to get her off me.
I land a talon in her leg and she shrieks. It’s enough to get her to loosen her grip, and I jerk hard away from her. It’s like I’m tearing my own wing off, but suddenly I’m free and I flap as hard and as fast as I can for the cover of trees and darkness.
Once on a branch, I nibble my wing with my beak, feeling over the feathers. The pain is blinding. I stretch my wing out—more pain. I nip at the hurt, but that makes it worse. I shuffle along the bark until I’m against the trunk, then huddle into myself, fluffing my feathers, and hope that my wing stops hurting.
A squirrel chitters angrily from above.
I roll my head and look at her. “Go away.”
She shrieks, flicking her tail and bristling her fur. Her squirrel nest is in the upper branches.
“I’m just resting,” I hoot. I have no interest—or at least no energy—to bother her nest.
She has the nerve to throw a nutshell at me.
I pull in my feathers, lift my wings, and prepare to show her who says where a great horned owl can roost, when my wing sends lightning bolts of pain through my body. I wince.
The squirrel senses an opening. She launches another nutshell and hits me right in the beak.
“I’m going!” I stretch my wings as far as I can and glide away from the branch, landing on a stump in an open space between the trees.
Never roost in the open, Mother’s voice chides.
But my wing won’t let me fly.
A crow flaps down from the canopy. “Owl!” he caws. “Owl! Owl!”
Soon other crows call back, “Where? Where?”
“Owl!” this crow barks, hopping around the base of my stump.
“Leave me alone,” I hoot, fluffing myself up and raising my ear tufts.
“Here! Here!” the crow shouts, and now more crows answer, “Owl! Owl!”
I have to keep this crow quiet or I’m going to have a swarm on me. I spread my wings, stuff the pain into my gizzard, and pounce on the crow.
“Help! Help!” the crow shrieks.
He flaps and hops and shrieks some more, and I try to get a good grip on him, but my talons keep slipping off his oily black feathers. I’m so tired, I barely have the energy to stand.
He pecks me hard in the shoulder and the pain causes me to topple against the stump.
I drop onto the leaves and walk—actually walk—my talons across the ground toward the nearest tree. It, too, is just a stump.
“Owl!” the crow caws loudly, hopping along beside me.
I shuffle my feet faster through the leaves, creating a thunderous noise nearly as loud as this crow and his screaming. I snap my beak at him and he flaps off, up into the trees. Above, the crows are swarming, getting into a frenzy of cawing as the crow I just let escape tells them how I attacked him.
“Mean! Mean!” he caws. “Bites! Bites!”
I reach the dead tree. I dig my talons into the stump and hop and drag myself, beak over claw, up the rotting bark.
“Owl! Owl!” the crows shriek, filling the sky with their noisy cawing, their black wings like a storm swirling around me.
I haul myself to the top of the ragged stump, turn my body, and get a glide going. I manage to get one flap, two, and I lift slightly higher. I spot a tree with a good-size hole in it. It’s too close to the field, too open, but I can’t fly any farther.
Please let it be empty.
I land my talons on the edge of the bark. The hole is empty and cold but dry and small and snug. I drag myself into it, filling the space with my feathers, and hunker down into myself.
My wing throbs. Almost as painful is knowing that I have just been driven off two perches, first by an angry squirrel and then by a murder of filthy, foul-beaked crows.
There has never been a worse great horned owl in the history of owldom. I am he: The Absolute Worst Great Horned Owl Ever.