“I got you something,” Aunt Bea says at breakfast Saturday.
The plan is to head out around sunset for our first walk in the woods with Rufus. Which means I have a whole day to suffer through. Which is probably a good thing since I still have to finish up my research for the hunting project.
“Is it my essay for school?” I say.
Aunt Bea snuffles a laugh. “Sorry, but no.”
Excitement hums in my belly when I see her lift a brand-new falconry waistcoat from a bag. She shakes it out. “There’s a real knife in the holster, so don’t get silly with it.”
“But Mom just called to say—” If I’m leaving, why buy me a whole vest?
“Because you’re a falconer,” she says, cutting me off, “and a falconer needs the right equipment.”
I let her hold it while I slip my arms in. It’s heavy canvas, with big pockets covered with thick flaps of material. It fits perfectly.
“Thank you,” I manage, tears pricking out from the corners of my eyes.
She smiles. “You’ve earned it.” She stands, collects her dishes. “Now, finish that schoolwork or we’re not flying that owl.”
I salute her as I get to work, my new vest wrapped around me for good luck.
As the light turns golden, I finish typing up all my notes. Falconry hasn’t changed much over the centuries. The ancient kings whose hawks soared over Middle Eastern deserts are kin with King Arthur, whose falcons flew across English moors, and with Aunt Bea and Red. And with me. I’m connected to something deep and true in the world, like I’m part of this thread reaching back through time and stretching forward into the future.
I hunt through the house for Aunt Bea—I’ve got to show her my finished essay. But she’s outside, standing in the yard, flying Red and using a lure—this one meant to imitate a rabbit, but it’s really a stuffed sock made of fur. She tosses the tidbit-laden rabbit lure into the grass, then drags it fast across the ground. Red dive-bombs from above, hitting the lure like a missile. I was so into my essay, I’d forgotten that we’re taking Rufus to fly.
“Is it time?” I ask, shrugging on a fleece jacket under my vest as I step out the back door and trundle down the wooden steps. “I finished my project.”
Aunt Bea calls Red to the fist, and she lands there in an instant. “About,” Aunt Bea says, feeding Red her tidbit.
I get Rufus from his aviary as Aunt Bea puts Red back in hers. We’re flying Rufus solo in the woods. It’s his first time, so we agreed two sets of eyes would work better than one.
“You sure we shouldn’t put a radio on him?”
Aunt Bea nods, handing me her pouch of tidbits. “If he flies off, that’s how it should be anyway.”
Her words bruise my insides. I know she’s right; I know that’s what we’ve been working toward; but I can’t just yet. I can’t even think about it. I tuck the pouch into my vest pocket.
We fly him in the yard a few times, just to remind him about returning to the fist. My confidence builds each time he hits the glove. We’re ready, I keep telling myself. You’re ready, I send out to Rufus, as if my mind can penetrate his.
“It’s time,” Aunt Bea says, checking the sky.
A plume of dust signals a car coming down the road. We’d agreed cars would be bad for Rufus, and we’d wait for any to clear out before heading into the woods to fly him. I call Rufus to the glove, just to keep him focused until the car passes. Only this car—truck, actually—pulls into Aunt Bea’s driveway.
I visor a hand over my eyes, try to see who it is, because who would be coming to visit unannounced at sundown on a Saturday? It takes me a second to register the blue lights on top of the truck. And then a man in a uniform—a uniform with the Fish and Wildlife symbol Jaxon’s been sketching for our project emblazoned on his vest.
Aunt Bea’s jaw clenches. “Stay here,” she says, holding up a hand, like I need more than words to comprehend the full depth of her meaning. I am fully aware of that depth. Aunt Bea warned me that first night: This is a rehab bird. We make him better and then we release him back out to his wild life. But I wouldn’t listen.
“Hello. Are you Beatrice?” says a man’s voice attached to the silhouette that steps onto the lawn.
“Hello, Warden,” she says, walking his way. Her legs are stiff, like she’s being dragged toward him by some tractor beam.
“Jim Doucet,” he says, then looks past her, right at me. “I’m here about a rehab owl.” His head nods in my direction.
At Rufus.
“I don’t have you registered to fly anything but that hawk,” he says, examining a notepad in his hand. “And have you signed on for an apprentice this season that I don’t know about?”
The laws we’ve broken flash before my eyes. I can pick out each one from Jaxon’s manual. Unlicensed falconer: me. Unauthorized bird: the owl on my fist. The punishments for each: loss of falconry permit. Meaning the loss of the privilege of keeping a raptor.
Of keeping Red.
Aunt Bea seems to shrink as she approaches him. “Well, Warden, there’s a bit of a story here.”
Bit of a story? No story, just me. Me and my need to train Rufus. And then the name registers: Doucet. I look back at the truck. Jaxon sits in the passenger seat.
He told his dad about Rufus.
A black hole opens in my gut and my insides shrivel down into it. I did this. Me. How could I have been so stupid? I knew friends were dangerous. I let myself go for one second, let two people in, and now it’s happening all over again—just like with that stupid birthday party I begged my mother to host . . .
The warden holds up a hand to stop Aunt Bea midsentence.
I have to fix this.
“It’s my fault,” I say, walking straight over toward the warden. “I made—”
“Maureen,” Aunt Bea snaps, slicing a hand back at me.
The warden’s eyebrows narrow. The notepad in his hand is not a regular notepad. It’s a bound stack of citation forms. Citations. For violations of the rules. He’s already decided.
I step back.
Aunt Bea will lose everything she loves. Because of me.
I had thought the worst thing that could happen was me being taken away from here, but no—the worst thing is me destroying everything here that I love.
I can’t let this happen.
I run headlong into the trees, fist clenched on Rufus’s jesses. He’s screeching, flapping to stay upright as I barrel through the underbrush. If we’re not there, the game warden can’t give Aunt Bea a citation. He can’t take her license. He can’t ruin her life. Not because of me.
My toe hooks on a root and I tumble down. My hands instinctively jerk forward to cushion my fall. Rufus flies off my fist, screeching as he lifts into the net of branches.
“Rufus!” I scream.
I roll over, search the air, but it’s just branches and leaves and shadow. “Rufus!”
A twig snaps, a chickadee cries out. I scramble to my feet, rush through the bramble to a clearing.
“Rufus!”
Owls are invisible, designed to blend in with the forest, and silent, with feathers fringed in fluff to keep even the air molecules from giving them away. My eyes scan the tree branches—could that be him? What about that lump in the thicket?
My heart pounds. He’s not ready. He hasn’t flown alone in the forest for weeks. I’m ruining everything—Aunt Bea’s life, Rufus’s life, my own life.
Please, no.
“Rufus!”
I run to the next clearing, then to the next, searching the shadows. Branches tug at my pants, my fleece, the vest; I’m streaked with scratches and prickled with burs. I can barely see—thick tears cloud my eyes. I keep going, push farther into the brush. Mud sucks at my boots, splatters my jeans. My gauntlet gets snagged on a pricker vine. I stop to untangle it.
Wings flash.
Could it be? Forget the glove—I wrench my hand free of it and dive through ferns, over fallen logs, my face whipped by switches of yellow leaves. Hidden creatures skitter away from me in a rustle of leaf litter. Good—stay away from me. I’m a hurricane of bad. I destroy every good thing I touch.
A wide stream cuts through the woods, leaving a space in the canopy of leaves. The sky is the deepening blue of evening. The shadows all around me have lengthened into broad strips of black. I’m in a hollow—a dip in the earth, meaning I can only barely guess at what direction I’m facing. And I have no idea where Aunt Bea’s house is, even if I could figure out which way is west. A chill creeps over me.
I’m lost.
I fall to my knees.
Rufus is lost.
I slump down farther.
I hear a screech—his screech?—and it echoes from everywhere.
He’s really gone.
I sink into the mud at the stream’s edge, then lie back in the leaves. I failed my owl. I failed my aunt. It’s my fault she did any of this.
It’s Jaxon’s fault, my anger says.
But I can’t even hold on to that anger. I knew the rules. I just didn’t like them. I knew what was best for Rufus—it just wasn’t what was best for me. This is all on me. It’s like I was handed this glass bowl full of everything I ever wanted and I bungled it, let it shatter to pieces. No—it’s more that this perfect place was foolish enough to let me into it. I alone am enough to ruin anything.
It’s fully dark now. The cold mud along the stream’s bank chills the whole of me. Shivers begin shattering my body. I’m so useless, I have no idea how to even start a fire without a match. So much for the My Side of the Mountain fantasy. I feel my way away from the water to a tree and hunch my back against it. It’s not until I hear sniffing that I remember I’m wearing a vest full of meat. I take the knife from its pocket and then hurl the vest as far from me as I can. I slide my back up the bark to stand against the tree and hit a branch. I should climb onto it. I fold the knife, store it in the pocket of my fleece, and hook my arms around the branch. Years of playground climbing have prepared me at least for this.
I settle on the branch; it’s not too far up the tree—if I fall, I’m hoping for a sprained ankle, not a broken neck. Whatever I’d thought was sniffing is either silent as a ghost or gone. I’m not climbing down to find out which.
Who cooks for you? Who cooks the food? a strange owl cries. It’s a barred owl’s call. Not Rufus. I hold still, listen to hear it again. Barred owls have attacked people who’ve come too close to their nests. And I know what talons are capable of. As my ears strain to hear the angry owl’s approach, the night fills with other noises. A breeze sends the branches clacking, the leaves rustling. A twig snaps somewhere—animals moving. Toads croak in the stream below me. Tree frogs chirp. Grasshoppers buzz. A growl. A snort.
This is the world that injured Rufus. The world we saved him from. A world I’ve thrown him back into.
If one of us has to be attacked, let it be me. Please, let it be me.
“Reenie!”
It’s Aunt Bea’s voice.
“I’m here!” I cry, and nearly fall out of my tree leaning toward her voice.
“Reenie!”
A flashlight’s beam slices the black. Lands on my vest, which lies across some scrubby plants by the stream. Something’s ripped a pocket.
“Oh god—Reenie!” Aunt Bea comes careening down the slope.
“I’m here!” I shout again, and drop down out of my tree—the flashlight’s glow shows I was barely four feet up.
Aunt Bea whips the light, catching me in its beam.
The survival terror subsides and is replaced in an instant with horror at what I’ve done. Tears spring out. “I’m so sorry.” A sob bursts from my throat.
Aunt Bea rushes to me, wraps her arms around me. That only makes me feel worse.
“I did this,” I wail into her arms. “I’m bad luck.”
Aunt Bea strokes my hair. “What are you going on about?” She pushes me off her chest, smoothes a lock of hair from my face.
“The warden,” I manage between hiccups of tears. “It’s my fault. I’m so sorry.” I drop onto my knees.
“Reenie,” Aunt Bea says, kneeling beside me. “It was my choice to let you train that owl. My choice to help you.”
“But that’s not true,” I say. “I made you train him. If I hadn’t been so stubborn, if I had listened to you, if I had followed the rules—I even know the rules!” I’m screaming now, hitting the dirt with my fist. “That was Jaxon’s dad. I brought him here!”
“Maureen,” she says. “Any trouble I’m in is my own. You aren’t to blame for anything.”
“I know it’s there in the back of your brain. So just say it! At least you could tell me the truth!”
Aunt Bea gives me a hard look, the look she’d give another grownup. “I’ll give you the truth, Maureen. The truth is, none of what you just said is true.” She stands up, holds out a hand, and pulls me up from the leaves. “The truth is, none of what that warden said to me is on you. It’s my license on the line. My choices. Any trouble I’m in is mine.
“The good news is, he’s not giving me a formal citation. Just an informal probation. I have to fill out some paperwork. Everything’s going to be all right.”
Her words worm into me, cutting through the walls I’ve built around my heart. “But I made you,” I whisper.
Aunt Bea snorts and wipes her face, and I realize she’s crying too. “Girl, you couldn’t make me do anything.” She smiles. “If we aren’t both the stubbornest moose in the forest.” She hugs me to her, tight.
We walk back up the hill Aunt Bea came down, and she grabs my vest as we pass it. “Barely torn,” she says. “Probably a fisher cat, maybe a skunk. I must have scared it off.”
Fisher cats are overgrown ferrets. Skunks are only feared for their stink. Here, I’d imagined bears and catamounts, but the scariest thing that attacked me in this forest came from inside. My own fear was the most dangerous thing hunting me. And it’s always on the prowl.
“Your friend was worried when he saw you run off,” Aunt Bea says. “I think his dad changed his mind about giving me a citation when he saw how upset his son was.”
“Jaxon?”
“I hope you don’t blame him. I don’t. He was worried about Rufus.”
“I should have thought more about Rufus.”
“No, I should have helped you understand the rules better, kept both of us from having fun we shouldn’t have had.” She takes my hand. “But I’d wager, what we did—I think you saved that owl’s life.”
I pick a bur from my vest. “Not tonight. Tonight, I lost him.”
“No,” she says, holding a dead branch out of the way for me. “He went home. It’s where he belongs.” She puts her arm around my shoulders as we step over a log.
“I tripped and he was thrown off my arm,” I say. “He must think I threw him away.”
“He’s a bird, Reenie,” she says. “He thinks you sent him flying. He’s probably out hunting mice and stretching his wings.”
“What about the jesses?” I ask. “He’ll get them tangled on a branch and die because of me.”
“I cut all my jesses so they break if they get tangled in branches.”
“He’ll be lonely,” I say. “And cold.”
“He’s a great horned owl,” she says. “They live alone unless they’re raising a family, and he has a coat of downy feathers to keep him warm.”
“He wasn’t ready.” I wasn’t ready, is what I mean.
She squeezes my hand. “He was.” Her eyes hold mine as if to stress how okay he is.
We crunch through the last of the deep leaf pile as we near the house. “You helped that owl more than he’ll ever know,” Aunt Bea says. “He’ll probably live through the winter because of you.”
I let the words in, lay them like stones, start to build the foundation of trusting this idea: that Rufus was ready, that I did something right.
“Yeah,” I say. I step through the last bush and into the yard. “I just wish I’d gotten a chance to say goodbye.”
Aunt Bea stops dead, points toward the mews. “I think you’ll get your chance.”
I follow her finger and there, perched on the roof of his house, is my Rufus.
Joy explodes through me and every nerve is on fire. A smile erupts—so big it nearly breaks my face—and I can barely get a whistle out to call him to me, but I do. And he soars down through the night, too fast for me to realize I have no glove on, so he hits my arm like a two-ton truck and clenches with his vicelike talons. I grit my teeth, control myself to keep from screaming. At least I’m wearing a thick fleece. Otherwise, I’d have serious holes in my skin.
Rufus is all atwitter. He nibbles my hair and screeches for food. I dig into what remains of a vest pocket and find a tidbit. He gobbles it down.
“My good boy,” I whisper to him, tears streaming down my face. “You came home, my dear boy.”
We settle Rufus back in his aviary and Aunt Bea tosses in a live mouse, which Rufus hunts like a pro.
“Good night, good buddy,” I whisper through the bars, and then I hoot our special hoot, and he hoots back to me, and I know he’s as happy to see me as I am to see him.
Inside, Aunt Bea pulls out bread, butter, and cheese, and we start making food.
“He came back,” I say as I fry the grilled cheese sandwiches for us.
“That’s not a good thing,” she says, pouring some milk.
“Of course it’s a good thing!” I say, slapping the gooey sandwiches onto plates. “He isn’t ready yet. He still needs me.”
Aunt Bea takes her plate and begins to eat standing up. “He can hunt,” she says. “He can fly, meaning his wing’s healed. There’s no reason he couldn’t have been released today. And he was released. But he came back here instead of flying free.”
I take my sandwich to the table and sit pertly in my chair. “Which means he isn’t ready yet.”
Aunt Bea sits next to me. “Which means he’s getting too comfortable. Remember the goal here, Reenie. We want him to go away and never come back. He deserves to live a wild owl’s natural life.”
I stuff a huge bite into my mouth and take my time chewing. What’s so good about a wild owl’s natural life? The question answers itself: it’s the life he’s meant to lead. She’s right. I know she’s right.
“We need to start separating from him,” Aunt Bea says, finishing her sandwich and standing to put her plate in the sink. “We need to get him thinking about living on his own.”
I take a long sip of my milk. “So, what—I shouldn’t go out and talk to him?”
Aunt Bea must hear the abject misery in my voice, because she smiles and says, “How about one more visit? We’ll start tomorrow on moving him to more private quarters.”
Warmth blooms and fills me, toes to frizz. “One more visit.” I gulp down my sandwich and head to the sink to start on dishes.
Aunt Bea shoos me away. “Well, get busy,” she says. “I can take on dishes tonight. Feed Red while you’re at it.”