Wabi

DID MY GREAT-GRANDMOTHER MEAN FOR me to spend more time sitting in the cedars at the edge of Great Waterfall Village watching the human beings? Before, I had only gone once in a while to wonder at their curious ways. Now, though, hardly a night—or a day—went by without my spending time there, studying them closely.

I liked watching their little ones in particular. They spent so much of their time in play. We owls do a bit of playing—dropping things in flight and catching them, bouncing up and down on supple branches—but those human little ones were much more inventive. They played alone and with each other and with the four-legged ones that were always following them about.

They made their own little upside-down nests, copying the ones their elders wove from branches and grasses and big pieces of birch bark. They twisted and wrapped fibers to make strings and then took supple little tree branches to fashion bows and arrows like the elders used. They played a game where they shot at little hoops they rolled across the ground. It looked like fun to me. I enjoyed watching them play it.

So it went day after day as I kept on listening and learning about things that an owl would never use. Such things as clothing. I did pity them for having to wear clothing. The Great Darkness clearly loved owls much more than humans. We owls were given feathers to wear. Our feathers kept us warm in the coldest winds and cool during the times of heat. Humans had to put on leggings and breechclouts, shirts and robes and hats. They even had to cover their tender feet, which were not tough like an owl’s, with moccasins. Poor, pathetic things.

Of course, at first, I did not know what clothing was. So it was that, one day in early summer, I saw something that shocked me. I was perched near a place where the river flowed into a calm little pool. It was early morning. Along down the bank came one of those humans, a big male. That human walked right down to the water’s edge and then sat down and—wahh-ahhh!—pulled the skin right off his feet. I stared, certain that blood would start flowing. Instead, the human yanked what I thought was all of his skin off the top of his body. I almost fell out of my tree! The skins that this human had been wearing were not his own, but had been taken from other animals.

Now I could see the shape of that human’s body, the play of muscles under the real skin, which was smooth and brown. The man waded into the stream and began to wash.

He was not there long before another human came along, a small one whose clothing (I had now figured out that it was not her skin) was that of a little girl. She called softly to the first one standing knee-deep in the cool water. The man turned and showed his teeth at her.

But the little girl showed her teeth back at the man. She made friendly sounds as the man finished washing and then came to sit beside her. I listened closely.

“Big Brother Melikigo,” she said, throwing twigs at his head, “why are you so lazy? While you’ve been busy washing your hair, the other men have been cutting trees for the new wigwam.”

“Little Sister Dojihla,” the man said, “if you are so worried about building that wigwam, why aren’t you back there helping them?”

I had not been watching and listening for long before I heard something else. It was the sound of stealthy feet creeping through the brush at the edge of the riverbank, stalking up slowly in preparation for attack.

I turned my head to stare down into the brush. Some think that owls cannot see in the daylight, but that is not so. Our eyes are just so big that too much light is painful. I saw clearly what was getting closer and closer.

It was a gagwanisagwa. It was not the worst or the largest of the non-animal monsters that hunted humans, but it was bad enough. It was not much larger than a big human, but it made up for its size in its bloodthirstiness. Its body was long and snaky, its many teeth sharp. The legs of the gagwanisagwa are short, and it cannot run swiftly for great distances. But it can move very quickly close to its prey. In this case, it would be two foolish humans.

Great-grandmother had once seen a gagwanisagwa slip up on a small herd of elk in the night. Before she could make a warning sound, it was among them, slashing with its teeth. It killed every one of them, drank some of their blood, then left and did not return.

The gagwanisagwa is a coward. If the man had his bow and arrows with him and was alert, this creature would not dare to attack. But now, with no weapons at hand, those two humans were defenseless.

I flapped my wings and hooted loudly to get the attention of the two humans. They were too busy talking to hear me, but the gagwanisagwa did. The creature turned its black gleaming eyes toward me. It hissed softly and bared its teeth at me. It was not smiling.

“BOOO-LE-WAAA-TIOOOO,” I hooted at them. It was the first time I had tried speaking the words of the two-leggeds to anyone other than my great-grandmother. Surely they would understand.

I shook my head. Were all humans as stupid as him? How did they survive? How could an adult like Dojihla’s big brother behave as heedlessly as a helpless nestling?

The gagwanisagwa was still hidden, but it was now almost close enough to attack. I swooped down over the humans, who did not even look up, banked, and dove, claws held out, into the brush.

I had been aiming at its eyes, but the gagwanisagwa moved its head a little too quickly. All I came away with was the larger part of one of its ears in my right talon.

The gagwanisagwa snarled and struck at me, but I was out of its range with most of its other ear in my left talon and making my next circle to attack. This time I came in from behind, screamed, dove, and ripped a nice big patch of skin off its rump.

That sound made Dojihla look up again toward the riverbank, where there was now considerable thrashing in the brush as the creature tried in vain to escape me.

“Just trying to catch some little bunny,” Melikigo replied in a bored voice. “It does not concern us. Let us go back to the village now.”