CHAPTER 14

One More Question

IN SOME OF HER STORIES, Great-grandmother told that long ago there was not as much distance between the various beings in creation. Back then, things were not as set in their ways as they are now. Nowadays, it seems, if you are a fox, for example, that is what you will always be. But back then you could sometimes become something else. That fox might be able to turn into some other creature.

The thought of one creature turning into another made sense to me. After all, I saw it happen every day, firsthand. There’s a nice fat mouse scampering about in the grass. Swoop, grab, gulp. And now that mouse is a mouse no longer, but part of an owl.

But that old way of one thing becoming another did not involve either dying or digestion. It was just plain and simple shape-shifting. In certain of the stories Great-grandmother told me, it happened because some being made a foolish wish. Like the owl who wished it would never grow old and die. The Great Darkness gave that owl its wish, but not as it expected. It was turned into an owl-shaped stone that would never grow old and die. Great-grandmother had pointed that very stone out to me, where it stood at the edge of the chestnut forest.

In other stories, though, the being that changed shapes did so because it had fallen in love with some creature that was of a different kind. Like an owl falling in love with a human.

It took me some looking about, but I finally found my great-grandmother. Instead of her usual perch, she was in a big oak tree near the spot where I had been a nestling.

As soon as I landed silently by her side, she turned her head to look at me.

“Wabi,” she said, “you have a question for me.”

Not just any question, I thought. This one had been spinning about in my head like a whirlpool. It was the most important question I had ever thought to ask.

“Great-grandmother, was my father a human being who turned into an owl?” I had thought she might hesitate, but to my distress, she did not. Her answer was as quick and simple as it was disappointing.

“Nooooo,” she hooted, “he was never anything but an owl.”

“Ohhh,” I said, lowering my head in dejection.

My thought had been that if my father had turned himself into an owl, perhaps the ability to turn into a human being would be in me.

“Listen to me, Wabi,” Great-grandmother hootuled. “Your father was very brave. I never told you, but he gave his life to save me before you were hatched. One night, after I had been hunting very late, I did not choose a good place to hide for the day. A mob of giant crows found me. They would have killed me had not your father flown in and attacked them. He led them away and was never seen again.”

I lifted my head up. The story of my father’s sacrifice made me feel both proud and sad.

“Why did you wait so long to tell me?” I asked.

Great-grandmother dipped her head. “Because of me, you never knew your father,” she said. “I did not want you to hate me.”

I rubbed my head against my great-grandmother’s shoulder. “I could never hate you,” I said in a soft voice. Then I sighed. “I just thought that if my father had been a human, that might explain why I have always been so attracted to them.”

“Nooo,” Great-grandmother said. “My brave grandson was always an owl. It was your mother who was once a human.”

I almost fell off the branch. My beak gaped wide in amazement.

Great-grandmother nodded at me. “It is not a long story, Wabi. Your mother did not like being a human. She did not like all the things she had to do, such things as cooking and skinning deer and making clothes. She wanted to be an owl so that she would never have to do those things again. Long ago, someone else in her family had made such a change, so it was in her to do this. So she went to the place in the forest where the old stories said such things could happen. It was the place where seven stones made a great circle near the foot of a giant oak tree. And she became an owl, leaving behind all that was human.”

Great-grandmother chuckled. “Your mother is a beautiful owl, but she has never been very good at being an owl. If your father had not taken pity on her, she would have starved. And after he was gone, when she had you little ones to care for, I stayed close by. Most of the mice she fed you were ones that I caught for her.”

My head was truly spinning now. I finally understood why my lazy mother had done such an awful job of caring for me when I was young, why she had not even tried to find me after I fell from our nest. Perhaps it even explained why, after my brother and sister had also left the nest, our mother just disappeared. Being an owl had turned out to be harder than she had expected. Had my mother found some way of going back to being a human again? But that was not what I needed to ask now.

“Great-grandmother,” I said. “I have one more question.”

My great-grandmother looked off into the forest before she turned her head back to me.

“I am sure that you dooo,” she said.