tecolotl

When I was a child, Tía would call me her little ángel. I would rest my head against her shoulder and hook my chin on the arm embracing me. Mornings, she always smelled of gardenias, but at night, tucking me into bed, she smelled of cinnamon and chocolate. Even in my first memories, her rounded arms were my refuge. When she would release me, I’d feel like a little bird in the first instants of flying, tumbling and gasping. Her worn hands would trace faint lines down both sides of my back, showing me where my wings had once been. She’ d tell me that I could fly, if only I’d remember how.

I would climb up trees and roofs, anything that brought me closer to the sky. I’d imagine myself with wings, imagine myself lighter than air, but my body always resisted. It always fell back to the ground, clinging to the earth. Tía would run to pick me up after I had fallen. She’ d kiss my bruises and cuddle me in her arms. Tell me that I’d almost flown, almost remembered. That she’ d seen my body hover for an instant before falling. We’ d look up at the sky while she spun me around, singing in her quavering voice. “Next time you’ll fly. Next time.” Then she would take my little hand and hold it up to the sky against hers. “You need to remember how to fly so that you can find your way pa’l cielo and make a little house for us, just you and me.”

And I would nod and hold her hand and promise that one day I would fly and take her with me.

She told me not to make promises I couldn’t keep. Told me there was a burning place for liars who forgot their promises. I promised her I’d always love her best, always want to take her with me, always keep my promise.

I wanted wings more than I wanted toys, more than I wanted friends. Wind excited me. I’d walk on tiptoes, waiting for wings to unfold from my back and for the wind to carry me away. I’d leave buttons loose and let coats and scarves float up around me, my long hair urging flight. At night, when the wind made sounds against the walls, I’d leave the house and climb trees, feeling the dip and sway of their branches. The leaves would make whispering noises against each other, twigs and seeds throwing themselves into the wind. The night sky and the long rush of clouds wrapping themselves around a dim moon.

Tía would run out in the dark to collect whatever laundry was still on the clothesline, loudly exclaiming,“Niña,’bajate de a’i! The lechusas are going to steal you along with the clothes! Inside! Hurry, hurry!”

We’ d go inside, but I’d sleep with my forehead pressed against the window, the wind’s hum on my brow.

My favorite game was playing tecolotl with my Tía. She told me to be my wings, as if they were body and not limb, as if my heart rested in the wings I couldn’t see, as if my blood ran through the latticework of tracing lines on my feathers. She’ d lift me up into trees and I’d perch there, learning how to remain motionless and balanced for hours at a time, how to turn my head slowly and take in everything around me. Sometimes I’d stand at the base of the tree, waiting for bob-white quails, squirrels, mice, grasshoppers to pass by. I’d pounce on them as silently as I could. I played at being a creature of the wilderness, believed I was one. Until the day my mother caught me perching at the edge of the roof wearing bedraggled paper feathers, releasing the mouse I’d caught with my bare hands.

My mother dragged me inside, “When is this going to stop? Look at her—go run her a bath! She’s a mess!”

My mother and Tía fought all the time, but my Tía was everything to me. Family and playmate, teacher and nurse. She was my mother’s dark-skinned half-sister, never married, without children, poor and illiterate. She cooked and cleaned for my parents, working for her room and board. When I was born, her hands were the first to reach for me. When I cried at night, she was the one who cradled me, the one who sang to me. When I went to school, she was the one who walked me to the school bus, the one who waited for my return, the one who fussed over my childish drawings.

One night, I woke up afraid. It was still dark. I called out for Tía, but she never answered. I ran through the house, but it was empty. I ran outside. No one.

I started walking down the dirt road we lived on. The few neighboring houses were dark and quiet. Mesquite trees on both sides of the street. Overgrown weeds everywhere. The road was strangely pale in the almost morning darkness. I heard a solitary dog barking. Flickering shadows ahead. An odd light in the tangle of mesquite and nopal and brush on the other side of a barbed wire fence. I stepped on the bottom line, pulled the other two lines around me as I slipped through. I hissed with pain as a barb slashed my arm. I stepped carefully, trying to avoid the thorned weeds.

I heard Tía’s voice, speaking in a guttural tongue. I came closer to the flickering light.

I could see everything.

I saw her standing next to the fire. Her hair wild, her eyes wild, her rough hands bloody and blood running down her arms. She was chanting as she stepped into the fire.

But she didn’t burn.

I turned and fled. I flung myself into my bed, pulled the covers over my head, and made myself forget what I’d seen.

Tía left soon after. One morning, she was just gone. Within months, my parents separated. They both found someone else, and I didn’t belong in either of their new lives. I went to live with my grandmother. She died a few weeks after my eighteenth birthday. After that, I was alone.

Tía left when I was ten. I grew up and forgot my promise, forgot to love her best.

I never told you. When I met you, what I loved first were your solemn black eyes. So much light. So much darkness. As if you were moments away from weeping. As if you’ d wept for so long the tears had left their shadows on you. Bottomless eyes. Black waters. The first time you looked at me, I staggered as if I’d been struck a physical blow. I recognized you. You belonged to me. Everything in me wanted to devour you, wanted to be devoured by you. I loved your sad eyes and your furrowed brow. Your black hair. Your tender lower lip.

I loved you for years before you noticed me. Both of us far from home, far from the border towns that had molded us. Both of us from families that had wandered the Southwest, migrating to harvest crops of all kinds. For me, I’d heard of it in stories. But you had worked the fields until the week before you came to this university in this tiny northeastern town where we were both students. In the years I knew you, there were always women waiting for your gaze to fall on them. I refused to stand in line, and I refused to beg. I was never going to tell you how I felt, because I refused to be one of many.

But then you were there, kissing the palms of my hands. And you would not leave my side, and you looked at me as if only I existed in your world. I was your palomita de canela, you said. You marveled at finding a woman with such dark skin, the same brown as yours, so far north. Was I lost? Had I wandered off the path of our seasonal migrations? You decided it was a miracle to find me in the midst of so much snow. You said that finally you had seen me. That was when I let you hold me.

Falling into your arms, I remembered faded dreams of wings and flight. You held me close, like a tree sheltering the spirits of tiny birds. You held me loosely, as if you knew I’d never willingly fly away. You held me, singing Ramón Ayala’s songs against my ear, your breath on my neck. And we danced.

At night, I traced the hard angles and planes of your face with my fingers and hands. Tasted the long river of your throat. Your skin smelled like sunlight, wavered like the hazy heat above summer roads and August cornfields. Your mouth tasted like salt, like the ocean. And sweet, like rich earth in my mouth. I bit your hands and tasted every fruit, every vegetable they’d ever held—onions, corn, strawberries, earth and more earth. You twined me about you. Vines burst from you, their green leaves flushing against my skin.

Your calloused hands ran over my body, and brown-speckled down burst from my throat, cinnamon colored across my belly. My heart thudded faster under the breast in your hand. You bit my shoulder, and I felt unknown bones shift under your mouth. Your hands skimmed my back, my hips and feathers fluttered under your touch. My face flared, suddenly heart-shaped against your neck as my eyes darkened, my beak pushing into the seed-filled silt of your hair.

You lifted me above you. And as I rocked against you, I stretched my arms, stretched my spine. Something uncoiled inside me. Wings unfurled from my shoulders, feathers flowing out. They began to beat, kept beating, spreading across the room, tips almost touching both walls. I rocked against you, my heart hammering. When my back arched, I saw the sky, felt gravity lose its hold. You crumpled into clods of earth between my feathered legs, and my face dove into the space between your neck and shoulder.

We rested, covered in feathers, in a bed of black earth.

That first morning, I thought it had been only a dream. There was no trace of wings, feathers, down. No trace of earth, seeds, rain. But the next night, and many others, sometimes gently, sometimes violently, I felt the wings unfurl. Always, there was the harvest-taste of your skin. Always, the air around you seemed to glimmer. Time passed. We dreamed beautiful dreams. Not only our life together, but what we would become, the art we would make, the communities we would build. For what I was in your eyes, I poured all of myself into our life, our future.

I was happy in your embrace, never wanted release. Palomita, palomita. Your squared hands followed the lines of my back. I pressed closer to you, wanting to merge my skin with yours. I imagined myself made of light, sinking into you. Imagined featherweight and rockweight. Imagined spinning and melting, darkness and light. You’d hold me close, and we’ d look up at the sky while you spun me around, singing in your gravelly voice. Voy a buscar un rinconcito en el cielo. I felt luminescent. Para llevar a mi amor. I twined myself about you. Voy a buscar un rinconito en el cielo. And I strained to see how close to inside your skin I could breathe. Para enscondernos tú y yo. And decided breathing was not all that important. Un rinconcito en el cielo. And held your heartbeat in my hand.

I’d never known happiness the way I knew it with you. We were hardly ever parted. You walked me to class whenever you could. We ate together. We slept wrapped in each other’s arms. We went to parties, your eyes always on me.

I caught my best friend Iliana looking at us wistfully sometimes. I’d raise one eyebrow at her. But then she’ d laugh and tease us for being attached at the hip. And when we were alone, I’d confess I’d never felt the way I did with you, that I’d never thought I would find what I found with you.

The days grew colder, passed in a blur of you and classes and dreams of wings. There were times when I couldn’t explain what I was doing. I’d find myself standing completely still in the shadows of trees, watching a squirrel as if I longed to swoop down and grasp it in my talons. Sometimes I couldn’t resist climbing a tree or seeking out a perch in the shadows. Walking in the sunshine, I’d catch a glimpse of my shadow and see wings where there were none.

I confided in Iliana. She laughed at me and said that finally falling in love was making me lose my sanity. I wanted to tell you, ask you what you saw in my shadow, but always something held me back.

My dreams became more and more real. I’d wake up shuddering, not knowing if my body was completely solid. It became harder and harder to sleep through the night. One morning I woke and found feathers in my bed. I started slipping from your arms and walking in the darkness, fascinated by how clearly I could see everything around me.

Feathers began unfurling inside my womb. The wings nested deep inside me fluttered, laughing and playing with the little beating thing suddenly thundering inside me. It was golden, tumbling and tumbling, mistaking me for the whole world. It set off a lyrical humming that pushed the scent of sunlight and fruit and rain-filled wind out of my skin, light falling out of my eyes.

I wanted to share it with you. I wanted to press your dark hands against the soft curve it was creating. I wanted you to hear its music, feel its warmth.

But even as I was discovering its presence, you were disappearing. The curve of your sheltering arms straightened away from me. The air dimmed around you. At night, we were only bodies. I clung to you but woke further from you every time. Your skin lost its harvest-taste. No seeds tumbled from your hair. I didn’t know what had changed. It happened so slowly I didn’t feel it happening. It happened so quickly that from one day to the next, I looked at you and could hardly recognize you. Wherever your hands touched me, numbness spread. When you turned away from me, I grew silent and still.

I searched for you everywhere. Staggering, holding my hands to my belly, I screamed your name. All I wanted was to look into your eyes. I’d curl up on the floor, clenching my fists, wishing for you. The pain had come suddenly, a clawed hand tearing at my insides. The little heartbeat fluttering inside me fell in a wash of blood, pouring out of me in bloody seizing cramps. Everything warm and golden in me went quiet and dark.

The world was brown snow and grey trees and icy rivers. No one knew or would say where you were. I couldn’t stop shivering. I was hollow and empty, bones brittle, skin translucent. Once, the scent of orange blossoms and earth had led me to you—now everything was ashes and dried leaves and the frozen remains of furred animals.

I tried to remember the taste of your mouth. The taste of your skin. The feel of your back, your shoulders, your hands, your hips, your thighs. The sound of your steps. But all I could remember was the fluttering inside me. All I could hear were the echoes of its thunderous rushing. I was filled with the resounding silence of all my hours alone.

I found you, finally. Standing on the bridge, waterfall and icicles all around the two of you. Long moments passed as I realized why you’ d become more distant. Realized that you were never going to come searching for me. I felt my eyes shift, and as far as I was, I could see the dark of your hands embracing the pale of her flesh. I could see your hands in her hair. I could see how she tilted her head to the left, the tiny blue earrings she wore. I could see you so clearly, I should have been able to reach out and touch you both.

You murmured something to Iliana in Spanish and she laughed throatily against your neck. You wrapped both arms around her. Kissed her. Your eyes passed over me. You didn’t see me. You didn’t hear my soundless cry.

I spent my days asleep in a darkened room. I slept as if I was drugged. Light made me shudder with pain. In that silence, the whole world wobbled every time my heart beat. In that darkness, pain flayed my skin from the flesh. Memory flayed my flesh from the bone. I spent the nights sitting by an open window, watching the shivering trees. I leaned against the window screen and dared it to let me fall through. I pressed my hands against it, daring the thin lines of metal to cut me, to make me bleed, to wake me.

You never came to find me. See me. Speak to me. Touch me. You never let me tell you about the fluttering. Or that I’d lost it. Or that I had seen you with her.

Night came again, and suddenly it was unbearable to remain inside. I pushed at the screen and climbed out of the window, without shoes, without a coat. The ground was cold, frozen wet. Shards of ice burned against my bare feet. The sky was a purpled orange. Only clouds, no stars. Dark shadows of trees everywhere. I climbed the hill, my feet sliding on the ground still muddy with melted snow. I passed buildings deserted and dark at this hour of the night. There was a tree I wanted. An ancient weeping willow that stood apart from everything else. Huge and solid, its snow-lined, leafless branches trailed to the ground. No seeds, no leaves, only twigs. The tree’s bark was rough and cold against my bare skin. It was more difficult than I remembered—wrapping my limbs around it and pulling my weight upwards. The wind tore at my thin shirt and my hair, stung my eyes. Standing on the widest branch, I pulled myself to my feet and looked up at the moon barely revealed through the clouds.

I listened to the wind as it grew in intensity. Heard rushing sounds. A faraway voice slowly growing in volume. I should be afraid, I thought.

The wind changed direction suddenly, blinding me with my own hair, a sudden chill cutting through me.

Then I heard her voice again:

“Ángel—”

“Tía!”

“Mi ángel, mi niña!”

“Where are you, Tía!”

“Aquí, mi ángel—”

“I can’t see you, touch my hands, Tía!”

“Here I am—”

“I can feel your hands, but I can’t see you, Tía.”

“It doesn’t matter, mi ángel—”

“I’ve missed you so much, Tía!”

“I missed you, too, y tus alas?”

“My wings?”

“Tus alas, mi ángel, the wings you’ve always had.”

“Where, Tía?”

“Abrázame y te enseñare—”

“Tía, I want to leave all of this behind. I want to forget everything. Show me my wings, Tía, I need my wings.”

“Vas a volar, mi ángel, and I’ll fly with you.”

“Show me, Tía.”

“Aquí están—a volar!”

Her clawed hands reached around me and drew two quick lines from my shoulders to my knees. The shrieking burst out of me, along with the sudden ripping of skin and the copper scent of my own blood. My skin folded out of the way, and I seemed to fall out of myself. My wings unfolded. Her hands grabbed my shoulders and shook me, shaking something out of me, settling something inside of me. I felt the wet heaviness of light grey feathers extending from my shoulder blades. She muttered words I’d never heard in a language I could almost understand.

I felt it begin. My eyes rounding. My heart quickening. The pulsing of blood in my veins. My bones were so light I could hardly feel the branch beneath my feet. The fierce wind would have torn me from the branch if Tía’s hands hadn’t held me down. I wanted to fly. My body knew it could. My wings unfurled, tips alight. I tore myself from Tía’s grasp, and I was gone—in the air, hollow and hungry.

I’d found my wings.

I flew. Glided. Hurtled through the air like a crippled wolf would dream of running. I gloried in the stretch of my wings. My life faded. My pain faded. My tears vanished. Memory was a dangerous cliff. I flew over and around it, feeling death lying along the rock face. I remembered nothing willingly before the memory of my first flight and waking to wings. I knew no fear.

I lived like an animal, only impulse and need. My body never had to learn itself—a thought and I was flying, a thought and I was gliding, falling, climbing. Swooping hunger and empty stillness. My claws were an extension of my appetite. What I killed, I ate. With my new shape, its small roundness and its large stretch of wings, I explored the world with new eyes that ate all color and light. Silently. Gracefully. By night, even the trees in whose arms I rested could not see or hear me. Even the beating of my heart had become a whispering undercurrent to the sound of the wind through the trees.

I woke, my claws tied together and my wings extended to the point of pain. It was still night. I saw the fire flickering and shadows moving across the dark cavern walls. I couldn’t see Tía, but I heard her moving behind me.

I heard it slice through the air seconds before I felt it across my back. Stinging, burning pain. Red washed over my eyes. I don’t know how many times she struck me. It seemed like it went on for hours. I screamed my throat bloody and raw. When I was too weak to make sound, she freed me. I fell to the ground in a shivering, sobbing mass. My wings lay limp.

I was crawling towards the cave entrance when I felt her step on my wings. With brutal hands, she plucked out each of my feathers and roughed away all the down. I whimpered helplessly. She grasped each wing and folded them behind my back. With a grunt, she shoved them back into my body. And as she did, I felt my limbs extend, felt my hands and fingers forming. Unable to scream, I clawed at the ground, feeling my head and face and eyes change. Everything shifted inside me. My bones filled in, and gravity forced me to the ground.

She’ d forced me back into my human shape. I curled up on the ground, my bloody body flinching as memory returned. I shuddered like a broken thing. I wanted to weep but couldn’t remember how. Everything was gone. All I wanted was the sky. My wings. To forget and to be free.

Tía sat on the ground next to me, “It’s time to wake up, ángel.” She brushed my dark hair away from my face, waiting for my tongue to remember speech. I said nothing.

Her eyes were so black I could see the entire cave reflected in them. I didn’t know how to speak to her. She was still Tía. The same dark skin and rounded body. The same slashing eyebrows and high cheekbones. Almost all of her hair had gone grey. There were more lines, deep lines streaming from her eyes and hard lines bracketing her mouth.

Black shadows lived in her eyes. Black shadows swam around her. She made my skin crawl. I’d seen her like this only once before. I wanted to fling myself away from her touch. I wanted nothing to do with her.

She kept brushing my hair, “It was time, ángel. If I’d taken any more time to find you, I wouldn’t have been able to call you back.”

Silent, I watched her, dreading the feel of her fingers on my face. I wanted to rake her face with my lost claws.

“Listen to me. There wasn’t time to tell you anything before. You took flight so quickly, and it took me so long to find you.” Her voice was strangely tender, as if we weren’t in this cave, as if she hadn’t just beaten me, as if I were still a child.

“I had to do it. So you’d understand me, so that you could speak. It’s time now to tell you the truth.” I saw my blood on her hands. She spoke gently, but through the black shadows, all of her words gained a sibilant hiss, “This is what you have always been. The wings were always inside you. It was always in your blood, waiting for you.”

“What have you done to me, Tía, I was happy in the air—”

“You can go back whenever you want—you just needed my help to begin and then to return to your human body. Now you should be able to go back and forth by yourself.”

I was too spent to try changing my whole body. I raised one hand and stared at it, I watched as my fingers thickened and separated, my fingertips growing long and sharp. Human wrists flowing into an owl’s talons.

“Just like that, ángel. You see, I’m telling you the truth.”

I looked at my hands again. How was this possible? “Could my mother do this?”

“It’s in your mother’s blood too—but it was never strong enough to let her change. But you—it was always strong in you, even when you were a child.”

“But what about my baby, Tía?”

She turned her face away from me, “Do you remember your promise, ángel?”

“My baby, Tía, what happened to my baby—did I lose it because of this?” I asked, raising my taloned hand.

She turned back to me—her eyes blazing, “Do you remember your promise?”

I did remember my promise. That one day we would go away, find a little corner in the sky and live there together forever.

“It was a child’s promise, Tía—but yes, I remember—we were going to live in a little nest in the sky and take care of each other.”

“I loved you more than anything in the world. I could never have a child of my own. Why do you think I stayed in that house with you, even though your mother had me as her maid, even though she humiliated me every day I lived under that roof? I did it for you. And when she finally drove me away, you forgot all about me. I’ve died a little every day I’ve been apart from you. And then I find you and there you are, in love and with a baby and not one thought of me.”

“Tía, I never knew. They told me you left because you were tired of taking care of me. That you wanted a different life. I didn’t know. I would have run away with you if you’ d told me any of this.” I reached up to touch her grey hair, “So many years.”

Her face crumpled. She sobbed silently, “I’ve been alone all these years, ángel. Please forgive me—I was angry, and I took it.”

“What do you mean, Tía, what did you take?”

“I made you lose your baby. I watched you from the trees for weeks before the night of the willow tree. When I realized you were with child, I slipped into your bedroom and added a tincture into the glass of water you always kept by your bedside.”

I couldn’t breathe for a long moment after she told me—all I could see was the torrent of blood that had come from me when I had lost my child. I lunged at her, wanting to pluck out her eyes.

She barely moved. Her eyes were the black eyes of an owl, feathers flaring out all around them. I raised my taloned hand to claw at her face. She caught it effortlessly, held it with her own suddenly taloned hand, “Forgive me, ángel. Watching you, I felt my heart breaking.”

“Bring my baby back, Tía. I know you can bring my baby back.” I knew it with absolute certainty, feeling a small feverish joy flaring to life in my heart.

“If I do, will you stay with me? Will you love me the way you did before?” She released my hand.

“I never stopped loving you, Tía, but you have to bring my baby back or I won’t be able to stay with you. Every day I’ll see you and know you took it and I’ll try to kill you until I succeed. Or I’ll become an owl and stay that way until I forget I was ever human.”

She knelt at my feet, “I will do this, mi ángel. But there’s something you’re going to have to do first. It’s the only way I can bring the baby back.”

“Tell me, Tía, whatever it is, I’ll do it.”

I slept that night and the next day. You were in my thoughts, amor. I warmed myself with the memory of the last night you sang me to sleep. The last night you held me close. The last night your fingers traced patterns over my skin. A kiss ended each path, your hands flowing against me, pouring onto my skin all the colors and shades of your dreams. Your dark eyes with their crooked brows stared into mine. Your hands pressed the roundness of my belly as if you’d known it would soon begin to flutter. And again, I smelled the rich earth on your skin. Felt seeds drop from your black, black hair. Touched the vines that wove around me and bound my dark skin to yours. You sang that song, para escondernos tú y yo, and because I believed you that night, juntos unidos los dos, everything that followed, y cuando caiga la noche, left me bloody in a cave, promising my keeper the heart you gave me, te dare mi amor, and then took back, leaving me hollow.

I will take your heart back. I will take all of you back.

I spent the day flowing from one form to another. Woman to owl, owl to woman. Watching my wings extend and feather, fold and disappear. Tía came to me, speaking words and pouring smoke over me. I felt her fingers smooth a dark oil above my eyes and from my chin to my breast. She fastened a length of thin leather around my neck, leaving two tiny pouches heavy against my chest. “You have everything you need now, mi ángel, kill him, devour him—leave nothing behind—and it will be undone.”

I’ve found you again. Three days flight to the east. I knew you would take her to the water with you. The rocky shore you’ d promised so many times to share with me. We were both children of the Gulf, accustomed to wide beaches and palm trees, to wide horizons and warm water. But you’ d confessed you were entranced by the ocean’s coast, the centuries-old lighthouses, the inhospitable waves crashing against the rocks, the solitary wooden cabins warmed by fireplaces.

I watch you from the blue mountains and the snow-covered trees. I see you with the eyes of an owl, every faraway detail almost more immediate than I can bear. Your flesh and hers, always entwined. The two of you, looking out at the sunset, your arms wrapped around her from behind. The two of you inside the cabin in front of the fire. You bind yourselves with hands and embraces, lips and limbs. I watch as you hold her. Touch her. Kiss her. Pull her body against yours. You speak softly in her ear, your breath warming her cheek. You hold her hands, trace her fingers with yours. She laughs, leans against you, slides smoothly into the curve your body makes for her. She tilts her head to one side, inviting your eyes to slide down her neck. She holds her arm out so that you must wrap yourself around her, then angles her body so that your hand caressing hers brushes against the underside of her breast.

I remember the feel of your hands, the way I’d looked out from your eyes and you from mine, even when we didn’t touch. I remember your breath, warm and constant on my skin, when we were sleeping. I remember how you uttered my name before you kissed me the first time. Breathlessly. Reverently.

Amor, I don’t want to watch you from the darkness. I still my restless wings, perching outside the cabin with the bed where you rest in her arms. I’ve waited as long as I can. It’s late and the snow is suddenly falling harder. With each breath, I am remembering my ragged griefs and twisting them into rage, igniting them with desperation. I will have to hunger for it when I come for you. Run as far away as you can. Run where I’ll never follow you. Run, amor. Because before dawn, you will be dead. I will have swallowed you whole.

I saw you wake with a start at my long whistling sounds, old superstitions striking you, El indio muere cuando canta el tecolote. You both rose from the bed. She shook her head, put one hand on your arm. You shook her off, picked up the old rifle left ready by the door. I watched you reach for the doorknob.

I swooped down, silently, talons extended when she walked through the doorway behind you. Something made her turn around. She saw me and screamed your name. My talons ached for the sensation of digging into your flesh.

With one arm, you pushed her to the ground behind you. With the other, you swung the rifle up to your shoulder.

If the snow hadn’t blinded me, the bullet never would have pierced my side. The pain burned through me so fiercely I plummeted towards the ground, my wings retreating and my human shape emerging—but not entirely. My limbs unfolded, but I kept my talons and wings that were now too weak to lift me.

I crashed into Iliana as she tried to crawl towards the house. She screamed, her body struggling to free itself from under me, cringing away from the black talons that still clung to my human hands. I drew back far enough to push her away.

The rifle went off again. This time it hit closer to my heart. Blood gushed out of me. I fell to the side, away from Iliana, my hands cradling my wounds. I lay still, watching the redness pour from me.

Leaving me for dead, you pulled her up off the ground and carried her like a wooden mannequin into the house. I heard the rifle clatter against the wall as you dropped it, struggling to get her inside and away from me. I could hear her sobbing hysterically. Imagined her hands grabbing at your shirt. I imagined you whispering over her skin, your lips kissing her eyes.

I pulled one of the pouches from around my neck and placed it inside the second wound. My flesh absorbed it. I gasped for air, and though it took me some time, I turned over, got onto my knees, and crawled to the doorway. I was growing stronger with each movement. I swung the second pouch I carried around my neck behind me. I would leave nothing to chance.

It wasn’t what I’d imagined. You weren’t holding her in your arms. She was lying on the bed. You knelt beside her, your wide hands on her flat abdomen, as if caressing an unborn child.

I stood, limbs trembling. I kicked the rifle away from the door and out of the house. You moved to stand between me and the bed. You looked right at me. I waited for you to recognize me.

Nothing.

You looked at me as if I was a monster. You saw my black talons, my feathered arms, my rabid eyes. Nothing. You didn’t know me. You should have known me. I would have known you in any shape, any form, would have known you in this life or any other. Would have known you in another body, even after decades.

With one wing, I knocked you to the floor by the wall. I straddled your legs and raked my talons down your chest. For a moment, I was lost. Blind, deaf, mute. Lost in the feel of your body under mine. Your scent. I closed my eyes for a second and didn’t see your doubled fist. With the blow, my body arched back, but it wasn’t enough to dislodge me.

I opened my eyes. You were grimacing with pain. Your chest was bloody. Your eyes clouded with shock. I saw you wince when I tightened my knees around you. I leaned in closer. “Don’t move,” I hissed, my talons piercing the flesh under your ribs, one hand ripping into you. You flinched. Grunted. Our faces were only inches away.

“Why did you leave me?” My voice so guttural they were barely words.

I saw it in your eyes—the moment you recognized me. “Paloma,” you whispered, your hand reaching out to touch my face. I flinched. Your hand stopped where it was, so close I could feel the warmth of your palm.

“Why?”

You lost your breath with the pain,“Tecolotl, lechusa, bruja…one night…I saw you…like this.”

You had seen me. Had known me. But I was nothing you could explain wanting or loving. You would have reached out to me without knowing if you would touch bird or woman. And I would have sought out the fertile earth of your skin, harvested your strength, polished the light in your eyes. I would have dreamed over you, drawing out what was deep within you, the power of fertile earth, the brilliance of the sun. Instead, you had feared me.

The pouch inside my wound flared suddenly, hot and searing. I could feel it and all my spilt blood changing me. In your eyes, I saw my lips, once white, turn black and harden. My black eyes bloomed into the yellow of marigolds. Long tufts of feathers rose sharply from above my eyes, creating what looked like horns. My chest flared with feathers different from the ones I’d had before. These were darker, horizontally barred. Above, my neck was pure white. Even the surge of my wings breaking from my shoulder blades was different. They stretched black and grey and brown, stretched until they were barely contained by the cabin’s walls.

I leaned in close to you, so close I could have brushed my lips over you, “And what did you think you were? How do you think you were able to see me before I even knew what I was? I don’t know what you are, but you are not wholly human…”

“No—I’m just a man—this is all I want to be…” I slowly, tenderly pulled my talons all the way back into my fingertips. Withdrew my hands.

You grabbed my wrists as your body shuddered. “Please, paloma, let me live, for her and the child.”

“And me—and my child?” I hissed against your face. “While I bled and my child died, you left me alone.”

“Ay, paloma…I’m sorry…I’m sorry…please…”

Your eyes were as I remembered them, solemn and starred, endless black pools. I spoke your name. Your face changed, relaxed. You put your hand on my arm, said my name, “Remember…how much you loved…me. Remember…I used to sing to you…this song…voy a—”

Before you could draw another breath, I stood. You looked down at your wound, pressing on it to slow the bleeding. I pulled off the second and heavier pouch and swallowed it. I felt it burst inside me, and I became complete. Became fully formed. Became tecolotl. My mouth opened. My wings opened. No longer human.

You didn’t fight me. You closed your eyes, bowed your head, clenched your hands together as if in prayer.

I devoured you whole. You tasted like nothing I’d ever eaten. Earth. The nectar of withered flowers. Seeping, churning, twinkling inside me.

I heard Iliana screaming. She threw herself at me, “You killed him! You killed him!” Then she looked into my eyes, and I saw that she knew who I was. What I was. Shuddering, she fell to her knees. “No, no, please let me live! Forgive me, forgive me, I just wanted what you had—”

I peered deeply into her. She was not carrying his child. Tía had said, leave nothing of him behind. Then, I felt something else, a knowing slowly taking root in my mind. I stared into her and thought forget. Her eyes clouded over and she looked at me without recognition. She wandered out the door.

I turned and stared at the fireplace. The fire burst from the fireplace and lit up everything—the bed, the curtains, the couches, the extra firewood.

I ran out the door. To fly and carry the burden within me, I needed even larger wings, stronger wings. I flung myself towards the sky, and with each beat, my wings broadened. I left the cabin ablaze behind me. It burned fiercely, taking no note of the falling snow.

I do grieve for you. I remember you, the earth you carried inside, the harvests of your hands. Remember the song you sang me that first night. Oh, I know, amor mio—I know you sang it to her too. I know you sang it to all of them. But it is my song. Only mine now. I hear you singing it now. I have eaten the light in your eyes. Soon you will be skin, bone, hair only—but the best of you will live on in the child I carry.

The sky took me. I rose up against the moon’s coolness—gliding, soaring. There was a fluttering in my womb again. I could hear Tía calling my name. Here I am—I’m coming home, Tía.

I didn’t expect to falter. Didn’t expect the fever that hit me. The stabbing pains that pierced my head. I didn’t expect the exhaustion that made my eyes close against my will.

A sudden snow-laced gale of wind sent me rolling through the air, my wings unable to extend themselves fully again. I squinted against the whirling ice that crashed into me in successive waves. I pulled my wings one way and another, but I was lost in the storm. My body started to fall. I pulled in my wings and tucked in my head, falling and falling, waiting to fall into a calmer level of the winter storm. But it never came. My owl body started collapsing into my smaller human self—

Then an immense golden darkness descended on me. I saw glowing amber red eyes and then they disappeared. The snow ceased, the wind ceased. I heard Tía calling my name. With infinite tenderness, talons closed around my body, holding me securely. The darkness resolved itself into large wings, strong and sure in the winter storm. She tucked her legs in close to her body. I lay limply in her talons, covered in down, breathing deeply of the warmth emanating from her vast body. I cupped my hands over my womb, giving thanks. My family is with me.

I couldn’t see Tía’s black beak. It was impossibly far away. I closed my eyes and thought, this is what I will become—as time passes and my abilities grow—and we’ll all soar in the sky together and no one below will know—or believe—we exist.