Michael lay on his back looking at the full round moon through his window. It was three in the morning, the same hour of his awakening for over a month. Something was coming for him and he knew it.
Michael lay quiet as a stone. Just as he had every morning for the past several weeks. Cold beads of sweat trickled down his forehead. He breathed slowly, deliberately. He sensed the presence of everything that passed near or through his window - the charred aroma of the evenings cooking fire, the squall of a panther, the beating of wings, even the odor of water moccasin sliding through the mud at the yards edge.
Something was coming, something he must hunt or kill or face.
In a flash of certainty, he knew what it was. He wondered how he could have gone a month without knowing.
"The beating of wings," he said aloud. "It will come with the beating of wings."
Michael took one long deep breath and on the soft purr of his exhale, it came. When he heard it land on his windowsill, he had to force himself to look.
It was a snow owl. As Michael watched, the owl gripped the windowsill with his claws and slowly opened his cotton-white wings. His wingspan was wider than Michael was tall, and he wanted the boy to know it. Relaxing his wings, the bird lifted a leg and dug his claw deep into the side of the window frame.
As Michael watched, the owl scraped a long scar into the wood.
Marking it. Then he turned, cast a powerful scream into the night and flew away. Michael's heart pounded like a wounded rabbit's.
his breath came in hard short gasps. He leaped out the window and followed the owl through the pine woods. The owl flew from one low limb to the next, then lifted high over the treetops before setting in a clearing.
Michael was close behind, stepping over fallen logs and brushing low-hanging moss aside with his arms, moving as quickly as he dared in the darkness.
When he arrived at the clearing, he crouched down, hiding in a clump of honeysuckle vines.
The owl was sitting on a stump, gently lifting and lowering his wings. As Michael watched with eyes as big as the moon, the owl flapped his wings and hovered three feet above the stump.
He seemed to float there for several minutes, then he stepped on the stump with the legs of a man. Michael froze, too scared to breath. The owl gazed slowly around the clearing, peering deep in the woods with his night-seeing eyes. Then he began to flap his wings again. Michael knew he wasn't going anywhere, not with the weight of a mans legs to carry. The owl flapped his wings faster and faster till the feathers started flying. He beat the air with his wings like he was striking out at somebody.
Over and over he whipped his wings till all his feathers were floating in the air or lying on the ground. Michael saw white skin stretched across the wing bones of the owl. From under the skin, tiny fingers pushed and poked, then they popped right through. Human arms stretched out, cracking and breaking the bones of the owl.
It was the body of a man and the head of an owl.
Michael wanted to run, but knew he would be killed if he did. He watched as the owl-man covered his head with his arms, then lifted his face. It was the face of a man with the eyes of an owl.
Michael knew this man.
