In the Midnight Hour

A Rare Bird

Sarae walked along the endless row of soybeans, the bean plants brushing her knees as she followed the long furrow. At least the night was cool, and the moon, a mere sliver, had set at 10 p.m., so she could work by starlight.

The glittering stars in their constellations dusted the velvet-black night sky, and a cool breeze blew over the silent world, not even enough to rustle the soybean leaves. A heron croaked far away from the trees that lined the Missouri River, and cars quietly whooshed by on the interstate five miles off.

The world, so beautiful and so lonely.

She'd been walking for hours, and she was no closer to having found the trapped dead who had called her. Yet she didn't grudge the walk, for the night was so beautiful.

"Are you sensing anything?" she said quietly to her screech owl, who was fluttering here and there above the endless field of soybeans that must have been a solid half-mile wide.

"It's still fuzzy, but you're in the right area," Zoe sang in reply. The screech owl had a tiny voice, but hearing her speak made Sarae smile. It still kind of blew her away to be talking to an owl.

Usually the trapped dead who called to her were locals, and most of them had died in the last 50 years, though some called her from up to 200 years ago—pioneer families, Natives, fur trappers—who'd died in this part of northwest Missouri.

But this voice was especially faint—ancient—like a radio playing softly in the next room.

"Find me," he had whispered in her sleeping mind. She'd awakened with a gasp, and her owl's eyes had gone wide and black in astonishment.

She'd already walked part of the soybean field the previous night, looking for him. Now she was walking more of it. At least the rows were straight, so she knew she wasn't covering the same ground over and over.

Her owl, Zoe, was hunting for mice and snakes – precious few in this field drenched in insecticides and other chemicals.

"I wouldn't eat any of those," she told her.

"I'm not," said the little screech owl. "I'm just bored."

"You're telling me."

Just then, Sarae felt something.

"Zoe!" she called, halting among the soybeans.

She heard a trilly small whinny from a little distance away. That was Zoe, flying toward her in the moonlight, though Sarae couldn't see anything in the darkness and couldn't hear her soft-feathered wings.

But Sarae felt a little push of wind from her wings, a little burst of air as Zoe backwinged to land neatly on her shoulder. Sarae always had a little patch of tough leather sewed there to protect her shoulder from the owl's sharp, strong talons, but even now she felt the prickle of the claws that curved in from her landing.

The little owl turned her head, tufts up and alert. "Keep walking forward."

Sarae moved forward in the dark, soybean leaves brushing her at her knees. She felt, or sensed, a tiny wrinkle in the air before her.

Wow, she thought, reaching out her hand to delicately touch it. Usually the trapped dead were much, much easier to find. But this one ... she'd never sensed anything this old. White history here in northwest Missouri began only about 250 years ago. The whites had erased all other history, erased it again and again until nothing of it remained.

Her stomach dipped – excitement, fear. She crouched and began getting her items out of her backpack, laying them in the correct order on the ground for untrapping the dead. Zoe, balanced on her shoulder, overseeing the operation, her little beaked face looking from item to item in silent approval.