The Secret Owls **part one** *** It would have embarrassed him to mention his own small sorrows to a Freed Man from a land with slavery, and so Ürsomir shrugged in answer to the question presented, and kicked at a pebble. It skittered through sun-warmed dust, and then vines and brambles at the side of the path. “A madman, by all accounts is freer than most,” he said. “This includes, I suppose, freedom from grief.” “So, you’ve lost no one?” Another shrug. Another blush. “Someone,” he said, hoping to leave it at that. Forest noise toppled from leaf canopy to forest floor: snatched by birds and woven into song. Insects spoke to one another a dozen different languages though no human could know any of them. Wind-noise lisped, like a whisper in the birches and the elms, the maples, and the hemlocks. “I think we are alike, though mad in different ways,” the Freed Man said in calm, contemplative tones; he spoke like one at peace with silence and his own thoughts. He shaped his words with a spare economy—not like an Englishman at all: not like a Colonial, an American, though English was the language he’d spoken since childhood. “Alike?” A smile tugged at the edges of Ürsomir’s lips; a lightness (like an embryonic laugh, perhaps) tickled in the depths of his neck. “You and I are alike?” His companion shrugged. He was a dark and wiry presence at Ürsomir’s side: tall, like a woodland elf, and as dark as an oak leaf gone brown in winter. He was incomprehensible, at times…this half-stranger whose only name was Shadow. He spoke in the elliptical manner of an alchemist from Pekkur, though with the twist and warp of English accenting in the depths of his words. He’d learned the local tongue—so he said—with relative ease, and he spoke it well enough. Better, in Ürsomir’s honest judgment, than himself. “We have each lost something…or someone. And we’ve judged it better to live like this,” he gestured to the narrow, dirt path and the forest pressing in on either side with the sound of summer birds and the scent of birches and moss. “Alone.” Ürsomir smiled again. And laughed. “Alone, you say. Since your wander up the path, you’ve lived with me, and it’s been two summers now.” “You’re complaining?” “No. It’s been two good summers and I’d hope for a lifetime’s more…but alone? I am not alone. I have someone to talk to; we share work and a hearth? A man cannot share if he is alone. But you…” something dark bubbled in the depths of his throat: a question, he knew, that might invite hard answers. He thought to swallow it, and kill it in his stomach, but it would simply grow back...again…and again, until he asked. And so, resigned to the possibility of dark answers, he inhaled and shaped the question into the appropriate words. “You are alone?” Shadow threw a glance downward, focused—for a moment—on something on the dusty path and between his feet. He stood a head taller than Ürsomir, and so his gaze traveled downward for a longer, quiet distance. He scuffed at the dust, and an ant scurried away from the threat of trampling. He glanced up, sideways, and cocked an odd smile across half of his mouth. “There isn’t another face like mine for miles around. I’m alone, at least in that respect.” “In Pekkur, there are others like you. A few.” “We are not in Pekkur.” “We?” More laughter fluttered, unvoiced, in the depths of his neck. “I live here, Ürsomir. I know herbs and cures and you know metals and an anvil and the thing underground; we are respected in the villages. In Olóš and in Horá, and the tiny places in between. The bear, they say, and the shadow: those are our very names among people we scarcely see. This is a good thing, especially as no one speaks of other things, untrue things those such as we might inspire among stupid tongues. It is very good. And yet, I am alone. No, Ürsomir, not lonely…simply…singular. Do you understand?” “I understand,” Ürsomir said, wondering—for a moment—if he’d just been scolded. Shadow smiled. “Yes,” he said. “You always understand.” Ürsomir laughed. “I am,” he said, “a smart bear.” * They’d stepped—yesterday—into the forest to gather mushrooms and the wild herbs fit for any humble kitchen. They’d filled rough-woven bags with what the forest yielded, and at the height of the day’s heat, gave themselves to the river Pólá as their bagged mushrooms and bagged herbs hung (safe from marauder-animals) on the branches of a tree. They bathed. They swam. They talked. And when refreshed and washed clean of a day’s sweat, they clamored onto a boulder at the river’s flank, and basked—as naked as molted snakes with their bellies to the air—until the sun dried them. They’d talked and spoke of dreams, and Ürsomir enjoyed quiet revelry at the playful, tickling stroke of Shadow’s narrow, twig-thin toes brushing on occasion along the meaty under-pads of his own. There was a language in that touch, understood in the depths of his own blood, but he hid the flagrance of his own gleeful comprehension as best he could, hands clasped for modesty where immodest flesh threatened shameful displays. Now, in the waver of lamp-light and hearth-fire, they ate a light stew of mushrooms, boar, cabbage and herb-steeped-plums from wooden bowls with spoons hammered on Ürsomir’s own anvil. They ate boiled eggs, dusted with paprika. Autumn hung as a promise in the air, though summer’s end had not yet announced itself in longer nights. It had been a long day. Ürsomir hammered new shoes for two village horses as Shadow labored at the bellows before the call to mend a small boy’s broken arm. The child, as pale as a ghost, with hair like spun honey, had fallen—by his own account—from the roof of his family house. “The cats,” he’d told Shadow. “I wanted to catch the cats.” “Cats are fine on a roof; they know how to walk there,” Shadow had said. “But little boys should never follow them so high.” Ürsomir smiled at the memory of those words, and flinched at the sudden boom of rolling thunder. He hugged himself against the dreadful promise of a storm and of lightening touching trees, shattering them into splinters. At meal’s end, Shadow cleared the table and Ürsomir washed the bowls, the spoons, and drew frothy beer from a keg in the cooling niche. He settled with Shadow, before the hearth, a flagon in one hand. Thunder, a softer, rolling noise to the west, filled Ürsomir with visions of cannons and Tsarist troops, sweeping down from some vast, Russian distance. Something touched the roof. “The owls will come soon,” Ürsomir said, quietly. “The owls?” Yes. “The storm tonight will bring them.” For a moment, there was silence. Ürsomir contented himself with the lull and simply watched the waver of shadows and firelight across the narrow, angular planes of Shadow’s strange and foreign face. A woodland elf: everyone called him that for his height and his winter-dead, oak-leaf color, and they called him Shadow—by Shadow’s own account—in their belief that a man of blackest Africa wasn’t black at all, but simply able (by some strange quirk) to stand—always—in the shade. “What was it like for you?” Ürsomir asked, suddenly and unsure of the origin of his question. “You say so little of your life before you came here.” As the words hung between himself and Shadow, he wondered at what impertinence might have colored them. None, he hoped, but in local understanding, questions of a man’s past were—even if gentle—an intrusion. “It was bad,” Shadow said. “But better, by far, than many ocean voyages for men like myself.” There had been a wall—Shadow said after a long, long moment of dark recollection—loose planks intended to separate passengers in steerage from stock. In reverse, from the New World to the Old, there had been no real need for one type of stock, and so from his allotted space in belowdecks, he heard only animals on the other side of that plank wall with gaps. He smelled them, though it was hard to distinguish that scent from the bucket he (and the others) had been expected to use and dump overboard before overfilling. There were few passengers: himself and the pastor with whom he traveled. There were strangers: a few. They kept to themselves and said little—if anything—to the man of God or to Shadow himself. No one questioned Shadow’s right to travel, assuming—as was common—that the old minister owned him. He did nothing to challenge their belief. In London—Shadow said—he’d met a man from Pekkur. An alchemist. He fancied himself an Abolitionist though in public, he spoke badly and without grace enough for the English ear. The alchemist—Shadow said—had made arrangements with the minister, to secure servants and Shadow was the first. It was a boondoggle; the alchemist had no need for servants, no desire, but he acquired young men and young women like Shadow himself; taught them things and sent them into the deep, forest-country as doctors and smiths. Ürsomir had heard of men like the alchemist. Local men of learning, outspoken in their hatred of the flesh trade. Who backed them? Ürsomir wondered to himself. Who opposed them? “The New World,” Ürsomir shook his head to banish the questions in his mind. “I think,” he said, “that I prefer the Old.” Shadow nodded. “Not all of it,” he said. “But here…yes…the Old World, here is very, very different. I know things here I could never have learned over there. I know medicines. I know what stories live inside of books.” “Did you have friends there?” Ürsomir asked. “No.” Shadow said. “Acquaintances, yes…other like me; but not friends.” Ürsomir sipped beer through its fading head of foam. “In this forest,” he said. “In this simple little cottage,” he said. “You can have anything, because here,” and he thumped his white peasant’s shirt, and beneath it, his broad, heavy chest centered with its meager thatch of hairs. “Here,” he said again. “You have a friend, and—I hope—a brother of some kind.” He drank beer and said nothing more. Shadow joined him in perfect, contemplative silence. * “Do you know of the owls?” Ürsomir asked, after a hard day with hot iron and his hammers. He’d smelled of coal smoke and sweat. Women came—three different times—to buy tinctures and salves from Shadow, and to watch him—even in sunlight—standing in the shade. They laughed at the marvel of how he carried his own shade in his skin, paid with silver coins. They touched his hair—for luck—and were shy in asking for the favor. It was—Ürsomir knew—stupid superstition. A black man’s hair was—quite simply—hair. There was no magic in it: no luck, though (perhaps?) it was good to weave into a pillow. “The owls?” Shadow asked. They sat on their canted, flat boulder at the river’s edge. The sun had rolled far to the west and the day’s final flourish was dark and purple in the east. “Here, we have many sacred things.” Shadow nodded. “The machine, too” he said. “Though I’ve never seen that clockwork miracle.” “The machine.” Ürsomir nodded. “And the owls,” Shadow said. It might have been a question. There was no way to tell. Ürsomir nodded again. “They carry secrets, and wisdom too. They are messengers.” There was more to say, more that he wanted to, but the intended words jammed in his throat, lumped there like milk gone curdled, and they would not move. He’d bathed with Shadow, as was their custom. It was Shadow who’d found a catalpa tree, growing where Ürsomir never guessed one would have grown. It was, he thought, a fortuitous omen, and so he plucked broad leaves with Shadow, whispering prayers to The Brothers in violation of what the Catholics and the Hussites said were proper prayers. It was easy, however, to pray to The Brothers so far from Pekkur, and in a forest where only the trees might hear. He’d bathed with Shadow and they scrubbed one another with the broad, green hearts that were catalpa leaves. They’d touched one another—as one would when scrubbing a compatriot—and in a moment of possession, Ürsomir lost himself in the kiss he pressed to Shadow’s dark forehead. The gesture was one Shadow accepted with smiling silence, and a caress—with only his fingertips—to the side of Ürsomir’s face. Drying, now, on their chosen stone, Ürsomir sat with his feet dangling in the water, watching catalpa leaves floating downstream. “There is a place,” Ürsomir said. “Where the owls gather. It is special. I want to show you. Tomorrow.” Shadow nodded. “Tomorrow,” he echoed, and in his tone, Ürsomir heard the shaped sound of a promise. * The tree, when they came to it, stood naked in a clearing. It wore bark—perhaps like an oak, like a maple, or like anything else known in this forest—but it held no leaves, no greenery with which to identify it. The tree, when they came to it, was gnarled and weathered: alive, Ürsomir knew, but unlike the other trees. It was early. Though risen for more than an hour, the sun hadn’t yet burned night-mist from the river and from low, damp ground. It swirled in clotted lumps, and blew in jagged whiffs in the soft, soft wind. Tomorrow had been fast in coming. And now it was today. Shadow, as usual, had been the last to awaken, and in the silence of the morning, Ürsomir rummaged through his own scant belongings, until he found what he’d been looking for. A pouch. He carried it with him now, cinched to his belt. He felt its comforting weight, more the idea of it than a true sensation, and as he approached the bare, skeletal tree, he fingered the pouch, aware of Shadow at his side. “This,” Ürsomir said. “Is what I want to show you.” “A dead tree?” Ürsomir laughed: a low rolling sound. Heavy: like boulders rolling in his throat. “More than that,” he said, reaching for the pouch hanging from his belt. He opened it with deft (though blunt) fingers and reached inside. He felt what he needed long before he saw it. He pulled it into the morning light between forefinger and thumb, showing it to Shadow. “A key?” Shadow asked, drawing closer to examine the thing. “A key,” Ürsomir said. “From metal I’ve worked myself. There are men who know the secret metal crafts. I am one of them, and if you might be willing, it is a craft I would teach you.” “You’d teach me to make keys?” Shadow asked. “And locks?” “A key,” Ürsomir said, leading Shadow to the un-dead, leafless tree. “I know nothing of locks,” he said, stepping forward to examine the trunk and the bark. “What are you looking for?” Shadow asked. Ürsomir smiled. “Look with me. You’ll know what I’m looking for, when you find it.” The bark was green with lichens and moss dotted with blooms like pinpoints of unripe gold. Ürsomir circled the tree, examining its peeling bark, as brown as Shadow’s skin and mottled with shades of gray, like rust-tinged ash. There were things embedded in the cragged tree-skin: interlocking gears and cogs, smaller than anything a watchmaker would recognize. They were foreign, however, to a watchmaker’s trade, and beyond all human skill. This was not a watchmaker’s tree. He had hoped—in the moment of a single heartbeat—that Shadow would find what he was looking for. Ürsomir found it first: perhaps because he knew this tree, or the owls who used it; perhaps because Shadow—in perfect, awestruck silence—had locked himself in close scrutiny of the gears and cogs, flywheels and ratchets that moved in clockwork precision. “It moves,” Shadow said. “The entire tree moves!” Ürsomir nodded. “It builds itself,” he said. “But it has never learned how to make leaves. I guess that the owls do not need them. This is their tree. I think it is a good one for them.” And then— (right at the level of his eye) —he found what he sought. “Here,” he said, motioning Shadow to his side. Shadow moved quickly, leaned forward and laughed at what Ürsomir showed him. “A keyhole?” he asked. “Maybe this tree grows no leaves because you have to unlock it, first…or wind it up like an expensive clock.” Ürsomir handed him the heavy, bronze key—as long as his hand and narrower than any of his fingers. “Put it in,” he said quietly and with a smile. “And turn it.” …to be continued… * * * Agara is a land rich in odd, little tales. It doesn’t surprise me, then, that I’d find myself there, once again. It does surprise me, however, to learn that I’d find myself (figuratively, at least) in Agara, during the 1700s…just outside of a small village that has—in typical Agaran character—totally neglected to reveal its name. Oh well…at least I got a story out of it, and you’ve—presumably—just read it. There is more to come: I post the conclusion tomorrow. This story came about because of a notebook (a Christmas gift from KateBlack10,) a key, and my camera. Those things in that combination made me think of Agara. I’ve immortalized that bit of inspiration with the image accompanying this text. Hopefully, you’ve enjoyed both, and thank you for reading and commenting.