The Secret Owls Conclusion *** There was a faint and persistent vibration underfoot. The ground shook as it might where snow in the mountains shook itself, billowing in avalanches onto the forest below. There was a stillness in the air. A pause. A note—suspended. “And now?” Shadow asked. “What do we do now?” It wasn’t until after Shadow spoke that Ürsomir realized he’d been holding his breath. “I tell you a few things, he said…and afterward…we wait.” Shadow nodded. “Will you walk with me?” Ürsomir asked. “I like the forest,” he said. “Especially in the morning, but I seldom walk. There’s always work, or something to distract me.” Shadow nodded again. Ürsomir took a step, another, and then a third. “Your key,” Shadow said, glancing back at the tree and the key protruding from its clockwork bark. “Leave it,” Ürsomir said. They day promised wind and warmth, and maybe—by nightfall—rain. Ürsomir walked quietly, at first, beside Shadow, watching sunlight dapple the leaf canopy overhead. In the distance, the river babbled and chuckled to itself, delighted, he thought by the boulders tickling it in its bed. He thought to wander to the river’s bank, to watch sunlight dancing on its face, but the path he took angled away from the river and deeper into the forest. Ivy climbed trees here; wildflowers threw their colors into the tree-dappled light. Birds chirped and chortled, speaking to one another in more than a dozen birdish languages. He imagined the moment as a stranger was likely to see it, and in all likelihood, there were strangers in this forest. Women harvesting mushrooms or men at whatever tasks might have demanded their presence. They would have seen him with Shadow, a boulder of a man, his face shadowed with the reddish, sandy stubble of new beard and his hair pulled back into a ponytail hanging in the space between his shoulders. They would have judged him a peasant by his white tunic, cinched at the waist, by a woven leather belt, and by his tan breeches, tied off at the knees. They would have frowned at his sandals, naming a dozen improprieties or a dozen more at the sight of his thick, blunt toes. Civilized gentlemen wore a full covering of stockings and shoes. He imagined their mawkish curiosity at Shadow, the shadow by his side. They might have called him a woodland elf, for his lean bearing, his serpentine grace. They might have gawked in confusion at his peasants tunic, as green as an ivy-leaf. His breeches—knee length—and his city man’s boots as high as his calves. The country doctor they might have called him for his skills with medicinals and splints. An apocryphal pharaoh, they might have judged of him, for his hair: close-shorn stubble, as short as Ürsomir’s own infant beard. Ürsomir shuddered at the idea that they might have been Hussites, or worse, Catholics, and that they’d see the kiss he’d planted on Shadow’s forehead and read evidence of latent indiscretions as flagrant and more offensive (by Catholic and Hussite standards) than a peasant’s pale, naked toes. There were no strangers to look upon them. Only birds and insects, squirrels chattering to one another; there might have been larger things, as dangerous as a boar or as furtive as a cat. There was nothing to alarm him, however, and that was enough. “The tree,” Shadow asked. “Others know of it?” Ürsomir shrugged. “Some people. Not many.” “How did you learn of it?” Another shrug, this one masking a harder answer to Shadow’s question. Ürsomir drew a deep breath. He smiled faintly. “I had an alchemist, too,” he said. “He taught you things?” “Not about abolition and the crime of slavery. I already knew these things. He didn’t teach me medicines. He was not a man of the herbs. But yes. He taught me things. I learned metals from him. I learned about the owls. Most importantly, he taught me their language and the language of another creature, and how to make a key.” Shadow nodded. “The one that unlocks the tree. You were the smith who’d shaped it?” “Yes,” Ürsomir said. They walked for a time, in contemplative, wordless silence. “I learned from an alchemist, too,” Ürsomir said. It had been a while since words stretched between them, and that quiet declaration came as a fallen tree interrupted their forward walk. It had been down a long time. It was little more than a trunk, blanketed in moss. Ürsomir stepped toward it and stooped low. There was mushroom growth, there were things moving. Insects. Snails. Shadow stooped beside him. “You learned to make keys to unlock magical trees?” Ürsomir laughed. “There is no magic in that tree, but yes…I learned to make keys. I can teach you. I want to.” “Why?” “So that, maybe, you will understand something.” “You’d teach me…today, maybe?” “Not today,” Ürsomir shrugged. “But soon. Today, I want to show you things. One of them may be difficult, but I want you to know it.” “Difficult?” “It is a thing of trust.” “If this is a question, Üršek…then the answer is yes. I trust you.” Üršek! Only his family had ever used that word. Ürsomir smiled. “Here,” he said, nudging at something close to the fallen log. He pinched it between thumb and forefinger and raised it to the level of his gaze. It squirmed. It kicked. “A bug?” Shadow asked. “One of my teachers. I learned about the tree from one of them. He was shy at first, like this one. But I learned how to ask nicely for the things I needed to learn, and so he agreed to tell me how to make a key. He is like the owls I want you to see, perhaps—one day, if he decides—he will be a part of such an owl.” Ürsomir smiled, lost for an instant in memories. “I’ve seen those bugs; the ones with the claws…behind…I’ve heard the warnings about them.” “The warnings are false,” Ürsomir said. “Monster tales to frighten young children.” “They lay their eggs,” Shadow said, touching his ear and lost—it seemed—in the grips of a nightmare. “Inside,” he said, and fell into silence. “No,” Ürsomir said. “They do not…but maybe an Englishman has been here, and has seen a child learning things not written in books.” “I don’t understand.” “This is the difficult thing, Shadow. He will teach you, if you let him; he will speak in ways only you understand. But you must let him speak to you in his own way. He is small. His voice will not carry, and so he must speak to you from inside your ear.” “Bugs cannot speak,” Shadow said, laughing. There was nervous dread in the sound. “This one is like the owls you will see. Today. Tonight. He is not…ordinary. I will not force you to listen to him. I can put him back, right here, in the shadow of a fallen tree. He will be just as happy if I did so, because, maybe, he wants to spend the day with his wife, far away from maddening humans.” “Inside of my ear?” “Yes.” Shadow nodded, grudgingly, but with something stubborn and resolute masking his face. “Okay,” he said. “You are sure?” “I’m sure. But this should happen soon…I may lose my nerve.” Ürsomir nodded and drew the squirming, struggling insect close to his lips. He whispered, softly and gently to it, begging its indulgence, asking various permissions, and offering anything the creature might have demanded. He spoke as honestly and as simply as he could manage, and with some trepidation. He asked a lot of the small insect with monster claws like calipers grown from its hindquarters. The insect stopped struggling. It grew still. He transferred the small thing from finger-clasp to the palm of his opposite hand, and it stood, dark and impassive, on the pallor of his flesh. “You see?” Ürsomir asked, holding his palm flat and close to Shadow so that he might see the stillness of the earwig. “He agrees to what I ask. If you agree, he will speak to you.” Shadow closed his eyes. “I agree,” he said. * Sunset flared, heavy and golden to the west. They’d spent the day, sitting near a rotting, fallen trunk. Ürsomir watched quietly, as Shadow listened to an earwig speaking like a voice in his head. He smiled as Shadow smiled, and watched with pensive concern as Shadow closed his eyes and nodded in agreement to something the earwig had asked. He’d kept his eyes closed for a long, long time, expressions dancing across his face like masks of surprise, concern, and something like sadness. He opened his eyes, at last, an expression of sadness and surprise, lingering. “He’s ready to come out,” he said, and Ürsomir cupped his hand beneath Shadow’s ear and allowed the insect to walk onto his palm. He whispered gratitude to the earwig and transferred it from palm to moss, grown like an irregular carpet in the shadow of the fallen log. “We’ll go to the tree now,” Ürsomir had said, and Shadow nodded. They walked in silence, Ürsomir pensively so, and Shadow like a man laboring in silence through riddles and mysteries. Twice, however, he paused in his stroll at Ürsomir’s side, and simply smiled—a little sadly. It took long, long minutes to reach the naked tree: an hour’s worth of minutes, Ürsomir reckoned, stunned that he’d walked so far into the forest, talking to Shadow, and holding silence with him too. Sunset had darkened from honey gold to searing orange. The tree, naked and leafless, stood in silhouette. “The owls and the earwigs,” Shadow said, quietly and with the sound of half-whispered reverence. “I know what they are.” He reached forward and touched the side of Ürsomir’s face with only his fingertips, like the wings of a butterfly, brushing coarse beard-stubble. “I know,” he said. “What they mean to you.” * Sunset darkened as, a darker cloud descended. It buzzed with the sound of insect wings and the sound of something heavier: something larger. It wavered, changing shapes like few clouds in Ürsomir’s experience. He’d seen such clouds before, but their occurrences in his life were few in number. He could count them on four of his fingers. They were not daily clouds. They were not monthly. It was common, Ürsomir knew, for whole decades to sprout, bloom, and die before a such a cloud descended and settled like leaves on the naked, clockwork tree. “Owls,” Shadow whispered, a gasp buried in the word. “So many of them! All of the owls in the world!” He’d grabbed Ürsomir’s hands. He trembled. There were owls larger than hawks. There were small owls, like sparrows. Small. They wheeled through the air like drunken acrobats, chirping and cooing, and hooting like spooky things in any deep, ancient forest. They landed, one…another…and another, in the naked branches of the spindly, naked tree. In long, strange minutes, the entire cloud came to rest, filling tree-shadow with the illusion of leaves, thick and healthy in their number. Owls. Hundreds. Dozens of hundreds: a number Ürsomir couldn’t count, even in the most ambitious of dreams. More owls, Ürsomir knew, than Shadow had ever seen. And Shadow, as silent as his namesake, stood motionless and agog: a statue hewn from deep, stained oak. The faint clenching and unclenching of Ürsomir’s fingers clasped in his own was his only movement. Ürsomir felt the swell of pride in the broad thickness of his chest. A lesser man, he thought, might have trembled at the sight of so many owls—a whole cloud of them descended into the bare limbs of an unnatural tree. A lesser man, native-born or otherwise, might have fled, making cross-signs against witchcraft and trickery. But Shadow simply stood, dark, narrow fingers clenching Ürsomir’s thicker, blunter digits. “One of them,” Ürsomir said, “will come with us, to share our hearth tonight. Don’t be afraid. It will be a good thing. An important thing.” Shadow nodded. * In night’s full darkness, with the dance of flames in the stone-faced hearth, they ate thickened barley gruel and smoked sausages, eggs boiled in the morning, and afterward, plums. They ate, as always, at the small wood-plank table, in near-silence. They ate, under the unblinking scrutiny of an owl. It was, Ürsomir had to admit, a handsome creature; pale with dark speckles and eyes like glowing amber. It perched on the windowsill, watching, wordlessly. “Is it all right if he stays with us tonight?” Ürsomir asked the question as casually as he could. “He would be comfortable here?” Shadow’s answer drew a smile across Ürsomir’s lips. “It is okay to be afraid of him,” Ürsomir said. “You shouldn’t be. He is harmless…but it is normal to fear such a creature.” “I’m not superstitious,” Shadow said. “I know. But strange things have happened to you today. You’ve unlocked a tree made of gears and cogs, like the innards of a watch. You allowed an earwig to speak to you, from inside your ear. And then you saw owls…a cloud of them, descended onto the branches of a single tree. This has not been a normal day for you, Shadow, and so I understand if you are hesitant to sleep under the same roof with such a visitor.” A shrug. “The earwig,” Shadow said, quietly and with naked amazement. “The earwig,” he repeated, “said this would happen. He told me no harm would come, and that I should…trust what I’ve known since coming here.” “He is a good earwig, no?” Shadow grinned. “He is a good earwig. And we are mad-men.” Ürsomir felt laughter rolling in his chest. He let it out. “That,” he said, “I believe, wholeheartedly.” And afterward, he cleared and cleaned bowls and spoons and drew beer from its keg. He sat, with Shadow, before the hearth, and Shadow—seized by a mood deep inside of his eyes—vanished for a moment, followed by sounds in the sleeping loft and returned with the comfort of boar-skins and woven quilts. He spread them on the floor before the hearth and settled as he did on the flat boulder by the river. He smiled, removing his boots, and sat on the softness he’d spread on wooden floor planks. Ürsomir joined him, and for a moment, they sat in silence, drinking beer. “The earwig,” Shadow began. “Told me that there are things you are afraid for me to know. He said they were good things, and that I know them already.” Ürsomir closed his eyes and bluffed a smile. “Earwigs talk a lot,” he said. “They can’t keep secrets.” There was laughter in Shadow’s voice. “The earwig. What did he tell you?” Shadow made a dismissive shrug. “He told me what I already knew.” He spoke quietly, a note of profound sincerity in his voice. He smiled in the firelight, a little sadly, and touched Ürsomir’s face with his fingertips. He kissed Ürsomir’s forehead, his stubbled cheeks, the flesh of his mouth. He kissed like a Frenchman, with more than his lips. * Morning drew mist through the forest, ragged clots of mist, like the breath of lazy dragons. The land was rich with dragon tales and Ürsomir knew most of them. He shared one, and another of them with Shadow before the hearth, on boar-skins and blankets. “I like the dragon stories,” Shadow said, somewhere between midnight and dawn. The owl stayed with them, as Ürsomir expected. They ate bread for breakfast and cheese. They washed with tepid water from buckets, and now, Ürsomir led Shadow to the tree made of gears. It was heavy with owls. Large owls. Small owls. Owls of in-between size. All of them perched motionless, as still as stones, casting leaf-shadows in the morning haze. The companion owl, as Ürsomir called the night’s visitor, soared overhead, found a perch in the gear-work tree, and settled. For a long moment, Ürsomir stood beside Shadow, watching the owls. Shadow stood in quiet anticipation. —Of what, Ürsomir had no clue: completion, perhaps, if his gut spoke truly. And so, Ürsomir stepped forward, measuring his steps with outstretched toes, and approached the tree with its lichens and its moss. He circled it, Shadow moving behind him, until he found the key inserted in its hole. He clasped it, turned, and pulled it from the trunk. He placed it in the pouch suspended from his belt, and stepped away, wordlessly…slowly. Shadow walked with him. They paused, perhaps twenty paces away. “Watch,” Ürsomir said, quietly. With a sound like pouring sand, the owls began to dissolve, disintegrate, break into particles. They plunged, flowed, and whispered on bare ground with a sound like raindrops. “Look closely,” Ürsomir said, stepping—one pace, two paces, three—toward the tree. He stooped, and Shadow stooped with him, gasping—only once—with amazed awe, at the deluge of earwigs, raining from tree branches. Closer now, the sound of droplets carried a metallic note, like flakes of iron, flakes of the finest metal, falling… …falling… …falling… If Shadow felt fear, or its lesser cousin, he gave no such suggestion. He simply watched, his mouth a little open, as owls dissolved into earwigs, and as earwigs—countless hundreds of them—scurried in a glinting, undulating carpet, as if confused; they found their bearings, some more quickly than others, and raced (like children) into the deeper forest. Ürsomir knew—and Shadow probably guessed—that they headed to the spot they’d found yesterday…by the fallen, mossy tree trunk decaying into loam. “The owls,” Shadow said, but did not continue. “They are like the earwigs,” Ürsomir said. “And the earwigs?” Ürsomir smiled. “They are like the tree. Owl. Earwig. Tree. They are all the same, made of the same thing.” “Alchemy!” Shadow whispered. “Mechanics,” Ürsomir felt a smile tugging the word. “So much to learn,” Shadow said. And Ürsomir nodded. “So much,” he said. “You’ve already learned some of it.” He smiled again and put his arm around Shadow’s shoulder. “Next week, if you wish, you can learn to make a key.” “To summon more owls?” “And more than that,” Ürsomir said. “Much more.” THE END **Contrary to popularized misconceptions, earwigs actually despise the insides of human ears. They prefer compost heaps, the comfy spaces in tree bark, and the occasional basement corner; cockroaches, on the other hand, adore the nice, warm space inside of the human ear and enter such spaces with disturbing regularly…often in search of food. Cockroaches don’t care where they forage for delicious nibblies, and a human ear is as appealing to them as the space behind a toilet, or the inner workings of a television. Earwigs prefer cool moisture, or the scent of grapevines…human ears are a bit too warm and claustrophobic, and…well…ears are no place for a lady with eggs to lay. (Earwigs females are among the only insects to exhibit maternal behavior; they are protective of their offspring and have been observed “doting” over their hatchlings.) In Agara, earwigs are venerated, and in Agaran folklore, dragons are often depicted with earwig “cerci” on the tips of their tails. In Agara, dragons and earwigs are close associates: avatars of one another. Earwigs are easily recognized by their cerci those extravagant calipers on their bums. These appendages serve a number of purposes…they scare larger, dumber predators into thinking that the earwig in question is actually dangerous…they capture and hold squirmy prey (cockroach babies?) and they also come in handy when the earwig in question needs to hold on to something fold or unfold his/her wings. Needless to say, in terms of wing manipulations, the cerci aren’t used very much as earwigs don’t like to fly. The pincers/cerci are used to fold and unfold earwig wings, which lack the muscles needed to do that particular job. As cerci manipulations are undoubtedly awkward and undignified, earwigs scarcely fly: dignity and physical grace are more important to earwigs than...buzzing from place to place. Why fly? an earwig might ask, when it's easier to walk? I know a lot about them and never knew, until recently, that they even have semi-functional wings. Needless to say, all of that went into the background of this story, and I figured, if earwigs can be driven to enter a human ear, it would have to be for a darn good reason. That’s when I thought of talking earwigs. As they’re small, they’d need to enter an ear, simply to be heard…and so there you have it. As always, thank you for reading and commenting, and (hopefully) not cringing too much at a particular part of this tale. And now, as it’s stopped raining, and since it's the weekend, I think I’ll drag Corey out on an earwig hunt, after going for something to eat.