First Came the Owl (7 page)

But I like
lots
of opposite things, thought Nita. Snow and orchids. Mom and Dad. Day and night. “Pepperoni
and
banana,” said Nita. “Can we have a pepperoni and banana pizza? Please?”

They got a half-baked one and did the bananas themselves. Even Petrova said it was not bad.

When the phone rang during dinner, it was about Dad. “He's delayed, Nita,” said Bill. “That was Captain Vanderpost. He'll call again tomorrow, but you might be stuck with us till next week. I hope you don't mind.”

“It's … fine. I mean, it's nice of you to let me stay,” said Nita. She took another bite of pizza.

“Oh, we like you,” said Bill. “Even if it means we have to have very weird dinners.”

“You mean unusual,” said Anne. “Thai pizza! I read something about Thailand today in one of my books, why it's called the Land of Smiles.” She started to tell a story about two quarreling children, a dog, a cat, some honey, and a lizard.

“Jing-jok,”
murmured Nita.

“And they ended up destroying the whole village,” said Anne, “so that's why Thai people always smile now and never fight. Did you know that story, Nita?”

“No. But they
do
fight, because I remember Mom telling me about hiding from the soldiers,” said Nita. “It was very scary and her family had to hide.”

“See, that's real life,” said Petrova, “not your silly old ‘land of smiles' fairy tale.”

The two sisters glared at each other.

“And here are two real live quarreling children,” said Mrs. S. “Stop it, you two.”

Suddenly, Nita felt left out, even though she didn't want to argue. She took a last bite of pizza. The spicy meat and the soft, warm fruit made a great combination. She would have to make some for Dad and Ma-jah if they were ever together again. But would she ever have her old home back, the way it was before? Or, like the lost village, would it completely disappear?

Eleven

O
N SATURDAY
morning it was nice and warm in the kitchen, and it was great to know you didn't have to go out. Bill said it went down to twenty degrees again during the night. Nita was on her second helping of French toast when Petrova came in from the garage, bringing a blast of cold air with her.

“I'm working on my trap,” she said to Nita.

“Trap?”

“For the owl.”

“We don't want to hurt it!” Nita had forgotten they were going down to the beach.

“Well, we have to catch this owl if we want to band it,” said Petrova. “You put a tag on its leg and then when someone else finds it, you can tell where the owls are flying to. One guy banded a nest of babies up in the Arctic and they found one later in Canada and one in Siberia. That's in Russia! It went that far.” She showed Nita a strange combination of two large tin cans taped end to end to make a metal tube, and a kind of wire box.

“Now tell her what you put in the trap for bait,” said Anne. “And it's your turn to do the dishes, Petrova.”

“We put bratty little sisters in the trap,” said Petrova. “Come on, Nita.” She threw her equipment to the floor with a clatter and put a few plates in the dishwasher.

“I'm not even dressed.”

Petrova fixed a beady stare on Nita like a bird of prey, like the owl, except her eyes weren't yellow. “Well,
get
dressed.”

Nita found herself walking toward the stairs. No wonder Petrova likes owls, thought Nita. She's so fierce.

Nita put on her ski underwear, her jeans, and her warmest sweater. Downstairs, she wrapped a huge scarf around her neck, put on her earmuffs, and said good-bye to Anne.

The two girls went over the hill, across the main road, down a path, and across the ferry parking lot. Then they went along the road to the beach by the lighthouse. It was such a gray morning that the lighthouse was flashing, though its beam was pale in the daylight.

Nita was glad to see the light was still working and to see the garland of Christmas lights circling up the white tower. She had been thinking about home as if it had disappeared in just these few days. She wriggled her chilly fingers and looked closely at every dune for the owl. “I don't see it,” she said.

Petrova clutched the stiff folded metal netting that made her trap. In a bag she had fishing line and the taped tomato cans. “I've only got one mouse,” said Petrova.

“Will the owl kill it?”

“
If
the owl comes, it can't reach the mouse. It only stomps around on the wire trying to get the mouse, maybe catching a foot in one of my snares.”

They trudged along the beach. “Can we go into my house for a minute?” asked Nita.

“I guess so.” Even Petrova was cold.

But when they got to Nita's house and opened the door with the hidden key, she was sorry they had come. Someone had been watering Mom's orchids. Who? Someone had left tools and boards in the corner. What was going on around here?

Nita picked up the sprayer and misted a couple of the orchids, but all their little mouths were open, and they spoke to her again, “Lady bug, lady bug, fly away home, your house is different and your family is gone.”

Nita remembered the mean things they had said to her when she was trying to start her report. “Shut up or I won't water you,” she told the flowers.

Petrova gave her a sarcastic look. Talking to flowers? the look said.

The girls stepped out again into the wind that swirled around the white clapboard house. The tall light brightened and dimmed. Nita went to the sheltered corner by the bedroom window and dumped some birdseed in the feeder.

“That's a neat feeder,” said Petrova. She ran her fingers over the curved roof and examined the fitted wooden pieces of the little house. “Is it from Thailand?”

“I think so. We've always had it, wherever we moved.”

Petrova picked up her trap and they went back down to the beach. Nita had almost given up hope when around the point came a ray of white that settled on top of a dune with a stretch of white wings.

“It's a different one!” Nita called to Petrova.

“Where? Oh! This is a male! The pure snowy white one!”

The owl Nita had seen before was white with brown flecks in its feathers. This one was big, but not quite
as
big. It was too far away to see any yellow eyes.

Petrova clattered her trap down onto the sand. She fumbled in her bag. But, she was in too much of a hurry. The little box that held her mouse somehow slid open as she sank to her knees.

A tiny brown body scampered over the sand, hesitated, twitched its nose, and dove under a clump of brown beach grass.

“Rats! Triple rats!” shouted Petrova.

“Don't shout,” said Nita in a tense voice. “The owl will go away. We'll think of something. We'll…”

“Don't be an idiot,” said Petrova. “Now we've got no bait. That's it. We might as well go home.”

And I have to go to
your
home, thought Nita. The home of someone who calls me an idiot. Great, really great. How could I ever have wanted to be part of her family? She pressed her hands against her earmuffs so she wouldn't hear one more word Petrova said to her. And she was never going to speak to Petrova again. And … an idea jolted into Nita's mind.

“Petrova! Do they … do owls ever eat rabbits? Maybe we can fool him with my bunny fur earmuffs!” Nita snatched off the white fur circles and held them out, her fury vanishing in the wake of her great idea.

Petrova frowned. Then she laughed. “Hey, I'll try anything! Take a long piece of this line and tie it on.”

Nita worked on the fake bait while Petrova set her trap. She had made loops out of nylon fishing line that could snare an owl by the foot. She tied the loops onto the top of the wire trap. Then she put the bunny fur earmuffs inside the wire mesh cage.

And still the owl sat, a white flash on the top of a dune, almost as if he were watching them, waiting for them.

They had to stop watching him to fix the trap, and when they finally had it ready, the owl was nowhere to be seen.

“Never mind,” said Petrova. “Maybe he sees
us.
They have fantastic eyesight. Come
on
! Let's hide behind the dune.”

They lay on their stomachs behind a dune about fifty feet away, out of the wind. Nita held the end of the line they had tied to the earmuffs, and every once in a while she tugged the line so the earmuffs twitched. She thought hard about the owl, as if she could will him to come.

“Good idea, this trap,” said Petrova.

“Come on, owl,” Nita murmured. And suddenly, lying there, Nita felt her wonderful “owl feeling.” For a day or two, she had completely forgotten how she had been swept away by the soaring calm of the huge white wings.

She took a deep breath the way Amy had taught her.

“Come on, owl,” she said again. Funny, Petrova didn't seem to mind her talking to birds. Maybe she could understand this kind of conversation.

*   *   *

He came fast. He dropped down, his talons out in front of him, his feathery legs extended. His white wings were spread wide and he looked like a wild angel who had decided to swoop down into the ordinary world for a visit. Nita held her breath.

The owl gripped the wire mesh with his talons. Nita twitched the line. The powerful feet trampled back and forth, trying to get to the pieces of white fur.

Suddenly, the huge bird pulled away and fell over sideways. Nita jumped up. Oh no! Was he hurt?

“It's okay,” said Petrova. “We've got him! Come on!” She ran toward the struggling bird, and Nita followed more cautiously. Those feet looked dangerous.

But in seconds, Petrova had him in a firm grip. One hand held both feet and her other arm was around the wings. The owl was still. Nita came closer, and the fierce yellow eyes stared into hers.

“Is he okay?” she whispered.

“Get the cans,” said Petrova. “Oh, he's fine, Nita. Now we've got to band him.” She didn't seem to feel the way Nita did at all. To her this was technical, like pictures in a how-to book. To Nita, it was like catching the sun, or an angel in your arms.

“The cans, Nita,” said Petrova again.

Nita found the metal tube and helped Petrova ease the owl into the cans head first. Gently they set the tube on its side on the ground. The owl didn't struggle at all. He didn't make a sound. Now all that could be seen of him were his feathery legs and fierce talons.

Quickly, Petrova found a metal tag in her bag and slipped it around his ankle. She squeezed the tag shut with pliers. Nita read the words engraved in the aluminum: Advise Fish & Wildlife, Washington D.C., and a number.

“Wonder where he'll go next,” said Petrova. “Do you want to take him out?”

“Oh,
yes,
” said Nita. She wasn't afraid of him anymore, and she hated seeing him in the tin can. She couldn't wait to get him out.

“Hold him like I did,” cautioned Petrova.

Nita got hold of his feet, and they stood him up, still inside the cans. As the tube slipped off over his head, Nita put her arm around him. He was heavy and very warm and soft. Nita held on. “Good-bye,” she whispered, and let go of his wings. Instantly, he spread them, and Nita released his feet with a little down and then up motion. It couldn't have been enough to throw him into the air, but he caught the rhythm and the wind took him. He soared over the dune and was swept down the beach until he was a white dot in the distance that finally dissolved in the winter sky.

“I need my earmuffs,” said Nita. “I'm freezing.” As she covered her ears with soft fur, she remembered the downy warmth of the owl in her arms before she released him into his real world, the sky.

Nita laughed. She took off and ran down the beach. She held out her arms like a pair of soaring wings and the wind blew her. She soared, laughing, all the way to the end of the sand.

Breathless, she ran back to Petrova. “That was so great,” Nita said.

Even Petrova smiled. “We were really lucky,” she said. “Lots of times they get away.”

I forgot I was never going to speak to her again, thought Nita. Oh, well. I can't be mad at her after she let me hold the owl. They walked back to the Stillwaters' in a friendly silence. The day was so bright with sun on the snow, and the memory of the wonderful bird, that she hardly noticed the long walk back.

Twelve

T
HE STILLWATERS
' woodburning stove made the living room cozy on this chilly afternoon. Anne played the piano. Petrova sat in front of her paper owl model, made of hundreds of tiny cutout pieces. It wasn't flat but rounded, a three-dimensional model.

Nita slid onto the other chair at Petrova's card table and watched Petrova fit A to B and E to F.

“Do you have another pair of scissors?” she asked.

Petrova shoved them over. Nita began to snip at a big scrap of paper. She cut bits of paper off the edges here and there, and the round head and streamlined body of the owl appeared. The feathery legs and huge talons were a little harder. But in a few minutes, Nita trimmed out quite a believable owl.

Anne stopped playing the piano and looked at Nita's creation. “It's a shadow puppet,” she said.

“I think … I think they have them in Thailand. When I was little I saw a show,” said Nita, suddenly remembering. Like the lizard moment, another picture flashed into Nita's mind. A warm summer night with lanterns hung in the trees and huge black shadows sword fighting on a white screen. Nita had sat on a wooden bench and leaned on someone's knee, but she couldn't quite remember whose knee it was.

Now, in the Stillwaters' living room, Anne aimed the lighted lamp at the wall and Nita held up her cutout. A big black shadow soared around the living room.

“Eek!” said Anne. Even Petrova looked a little surprised. “It's a really good owl. Maybe we could use it in the play,” Anne went on.