An Owl Pact

The time had come. Tytus could feel in the gut. He could feel it in the way the dead leaves rustled in the night, or in the constant clanking of wood in the barn’s shed, or in the nervous bleating of the stupid goats that lived beneath. Tytus took his favorite place at the peak of the cupola and awaited his friend… if you could call him like that.

A cold, sharp zephyr blew from the forest depth, the angered breath of the old trees. No human knew what was about to happen in that barn, only the two owls that had made their sacred pact there. It was so long ago, more than ten years; the pact was as old as their drained patience, but it remained in force. When he felt two amber eyes violently riveted on his position, he knew he was right, a harsh confirmation. Tytus spread his wings of alabaster in welcome.

Stryx landed abruptly in the molten branch of an old cedar. He stretched his long, black wings, showing a white belly barred with brown as he cocked his head to look below. There was a clear mark of damage in the tree, an angled cut that was halfway through the bark, a total disrespect, one more among many. That tree was the last barrier between their two worlds, the barn, and the forest, and that fool dared to cross it.

“I told you,” Stryx hooted. “I told you this would happen. I told you.”

“I know,” Tytus said, with the fear of what was to come boiling in his lungs. After all, a barn owl only fears two things: Sealing a pact, and the weight of his own promises once he must fulfill them.

“One hundred trees, one hundred trees we would forgive!” Stryx hooted, his grey talons gripping the branch tighter.

“I know!” Tytus said again, this time screeching, utterly pissed off by the unnecessary reminder. “I guess there is no escape now.”

“So you didn’t forget?” Stryx asked, pushing the limits of his patience.

These wood owls are so damn repetitive.

“We, the Tytonade, never forget,” Tytus stated the obvious. “That’s the reason we’re not hooting every single word several times as you do. Our memory is as sharp as our beaks. So don’t dare me to use it on you, Stryx. I know. The time for patience has passed.”

“Good, good, good,” Stryx hooted. “Unfair. Unfair it is. Your home is growing bigger and mine is being swallowed by the taint of that arrogant, arrogant boy.” He glared at Tytus with defiance. “And to think you hunt for him…”

“I don’t!” Tytus screeched. “My prey is my prey, and this barn is my home, way back it became his. Don’t forget, Stryx. In this place, every brick, every stone, and every piece of wood came from your world. The only difference is that they were shaped by those silly hands that never waver at the abuse. So you want it or not, we share the same home, and so… we must act swiftly to protect it.”

“Yes, we must,” Stryx hooted. “Oh, we must.”

“The real question is how.” Tytus rotated his head 180° degrees, a habit he only used to force his mind to think. There was something soothing at looking everything turned upside down; a mattress of soft, dark clouds became the ground, and a horizon of green, passive moss turned into a new sky. Tytus remained like that for a long time, reveling in the beautiful silence.

“I hate it,” Stryx nervously hooted thee times. “I hate when you do that. I don’t like the lack of sound. I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all. The forest never ceases speaking. Silence is a door to the unknown.”

Tytus ignored the annoying ramble of his friend and pushed farther into the limits of his mind. He rummaged in a dark swamp of memories until he found a glitter of light. All of a sudden, Tytus shifted his head back to its original place and chuckled like a mad owl.

“I know that look of yours,” Stryx said, a trace of doubt in his voice. “The only reason your face is shaped like a heart, it’s because you don’t have one down there.”

As Tytus gazed at the dark moonless night, he grimaced at Stryx’s ironic comment. Now he knew what to do.

*

Brow was swimming in a sea of hot sweat and dirty sheets. His ankle was itching, his knee too. These damn mosquitoes. I’ll have to fix that net. He scratched his leg voraciously, pinning his head to the pillow, and vainly thinking that could help to sleep a bit, but it didn’t. He rolled from one corner of the bed to the other until he stopped. There was something in the room, looking at him. He couldn’t see it—it was pitch black—but he could feel its presence.

He jumped from the bed and quickly went to find a box of matches on one of the shelves. He lit an oil lantern. Exploring through the room, there was nothing of notice. The net on his window was in perfect condition, his bed was entirely empty, and the floor beneath it too. He scowled with that single brow of his; that was the reason for his nickname, after all. His grandma always told him that it didn’t matter he had a single eyebrow since his blue eyes stood out thanks to it. Anyway, he found no rats, no bugs, nor anything else, and of course there were not. Every single night before going to sleep, Brow checked the floor for mice to kill, one of his many habits regarding vermin.

Still carrying his lantern, and still feeling that damn itching in his leg, he walked outside. Brow was a simple man, and simple men get calm doing simple things, like chopping a good tree. There was something soothing in the way a tree curved after a good swing of his axe. Besides, more wood meant a bigger barn, and a bigger barn meant more space for his cattle. Everyone won.

The night was silent until the ravaging thud of his axe resounded against the bark, then another time, and another, and another... Brow smiled, tasting that monotonous and repetitive noise. He took a pause to catch his breath, scratching his belly while doing so. The itching was so strong. He just couldn’t stop scratching, so it was better to focus on the task at hand. The oil lantern at his side projected his shadow on the cedar’s trunk, and before each swing, it grew larger and larger, until he saw another shadow beside his.

That of an owl looking at him.

He turned, but there was nothing behind him. He frowned his single brow and attacked the tree once more. After the last swing, the trunk fell abruptly at his side. Exalted and triumphant, Brow enjoyed that perfect moment of silence, but the silence was not complete; he could hear the jagged sound of nails scraping skin. His left hand was not his own. Brow couldn’t stop scratching. He could only focus on one thing: That damn itching. He threw aside the axe, took out his shirt, grabbed the lantern, and looked at his belly. There was something inside, something alive. He caught a glimpse of a little thing beneath his skin, a thing that had a tail. A rat! Brow stumbled and fell as the oil lantern lit a line of fire in the crops next to him.

The rat was beneath his tight now. Brow didn’t doubt it. He unsheathed his bread knife and attacked, piercing the little vermin and his own leg in doing so. After that, there was no more movement, no more itching either. He left the knife stuck there; pulling it out would be too dangerous. He stood up, gasping, and ready to look for help in a town closeby. Until he saw a flapping of white wings, and after it, the world around him became a darker place.

As hot thick blood oozed from the left side of his face, a pale morning light gave place to a new dawn. Brow saw two silhouettes in the top of the barn’s cupola. Two owls peering at him, judging his lack. One was dark as the night itself, but with two glittering eyes as amber as those of a cat. He knew the other one; it had a heart-shaped head, black matte eyes, and wings of snow. The white hunter of mice. But this time he had snatched another kind of prey inside his beak, a red nerve dangling from side to side, and at the end of it, a blue eye looked back at Brow, a blue eye so similar to those his grandma boasted he had in every family meeting. The owl didn’t seem to care at all. It swallowed it whole.

Brow ran for dear life and never came back.