The Shape Shifter

THE SHAPE SHIFTER

Ella had spent most of her life on the farm and thought she knew it like the back of her hand, better even. She’d walked every inch of the land, from the front fence facing onto the lane to the low mound of a hill up the back, covered in scrub and thistles.

When she was little she would play in the old barn, climbing on the stacked bags of wheat, pretending it was a fortress, throwing sticks at an invisible invader. She would sneak her fingers into the molasses barrel and lick off the black sugar before the horses could get to it. She had a lot of friends in the barn, elves and pixies and talking animals, including a loquacious wombat, but somehow they disappeared over time, one by one, until the only ones left were the mice, and they rarely spoke.

After boarding school, then university, Ella would scarcely come home but for the occasional holiday, or when one or other of her parents asked her to, missing her company. When she was home she would work on her laptop most of the day, emerging for dinner and conversation before retreating back to the keyboard. The one time she would go outside was to have a sneaky cigarette at the end of the verandah, as if her parents didn’t know.

This time it was winter and the old weatherboard house creaked with the cold and the only warm rooms were the kitchen and lounge, where the wood burner stove was. She was home because her father had had a fall from his tractor and broken his ankle and her mother struggled to keep everything going.

On the first morning Ella’s mum asked her to go to the barn and bring back a barrowload of the firewood stored there. She hadn’t been in there for years and was surprised the old building was still usable. As her parents were no longer actively farming there was little in the barn; ride-on mower, some bags of grain for the animals, tools hanging on nails, a stack of hay. The air was golden from the dust catching the narrow shafts of sunlight coming through the holes in the corrugated iron roof.

There was a strange atmosphere in the barn, unusually quiet and still apart from a very faint swooshing noise directly overhead. It made Ella uneasy so she rushed to fill the large wheelbarrow from the neat stack of sawn red gum against a wall. The barrow was quickly filled with as much as Ella could manage and, leaving the doors open, she pushed the load back to the house, up the ramp onto the verandah and offloaded the timber near the French doors opening into the living room. Then she went back for another load.

Back in the barn Ella could still hear the faint swooshing and looked above to see what might be causing it, jumping and gasping as she saw a dark shape silhouetted through the slats of the mezzanine. The shape seemed to be moving at the edges and once she had honed in on it, was clearly making the noise she had heard.

Ella backed slowly towards the doors, intending to flee, but at the last moment hesitated and called out, ‘Hey, you, what are you doing there?’

The shape stilled and for a moment Ella thought that she may have imagined it, that it was a trick of the light and that the dark shape was a wheat bag or something equally mundane. But the second this thought came to her, the shape changed again and seemed to be moving towards the ladder that led up to the mezzanine, close to where Ella was standing.

Ella backed again, slowly, she was only a few metres from the doors, but as she moved so did the thing, speeding up when she did, slowing when she slowed. By the time she reached the doors it was almost directly overhead and the swoosh was beginning to sound horribly like heavy breathing. She raced out into the sunlight, slamming and padlocking the doors shut behind her before she realised that she had locked it in. Which meant that the next time she came back to the barn it would still be there, waiting for her.

When she arrived back at the house empty handed, her mother asked her why and, sitting in the warm kitchen smelling like sponge cake cooking she told her parents of the thing. They looked at each other then both laughed.

‘Oh you’ve met Hoot then,’ said her mother.

‘What, are you two messing with me?’

‘Well if you came home more often you’d know what we were talking about,’ said her father. ‘The Powerful Owl, he’s been there for years, we call him Hoot. He keeps the mice down.’

‘Years? How long do they live?’

‘I dunno love, Hoot’s been there for at least 10 years. Maybe 20-30? Birds can live a long time.’

‘Wow! But I wonder if he’s sick or wounded. He seems to be dragging himself around,’ Ella said.

‘It’s daytime pet,’ said her mother. ‘They’re nocturnal. Maybe you disturbed his sleep.’

‘Well, pardon me for not knowing that you had a sleeping giant living in the barn. It scared the life out of me. How did it get in anyway?’

‘Have you seen those holes in the eaves? Even a big bird could get in. If you’re worried about him, go up and check.’ said her father. ‘Not much that I can do with this bloody leg.’

‘No thanks, he mightn’t welcome a stranger. Guess I’d better go and get more wood then. Will the cake be ready when I get back? Smells delish.’ And Ella heaved herself out of the chair and headed back to the barn.

It only took her a few minutes to fill the barrow again. Then she hesitated, wondering if the owl was injured. She did love animals and would hate to think that one was suffering. But what if it flew in her face, or bit her? With a name like Powerful Owl it must be big and, well, powerful. She looked up at the slatted floor but couldn’t see the dark shape. Maybe it had left through the hole her dad had mentioned.

She steeled her nerves and decided to have a look. Climbing the ladder she pushed at the trapdoor that her father had installed to prevent her from falling through when she was a kid and also to prevent her from getting at the poisons he sometimes used to store there. The trapdoor didn’t budge. She pushed harder and it lifted a centimetre before dropping back down. Climbing higher Ella put her shoulder into it and with a last big heave the trapdoor fell open with a strange dull thud.

Ella climbed the last rungs and stuck her head through the hole, looking around the large space. It was empty apart from a mound of, oh shit, feathers. And attached to the feathers by a sinew was a bird’s head, the round golden eyes looking straight at her.

Ella scuttled down the ladder so fast she almost fell and ran to the door. Then she remember the wood, in its barrow, just near the ladder. She’d have to fetch it, didn’t want to come back to the barn in a hurry, so she edged past the ladder, grasped the handles of the wheelbarrow and gave it a push. But the wheel caught on a piece of loose flooring and the whole thing tipped over, directly under the trapdoor.

Her heart beating hard, Ella threw the wood back in the barrow, moving like a woman possessed. As she stacked the last piece, she heard a loud thump and looking up, she saw that the trapdoor had closed.