Jaci Dawn

Everyone looked at Gran. Gran sank low in the grass and put his head in his paws. Billie sat beside him, her paw on his shoulder. Dish gently let Twerp down before he, too, sat down. Twerp curled up into the fetal position and started snoring softly. Ella and Aric sat together, trying to see over the grass.
“One good thing,” Aric whispered, “is if we can’t see them very well, they sure can’t see us.”
“Who are they?”
Somewhere, in the trees above, an owl hooted.
Gran groaned, head still in his hands. “Now we’ve got owls to worry about, and dead-weight back there is snoring,” he whispered, more to himself than anyone else.
“Shhh,” Dish hissed back. Swainson has about a zillion cats, too.”
Everyone looked nervously back toward the yard with the chain link fence. Ella shivered.
There was a sound near the van. Aric stood, parted the grass a bit and stared: the window closest to his home had been rolled down, and it looked like the barrel of a gun was pointing out. He followed the muzzle toward the apple tree, where a crow was settling down to roost. There was a popping sound, and the crow squawked once before it fell out of the tree, wings spread as if to fly. Aric ducked back down.
“They’re shooting birds!” He almost forgot to whisper.
“Familiars,” Dish replied, unhappily. “They’re hunting familiars.”
“It was just an old crow,” Aric hissed back. “Who uses a crow as a familiar?”
The popping sound happened again, and an owl dropped out of the sky, landing mere feet from the teenagers. Everyone fell silent.

The van finally rolled forward, and past where the young mice were hiding in the grass. The smell of its exhaust filled the October air. The windows were rolled up, and the mice could hear the faint sounds of a popular Country song playing on its radio. The tires crunched along the dirt alleyway until the brakes squeaked. It turned right onto the paved street and motored away.
Aric peeked out, again. He could see quite well in the darkness, a novelty he wasn’t expecting. The lights were off in his house now, and the pit bull had curled up on its back porch. Mrs. Swainson’s house had every light on, but Bob Freeman’s house sat dark. A few feet away, he could smell the owl: it smelled of feathers, old blood, and fresh blood. A breeze wafted the feathers, making it appear alive for just a moment, and Aric ducked down in fear.
Gran had finally taken his head out of his hands. He spoke aloud for the first time, “If they’re shooting familiars, maybe someone warned Mrs. Swainson, so she’d keep her cats inside. That’s a good thing, right?”
“Someone could’ve warned me,” replied a grumpy old man’s voice. There was a stirring in the grass, and something larger than a mouse moved toward the teenagers. “Whoooo is hiding there? And why wasn’t I warned?”
Ella squeaked when the round head of a barred owl peered down at them. It’s eyes were yellow, large, and she thought – angry.
“Well?” It repeated.
“We didn’t know,” Dish squeaked. “At least, not until they shot the crow.”
“What crow?”
“The one over in our yard,” Aric pointed.
The owl turned its head nearly backwards, then whipped it back. “I’d go look, but, as you can see, I have been shot. In the wing. I can’t fly. I don’t know any crow that hangs around here. Don’t like them, especially. They don’t like me.”
“Um, who are you?” Billie found her voice.
The owl’s eyes found her. “I expect introductions are in order. I am the honorable, wise, and fortunate Horace. Fortunate, because that thing that hit me in the wing didn’t kill me.”
“Bullet. They had a silencer,” Aric said. “I’m Aric.”
“How do we know we can trust him?” Hissed Gran’s voice. “He’s an owl. Owls eat mice.”
Horace stood up straighter. “Why would I eat mice wearing clothing? The shoes alone would do a number on my digestion.”
“Owls swallow mice whole,” Ella said. She didn’t know why she was telling the apparently offended bird this. “You know, bones and everything. I don’t think shoes or glasses would be any more of a problem than bones. But, on the other hand, you’re a talking owl. Do all owls talk?”
The owl blinked three times, “Well, yesss… but not in this language. Owls communicate mostly by simple sounds that locate, warn, entice mates, and such. I have never met talking mice before, either. Most of the mice I have – er, met – er, have squeaked, but not much else. You are the first talking mice I have ever encountered.”
They stared at each other.
“I’m Ella.”
“Dustin, but noone calls me that. I go by ‘Dish’.”
“Billie.”
“Gran.”
“What about the little one? Did he get shot, too?” The owl leaned in very close and sniffed above Twerp. Twerp stirred in his sleep and mumbled. Both Dish and Ella started to stand up to protect the little guy from the large predator when the bird backed off.
“That’s Twerp,” they said in unison.
“Deke, his real name is Deke, but we’ve called him ‘twerp’ for so long, that’s become his name,” Ella explained. “He probably wouldn’t want to wake up with your face so close.”
“Of course.” Horace took a long look around. “I don’t suppose you were going to stay here all night, were you? It looks quite uncomfortable. I feel exposed.”
“No, we were going to -” Aric started.
“Cross through that yard.” Gran stood up and pointed. “We’re going that direction.”
“May I come along?” Horace blinked. “My wing is quite painful, and I jolly don’t like the idea of staying here, by the cat yard.”

They roused Twerp and started off across the hard-packed alley, and into the unkept yard between them and freedom – or so they hoped, it would lead them to freedom. Twerp was groggy, but he was steadier than he had been, and he didn’t question the lumbering bird of prey that hopped along through the grass off to the right.
The world looked decidedly strange from their mouse-sized perspective. Ella found herself half-jogging to keep up with Dish. She was having trouble making out things, and by the occasional grunts and curses from everyone else, she wasn’t the only one. She could hear exceptionally well. The strangest thing was the way the whiskers on her face were reacting to what they passed by: in the crawl space, and the short jaunt across the yards, she hadn’t paid much attention to those whiskers, primarily because she could see. Now, the world was in several shades of grey and black, and her whiskers seemed to have come alive.
“They’re, like, electric,” She said out loud.
“What’s electric?”
“Whiskers. They feel everything.”
“Oof!” Gran stumbled into something and fell backward. “I feel like a blind dude.”
Billie helped him up. “Yeah, I thought this would be easier. Where are we now?”
The group came to a halt and looked around. Noses twitched.
“I smell food.” Twerp said.
“What kind of food?” Several voices whispered back.
Ella lifted her own nose and breathed in. Her nose did a dance of its own: sunflower seeds. The aroma was almost overwhelming now that Twerp had mentioned it. Her stomach growled loudly. “We must be in the front of Mr. Freeman’s house. He feeds the birds.”
Twerp bumped into her, “Just follow our noses. We’ll be in food heaven.” He happily pushed through, working his nose.
The rest of the group hesitated, before Gran sighed out, “Why not? We need to eat.”
Following her nose was much easier than trying to see where she was going, Ella decided. Horace didn’t say much, but hopped along beside them until they were under the hanging bird feeders. He muttered something about keeping watch while the teenagers stuffed themselves silly.
Twerp was rooting around in the dirt, picking things up and putting them in his mouth greedily. Aric made his way over and followed suit. Billie picked gingerly at a pile of broken sunflower hulls. “Birds have been…”
“I think we have to,” Gran replied. He found a whole seed. “I’m so hungry…”
They ate and ate, moving little piles of discards hulls and, more often than not, whole shells with seeds still inside them. Raw sunflowers, Ella thought, not the nice roasted and salted ones she liked to buy at the convenience store, but somehow these seeds tasted more wonderful than a big, juicy, hamburger sounded. And she was so very, very hungry.
“Guys,” Gran said after a while, “I think we should get moving. I don’t know how much night we have left, and I want to be as close to the BMX trails as possible by morning.”
“What then?”
“Maybe Twerp will have recovered enough to make us normal.”
“Make you normal?” Everyone had forgotten about Horace, and his question caused them all to jump. “What is normal?”
“Don’t worry about it, Horace.”
“I feel like you keep leaving me out of things,” the owl said sulkily.
Look, we just haven’t decided how much we can trust you, OK? You’re still an owl to us, and that’s scary enough.”
“I promised I wouldn’t eat you.”
“Guys!” Billie stood up and put her arms out between Gran and Horace. “We just need to go. We can sort out everything else when we’re in a safer place.”
They crossed the street in a hurry, their shadows made unrealistically long by a street lamp. Ella stifled a giggle at their shadow-selves, and hurried after Dish. Soon, they would be in the unfamiliar maze of scotch broom, brambles, and wild plants that filled the empty plot of land between their neighborhood, the looming forest that they couldn’t see, and the wide series of hills and ruts that made up the illegal BMX bike track on the edge of town. Already, Ella could smell the spicy aroma of the brambles, and the burnt-smell of the scotch broom. She wondered how they would mange to keep from getting lost in there.
Horace stopped at the edge of the overgrown maze. “Mousies. Friends. I can’t crawl in there.”
Twerp suddenly seemed to notice the big bird. “Holy shit! Where’d we pick you up at?”
Horace looked offended. Aric put his hand on his friend’s shoulder. “He got shot back in the alley behind out house. You were asleep. His name is Horace, and he’s a familiar, and he wants to stay with us for some reason.”
“Well, of course he does. He’s my dad’s owl.” Twerp stepped forward, “I’m Deacon, Horace. How bad were you shot?”
Horace leaned forward and looked closely into the face of Twerp, who didn’t flinch. “Deacon? You certainly have his glasses on. It’s my wing. It hurts a little, but not as much as it did when that thing hit me in the air and knocked me down.” The owl stretched his wing out and looked curiously at it.
“You can’t fly at all?”
“I haven’t tried. I met these mice, and they… er, I followed you all. It didn’t seem polite to fly off, if I could.”
“Well, try. If you can fly just a little bit, you can maybe keep us going the right way.” This was Gran, who had stepped closer. “Like, you could hoot to us, so we know which way to go. You know where the BMX trail is?”
“Where I ride my bike,” Deacon explained. “I’ve seen you roosting in there.”
Horace straightened. He turned away from the mice, made a coule little hops and stretched his wings. He gained air, and circled over their heads. “I can fly!” One more circle overhead and then he said, “I’ll stop halfway.”
“Hoot about every fifteen minutes.” But Horace was already gone.

8658 Words