Mulberry Wands (19 page)

What Paul wanted to do was fly.

They played with their new forms for several
hours. Fox watched television until she learned to say “Hello” and
“No” and “Yes” (she already understood English, so it was easier
for her.) Paul figured out how to perch, and flapped around until
he could go from the mezzanine back to the arm of the couch
perfectly. He thought with a few weeks’ of practice, he’d be good
enough of a flyer to hunt.

Fox put Paul’s flip-flops on. They were
ridiculously large on her feet, but she made fists with her toes
and managed to keep them from flying off. She held out her right
arm and looked at him, then gestured to the door handle.

Paul tried to gracefully land on her
shoulder, but he ended up smacking her in the head instead. She
laughed, and with her free hand, put him back on there. He had to
clench his talons to steady himself, and she cried out.

Paul hopped off, flapping onto the floor. He
wanted to ask if he had hurt her, though he couldn’t speak in owl
form.

Fox put her finger through the hole in the
t-shirt and pulled it out, revealing a spot of blood.

Paul hooted an apology. He flapped over to
the couch, where his leather jacket lay draped over the far arm. He
perched on it and hooted again.

Fox figured it out right away. She even
cleverly put an extra pair of socks under the shoulder for padding.
With the two of them working together, they managed to get him on
her shoulder and the two of them out the door.

Out on the town in their new forms. Paul
couldn’t help hooting in excitement, and Fox made a canine bark
come out of her human throat.

He hadn’t felt this kind of a thrill since
the day when he and Carlos were fourteen and borrowed the car keys
from Carlos’ sleeping cousin so they could go joyriding.

Paul really loved being an owl. He and Fox
walked around for several hours, she wearing his clothes, and him
perched on her shoulder. Fox didn’t understand money, and couldn’t
speak to people, so Paul flew off and looked for a translator to
help them out. He flew along the alleys, since Fallon had once said
you could find translators more quickly near walls. Paul had keen
night vision and found one quickly, a small boy who blinked as
though he’d been asleep. He swooped down next to the boy and
landed.

The boy peed against the wall, apparently not
realizing there was an owl behind him.

Paul flicked a stone with his talon to get
the boy’s attention. The boy turned around, saw him, and froze.

Can you translate? Paul thought. He still
didn’t know how the owls communicated with the translators, but he
thought it was something like psychic messages.

The boy kept staring at him as though Paul
were, well, a predator.

Can. You. Translate? Paul tried to push the
thought at the boy. He leaned closer, and the boy screamed.

A translator woman rushed out of the
darkness, holding a stick not much bigger than a toothpick. She
jumped in front of the boy and pushed him behind her.

“Don’t hurt him! He’s just a child, he can’t
hear you.” She said something to the boy in another language, and
the boy scampered towards the wall. “Take me instead. I’ll go.”

You can hear me? Paul thought.

“Of course I can,” she said. “New to the
light are you?”

He was insulted, briefly, before he realized
that the question meant she thought he was really an owl, which
pleased him.

Paul held out his left leg. The translator
woman took a breath, swallowed and clung to his leg, sitting on his
talons like a skier being lifted up a hill. He flew back to where
he’d left Fox, and found her sitting on the edge of the wall
surrounding the patio bar where he’d met Susan the first time. A
man was talking to her, apparently trying to pick her up. Paul
aimed for her right shoulder, where the balled up t-shirt protected
her flesh from his talons. His leather jacket was getting ruined
from where he’d been landing on it.

Sorry, he thought at both of them.

“Whoa, is that your owl?” he asked her. The
man tried to reach forward and touch Paul’s head, but Paul snapped
at him and the man pulled away.

Let’s go for a walk, Paul thought. The
translator woman whispered into Fox’s ear.

Fox nodded and stood up. She turned away from
the man who had been talking to her. Paul swiveled his head to look
at him. The man raised an arm as if to call Fox back, then let it
drop.

Fox walked down Fifth Avenue, with Paul
perched on her shoulder and the translator still gripping Paul’s
leg. Paul was concentrating on not falling off. He could feel Fox
pull her head back to peer at the translator out of the corner of
her eye.

“Your friend says she wants to taste human
food, but they won’t let her go inside because they want her to
show them a card, and she’s not sure how to get one.”

Fox came up to a bench, and she leaned over
to smell the seat of it.

I don’t know how she can get one either, Paul
said, flapping his wings to keep from falling. But she has my money
in the jacket, she can buy food elsewhere.

“You’re not an owl,” she said, full of
wonder. “You are a Sunward, aren’t you?”

Fox stood up and nodded.

“Oh, she says you both are,” the translator
continued, looking back and forth at them. Paul had a hard time
seeing her face, until he realized he could swivel his head almost
upside down.

Paul tried to nod, but an owl’s head was so
mobile that nods didn’t feel quite right. The translator seemed to
understand him anyway. Fox stopped again, this time at a tree. She
leaned over to sniff down the trunk. Paul was getting used to the
rhythm of her stride, but every time she stopped he had to flap his
wings to stay upright. He could see frayed strips of blue t-shirt
poking through the leather.

Someone had parked on the street and left
their dog inside the car. It was a yappy thing, small and angry.
Fox barked at it, then tapped at the window, scratching on the
glass like she was trying to get inside. She even imitated a mouse,
then a cat. Paul flapped off of Fox’s shoulder to the hood of the
car. The dog whined at him, tilting its head to one side as though
it weren’t sure what to make of an owl on its master’s car, then it
resumed barking, getting louder and louder until it sounded like it
was about to explode.

Paul was looking around, marveling at how
much different things looked when you were an owl. It felt too
bright, and he couldn’t see color very well, but the details were
fantastic. He could see pigeons roosting in a window at the top of
the mosque. He turned and saw bats fluttering in the light above
the bookstore, catching moths and other insects. He could hear the
rustling of lizards in the dead leaves under a hedge, even over the
conversation and clink of glasses from the diners on the patio. It
made him want to hunt. He was a killing machine.

Fox was trying to talk to the translator, who
had unclenched her death grip on Paul’s leg and was now on the hood
of the car. Fox pointed at a pizzeria down the block, where a line
of people snaked outside.

“You want to go there?” the translator said,
sounding as unhappy as the barking dog. “With all the humans?”

Fox nodded and flared her nostrils.

“I know you want to smell them, but it’s not
a good place for me.”

Fox narrowed her eyes.

“Who is it that you wish to talk to?” the
translator asked. She swallowed. The creases of her eyes were
tight, as though she were in the waiting room at a dentist’s office
and was torn between wanting to get it over with and just wanting
to leave.

We wanted to go out, have a few drinks, but
Fox can’t speak, Paul thought. We want you to hang out with us and
talk to the people. Also, explain the money to her.

“You want me to help you get into the human
guest-places?” the translator seemed horrified by the idea. “And
stay with you for several hours?”

“Yes,” the translator said, repeating Fox’s
question. “I do know human languages, we all do, but we usually
translate with humans who already know of our existence, mages and
scholars and wise women, people who can already see gnosti. I can
speak for you, but if I’m speaking to someone who can’t see me,
they’ll think you’re a talking owl. If you’ve been in the light
long enough to shapeshift, why is it you don’t know this?”

The translator looked at Fox’s face. Fox was
so expressive that Paul could tell she was communicating, though he
wouldn’t have understood her without the translator.

“She’s a fox, and you’re a …” The translator
turned to Paul. “You’re a human?”

Paul nodded.

“Don’t ask me to do this. Just take me home.
I don’t want to go in human places. Please?”

Fox growled. This, for some reason, made the
dog inside the car gulp down its last bark and be silent. Ah,
blessed silence, Paul thought. Maybe the translator was right. He
didn’t know if he really wanted to listen to much more noise.

“Yes, it’s true that I wouldn’t dare refuse
if you were both owls.” She backed up towards Paul again and
gripped the shaft of Paul’s leg, as though she were a child tugging
at her dad’s pant.

Fox growled again, and by her face, Paul
could tell she was trying to say something, but the translator
didn’t translate. Fox bared her teeth and snapped. Fox leaned
forward, using her hands to prop herself up, as though she’d
forgotten she was in human form. The translator flinched, and
ducked under Paul’s abdomen. Her head brushed up against his
feathers, tickling him, and he shifted from foot to foot.

If Paul could sigh, he would have. This
wasn’t going anywhere good.

Tell her I’ll meet her at my apartment, after
I’ve taken you back home, Paul thought.

The translator must have told Fox his
message, because Fox made a confused whimper.

Hold on, he thought at the translator, and
launched into the air. He didn’t fly as well as he thought he
could. They say owls can fly silently, but that only applies to
competent owls. He ran into things, and hooted rather more often
than an owl normally would. He also got lost trying to remember
where the translator had come from.

“Down there,” she said. “On the left.”

He banked sharply, overshot, and had to
flutter to correct his trajectory. By then he was too high, so he
had to loop around a second time before he could approach the wall.
Paul actually made a very good landing on the top of the wall, and
he was about to flap down to the ground, but the translator leapt
off his leg and landed on the brick.

“Here’s fine,” she insisted. She was
clutching the top of the wall like someone afraid of heights who
just got off a Ferris wheel. “Really.”

What did Fox say to you?

“She said she has to take enough disrespect
from owls, she’s not going to take it from prey as well,” the
translator peered up at him, still clutching the wall. “Thank you
for being understanding.”

I wouldn’t say I’m understanding, Paul
thought. I just didn’t want her to eat you. She’ll get in
trouble.

“I’d rather be eaten by a fox than …” she
trailed off, with a thoughtful expression. “Are you Paul?”

Paul hooted, forgetting again that he was in
an owl body. He had to get out of the habit of doing that, but when
he was surprised, he wanted to speak.

“We’ve heard of you,” she said. “There aren’t
that many human Sunwards, and fewer males.”

Paul was silent. He thought maybe he was
supposed to say something to that, but now that he had soft
feathers, silence came easier.

The truth was, he felt like a chump. If he
had been a real owl, the translator would have done her job, and
Fox could be chatting with someone over her first beer. But because
he was human, they figured he was a softy, and he was afraid they
were right. He lacked those killer instincts. He just didn’t have
what it took to make people listen to him.

“You won’t tell the parliament, will you?
That I didn’t do what you said?” She was still clutching the wall.
If even this height frightened her, she must have been terrified to
hold on to his leg while he flew.

They’ll eat you if I tell them that you
didn’t stick to our treaty, that you refused to translate.

“Yes.”

“Why’d you refuse us then?”

“We avoid human places, human things,” she
said. “The fewer humans know about us, the safer my people are.
Owls are cruel, but they at least know how to keep quiet.”

I’m human, Paul thought. He was still pretty
angry that even the translators had a double standard for non-owls.
And I don’t like when people disrespect me.

“I mean no disrespect.” She shook her head
enthusiastically. “Your people have a story about a mouse and a
lion, don’t they? About a lion that spared a mouse’s life?”

He knew that story too. It was one of Aesop’s
tales. The lion spared the mouse’s life, and in return the mouse
gnawed the lion free when a hunter trapped it in a net. The moral
was that you never knew who might be useful to you in the long
run.

What could you possibly do for me? The only
thing I needed from you was translation.

“I know things. Interesting things.”

Like what?

“I know about a mage named Susan.”

Tell me.

“She’s here with us. Not with my family, but
with our people. She’s awaiting trial.”

Trial?

“They say she killed one of our
warriors.”

Can you bring her here to meet me?

She murmured, like she was going through the
possibilities in her mind. Paul flexed his talons, enjoying the way
his sharp claws ticked along the cinderblock wall.

“It will be hard, but I think so. Maybe.
Yes.”

When?

She looked up at the sky. “Come here when the
moon is full.”

He nodded, and watched her climb down the
wall, to see which direction she went.