Wabi (3 page)

Great-grandmother, who for sure was one who thought of many things, explained that to me when I asked her why my mother didn't do a better job of caring for me.

“Do not be angry at her, Wabi,” she cooed to me. “She does not know much.”

Then she told me I was more like my father, her grandson. Not in thinking. He wasn't much at that or he never would have ended up with my mother. But in courage.

“Your father,” Great-grandmother said, “never feared anything, nooo, not him.” Then she shook her head sadly.

As the beautiful light of the night traveler, the moon, shone each night, my great-grandmother kept feeding and preening me. She faithfully kept watch over me during each day. The moon grew from a thin arc to a full round face during that time. I grew too. More than I had ever grown before. Not having to compete with a greedy brother made a difference.

Finally, as I flapped my wings in that little sheltering place under our hemlock, I felt that I was ready.

“I want to try,” I said. “Now, now. I want to fly!”

My great-grandmother pushed a branch aside with her shoulder. I hopped out, and jumped and flapped hard at the same time.

And I flew! I flew strong and straight! I flapped again and again and . . . I ran right into the trunk of a white birch tree.

Whomp! Flop!

I was on my back on the ground again. My feathers had cushioned the blow and I wasn't hurt, but I was angry. I jumped up and glared at that birch tree, lowered my head, lifted my wings and . . . then thought better of it. It would not do any good to fight with a tree. It hadn't tried to knock me down. I had flown into it. I lowered my wings and swiveled my head around to look at my great-grandmother, who had just landed behind me.

“Goooood,” she said. Her voice sounded happy.

“That was
not
a good flight,” I said. I was not happy. “You saw me run into that tree.”

Great-grandmother chuckled. “That is true,” she said. “But I was not talking about your flight. It is good that you did not attack that tree. Your father ran into a birch tree the first time he flew toooo. Then he spent half of the night fighting with it. He clawed all the lower bark off that tree and broke one of his claws. And even when he finally saw he could not beat a tree, he made it a point to never land in a birch from then on. Wabi, it is good that you know how to think.”

Her words pleased me so much that I opened my wings, flapped them, and flew again. This time I didn't fly into that tree. I shrugged one shoulder a little more than the other, as I had seen my great-grandmother do. It worked. I turned and turned. I flew in a circle around the tall birch, rising higher and higher until I landed in its topmost branch.

“I am Wabi,” I called up to the face of the night traveler. “I can think.”

My great-grandmother came flying up and I moved in a little to make room for her. “That is true,” she called. “True, true, trooo.”

WHEN I THINK BACK ON those seasons while I was growing up, I realize how patient my great-grandmother was with me. No matter what I asked her, she always tried to give me an answer.

“Why is there day and night?” I asked her once, raising my ear tufts in an inquisitive way. We were sitting together on the high limb of a pine just as the eye of the day was vanishing.

“Hoo-too-loo, long agooo . . .” she began.

I leaned against her, fluffing out my feathers in delight. I loved it whenever she started to answer this way. It meant a story.

“Hoo-too-loo,” she hooted again, “there was nothing but dark. There was darkness everywhere. There was a world then, but it was always night.”

“Hooo-hooo,” I said, raising my ear tufts even higher. The thought of a world where it was always night was wonderful and exciting.

“It was beautiful,” my great-grandmother said. “In that world loooong ago, we flew in darkness all the time. Even the night traveler did not show her face. We hunted and flew and sang in the darkness, and it sang back to us.”

“Hooo-hooo,” I said again as my great-grandmother paused to let the picture of her story grow in my thoughts.

“Ooh-hoo,” said great grandmother, “but although that dark was good for owls, it was not good for all things. The little ones who eat plants and grasses had no food, for their food would not grow without the light. So the Great Darkness spoke to us; it asked us to agree that there should also be light. That way the creatures that feared the darkness could survive, that way plants would be able to grow. And there was one more thing.

“‘Soooon,' the Great Darkness said, ‘there will be other beings here. They will walk on two legs as you owls do when you are on the ground. But they will not fly and they will be afraid of the darkness for they will not be as brave as owls. You owls,' the Great Darkness continued, ‘are my best creation, I love you very much. But I ask you to sacrifice, to give up half of the beautiful night so that these pitiful new beings can also live.'”

Great-grandmother paused and looked toward the horizon where the moon was just beginning to appear.

I knew what was going to happen next in her story. It made me feel proud to be an owl. It also made me curious about those two-legged ones that were mentioned by the Great Darkness. I had not heard about them before.

“Soooo,” great-grandmother said, “we owls agreed. We gave up half of the beautiful night to make day. And that is how it has been ever since.”

“Hooo-hoo,” I said.

I felt glad about what the Great Darkness did. Even though the brightness of day hurt my eyes, it was a good thing. Without day, we would not have so many things to eat. Those mice and rabbits and squirrels and other creatures could only grow to be fat and tasty by eating the plants that needed the light to grow.

Thinking back now to when I was sure that everything in the world had been made for us night-flyers, I have to smile at how little I really understood.

“Great-grandmother,” I asked at the time, “who are those two-legged ones that the Great Darkness spoke of? Did they ever get created?”

Great-grandmother looked at me in a strange way, as if she was remembering something sad. Then she nodded her head. “Yes, Wabi. Those two-legged ones are called human beings.”

“Do any of them live near us? What are they like? Can we go and see them?”

She chuckled. “You are asking tooo many questions at once, great-grandson. Yes, there are humans who live close by. And you will learn what they are like one day. I am sure of that.”

I rocked back and forth from one foot to another.

“Can we go see them now?” I asked.

“Not yet, Wabi, but soooon.”

I stared down at my feet, trying not to ask more questions, but it was no use. “Great-grandmother, how is it that you know so much?”

“It is because I know what I do not know, Wabi,” she said to me.

I was confused. How could you know what you do not know? Did that mean knowing or not knowing? I sat staring at my feet through half the night and still didn't have an answer.

I had so many questions that I felt as if my head would burst. I could not keep quiet.

“Why do I ask so many questions?” I said to Great-grandmother one day.

“It is because you are you,” she answered.

That led to another bout of foot-staring, and not just for one night. How could I be anyone else but me?

 

It was many winters later when I asked the question that changed everything for me. I was now the biggest owl in the whole forest. That was a surprise to me, but even more of a surprise to others. Usually female owls are bigger than males.

The question came about because of a chance meeting one night with another owl. My sister. I came across her while hunting in our far ridge one look away from my roosting place. (A look is as far as you can see while sitting in a high place. That is how we owls measure distance.)

My sister swiveled her head to look up at me when I floated down onto the branch just above her.

“Sister, hello,” I said in a neutral tone.

I was determined to be polite, even if she had intruded on the hunting territory that great-grandmother and I controlled.

She fluffed up her feathers, trying to look bigger. Then she realized that she recognized my voice. She stared hard at me.

“Rrrtrrbrrll, ull-ooo?” she hooted in a confused voice. Runt, is that you?

“The name is Wabi,” I said. “I am Runt no longer. What do you think of that? Are you not glad to see me?”

She didn't answer me. She just kept staring. Perhaps her narrow mind could not accept the fact that I was not only alive but bigger than she was.

She may have been surprised too at the way I looked. And here is another thing I have not mentioned before—the color of my feathers.

In every way but one, I looked like other owls of my kind—from the two tufts of feather that rise like horns on top of my head to the sharp, curved claws on my feet. In every way but one—my color. My color was not like theirs. Where their feathers were brown, mine were pale, almost the color of snow.

That was why my great-grandmother had given me the name Wabi, which means “white.” By the light of the moon, especially on a night when her face was full and open as it was on the night when I met my sister again, I almost glowed.

My sister kept staring at me, her ear tufts flattened down against her head. There was no friendship in her gaze and certainly not much intelligence. I lost patience with her.

“HOO-HOO! HOOOO!” I hooted in my loudest voice, spreading my wings as I did so. “MY TERRITORY! MOVE!”

My sister did just that. She dove off the branch and flapped her wings, not in the leisurely way we do when hunting, but in panic, vanishing into the distance. She would not intrude on my hunting ground again.

I went looking for Great-grandmother. It did not take me long to find her. She was in the top of a great pine that stood not far from the place where I had just had my encounter with my unfriendly sister. She had probably seen—and heard—it all.

That was when I asked the question.

“Why didn't my sister answer me?”

Great-grandmother looked at me. It was one of those looks that told me I had to be patient and listen closely. So I did, even though I rocked back and forth from one foot to the other as I waited.

“Wabi,” Great-grandmother said at last, looking out at the forest as she spoke, “she could not understand you.”

“Why?”

This time I did not have to wait for the answer.

Great-grandmother turned and looked straight at me. “She could not understand because you were not speaking owl talk. You were talking as the human beings do.”

“But that is how you and I talk all the time,” I said. “Why do those two-legged ones speak the same words that we do?”

“Because it is the other way around,” she said.

“You mean we talk to each other with human words?” It was very confusing to me. “Why is that so?”

This led to the longest silence my great-grandmother had ever forced on me. We sat there so long that my impatient rocking scraped all the bark from the branch under my feet. Moon moved almost the entire way across the sky as I waited for an answer.

My great-grandmother finally turned to me and sighed.

“Wabi,” she said, “you and I have a special gift that most owls do not have. We are able, if we listen closely, to understand the speech of many other beings. Not just owls, but humans and other creatures toooo.”

“Why?” I asked. As usual, one answer was not enough to satisfy me.

Great-grandmother shook her head. “On another night, I will answer you. Now the moment is not right.”

Then she flew away, leaving me with even more questions for which I had no answers.

LISTENING IS VERY IMPORTANT. EVEN the dullest owl knows that. Our survival depends on using our ears, even before we use our eyes, our wings, and our talons.

“Wabi,” Great-grandmother said to me soon after she began caring for me, “always remember that you have two ears, two eyes, two wings, and two feet. But you have only one mouth.”

I understood what she meant, or at least I thought I did.

Two ears to hear food. Two eyes to see it when it starts to run. Two wings to sweep down on it. Two feet to grab it firm. And then, of course, one mouth was plenty enough to eat it.

I know now that Great-grandmother meant more than that. I was asking so many questions that it probably seemed to her as if I had more than one mouth. I hadn't discovered yet that curiosity can get you into more trouble than listening and looking, flying and grabbing. But I was about to learn.

For some reason, I had decided to watch the setting of the Day Fire all by myself from a tall broken cedar at the edge of the big swamp. I had not told my great-grandmother where I was going. After all, I was a big owl now, even though I was still young. What did I have to be afraid of?

That, of course, was a question I should have been asking myself.

That night, though, as I sat there watching the colors of the sky-edge change, I was not thinking of questions. Instead I was just enjoying how it all looked. There were no owl words to express how I felt, but I had learned some new words that seemed right. Since my great-grandmother had told me we were using human words to talk with each other, I had begun to pay attention to those two-legged beings who lived near the waterfall. Some evenings I would sit hidden in a cedar tree to watch and listen and remember what they said about things. So I spoke some of those words now.