Of a Feather Read online

  Contents

  * * *

  Title Page

  Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  A Note From the Author

  Falconry Q&A

  Bird Rehabilitation Q&A

  Glossary

  Acknowledgments

  Find Your Story

  Read the Vanderbeekers Series

  About the Author

  Connect with HMH on Social Media

  Copyright © 2021 by Dayna Lorentz

  All rights reserved. For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to [email protected] or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.

  hmhbooks.com

  Cover illustration © 2021 by Izzy Burton

  Cover design by Kaitlin Yang

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Lorentz, Dayna, author.

  Title: Of a feather / Dayna Lorentz.

  Description: Boston : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2021. | Audience: Ages 10 to 12. | Audience: Grades 4–6. | Summary: A baby great horned owl, Second, so called because his sister, First, is already out of the nest, is reluctant to hunt for himself, but when his mother is injured he is forced out into the forest; Maureen is a human girl pulled out of her grandmother’s violent home and placed with an aunt—but her Aunt Beatrice is involved in falconry and runs a mews where injured raptors can heal, and it is here Maureen and Second (now called Rufus) meet and learn how to heal each other.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2019042999 (print) | LCCN 2019043000 (ebook) | ISBN 9780358283539 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780358378587 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Great horned owl—Juvenile fiction. | Wildlife rescue—Juvenile fiction. | Wildlife rehabilitators—Juvenile fiction. | Falconry—Juvenile fiction. | Aunts—Juvenile fiction. | Brothers and sisters—Juvenile fiction. | CYAC: Great horned owl—Fiction. | Owls—Fiction. | Wildlife rescue—Fiction. | Falconry—Fiction. | Aunts—Fiction. | Brothers and sisters—Fiction. | LCGFT: Bildungsromans.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.L8814 Of 2021 (print) | LCC PZ7.L8814 (ebook) | DDC 813.6 [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019042999

  LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019043000

  v1.0121

  For Evie & Josh

  and all the other members of the Owl-Human Alliance

  Prologue

  The vole sticks its twitchy little nose out of the shadows and tastes the air with its whiskers. It thinks that no owl is watching.

  Think again, vole. This great horned owl has his eyes on you.

  I can picture it perfectly: The wind will ruffle my feathers as I dive, I’ll feel the fur beneath my talons, and then—SNAP! Breakfast.

  There’s a crash and the tree branches shiver with the impact. It’s my sister, First. “The sun’s been down for an hour and you’re still in the nest?” she squawks.

  I don’t know why she’s here. She fledged last week. Mother twittered with pride, watching First’s silhouette disappear into the trees. I tried not to notice Father glaring down his beak at me, like he doubted I’d ever fly off on my own.

  “Shouldn’t you be somewhere else in the forest?” I hoot in reply.

  “Doesn’t mean I can’t flap by to check in on my favorite runt.”

  “Actually, it does mean that,” I grumble. “You should be claiming territory—some other territory.”

  First narrows her eyes, rouses her feathers. “Who says I haven’t?”

  This owl says. I can tell from the low angle of her ear tufts, from the grumble in her hoots, that she hasn’t. I feel a little bad for her, want to give her a bit of a nibble on the beak, but then she lifts her tufts and chirrups, “At least I’m not shivering in my feathers at the thought of hunting my own food.”

  That’s the First I grew up with, always pecking you right between the eyes, where it’ll hurt most. I contemplate slashing her with a talon. “I am working on a plan.”

  “Planning is for prey. You’re a great horned owl. You hunt. You catch something. Or you don’t and try again.”

  “You have your way, I have mine.” I turn my eyes back to the vole hole.

  First bobs her head, widens her eyes. “Care for a game of Talons?”

  Now I’m suspicious. Talons is a game Father invented for us, to prepare us for “the real forest,” he said. We start in trees on opposite sides of a clearing, and whoever forces the other one to the ground wins. First has fledged—she’s in the “real” forest. How bad must things be going for her to want to play with me?

  Gah, who gives a hoot? This is First. She’ll figure it out.

  “Not now,” I twitter, and pull my feathers into my body, hunker my head down between my wings. “I’m studying.”

  Need I say that I was not the greatest player of Talons? Need I mention that First, being the first to hatch, is bigger and stronger and—perhaps this is unrelated to our hatch order—ruthless?

  “What?” First tweets. “Is baby Second afraid of stepping a toe out of the nest?” She blinks her eyes: top lid down, then clear guard-lid across.

  When I don’t answer, she flaps off the branch.

  Even owls have a hard time hearing other owls. Our feathers are so fluffy, they melt into the wind, become a part of it, so nothing—not our prey, not ourselves—can hear our approach. So it’s only when First slams her talons down in the center of our nest—a wide circle of sticks Father stole from a red-tailed hawk back in the dead of winter—that I realize she hasn’t left for good.

  She grabs a clump of molted feathers from the nest and drops them on my head as she wings off. She’s not taking no for an answer.

  I take a tentative step out onto a branch. “First?” I hoot quietly. “Are we starting? Should I fly out to the clearing?”

  The ripples of wind from her wings hit me just before she bops me on the head with her feet. “Already started!”

  Great Beak! I stumble, miss a talon, and am off the tree and flapping through the night. I weave between the branches, twisting with the air as it curls around obstacles. The forest gives way to grass and I scan the stars for First.

  She’s already swooping down toward me.

  I flip my feet forward but too slowly, so I duck my head and dive, and she misses.

  “That’s cheating!” she cries, carving through the night to make another pass.

  I’ll try this move I saw Father use on an eagle who attacked our nest. I pull my wing in a bit and dip it down. I should flip over, so that my talons are where my back would be, then swirl back around. But the air current tugs too hard. Instead of a graceful twist, I flop over onto my back in midair and begin to drop, upside down and with no way to flap. “Help!”

  First snatches my feet in her talons, drags me back up into the nest. “What was that supposed to be?” She drops me like a piece of prey onto the sticks.

  “It’s a special flip technique I’m testing out,” I chirp with as much dignity as I can muster.

  First blinks slowly. “Planning, testing,” she hoots. “Maybe you
should stay in the nest, brother. Out in the forest, you either do it or you’re prey.” She lifts off and disappears into the darkening blue.

  It’s full dark by the time Mother returns to the nest with a rat, which she lays at my feet. “Was your father here? I thought I heard hooting.”

  “No,” I answer. “It was just me. Practicing.”

  Mother nibbles my tufts. “My little perfectionist, even practicing his hoots.”

  I bob my head away from her beak. “Mother,” I squeak, then try again in a decent hoot. “Mother, should I—am I—do you think . . . ?”

  She tilts her head as if trying to locate the rest of my hoots inside me. “Every owl fledges in their own time.” She pushes the rat toward me. “Eat something.”

  I look down at the rat, then back at the vole hole. You either do it or you’re prey, First had squawked.

  I push the rat back toward Mother. “You eat it,” I hoot. “I’m catching my own breakfast.”

  Mother twitters softly, then flaps off into the night.

  She left the rat.

  I manage to ignore it until the sun pinks the edges of the sky, but then I gobble it down before closing my eyes to sleep.

  1

  Reenie

  I can always fake a smile, always. Except tonight, my face just won’t cooperate.

  For sure, tonight wasn’t great. Gram’s mean boyfriend, Phil, let his usual simmering stew of anger boil over. He and Gram were yelling loud enough to keep me awake. Loud enough to wake the neighbors, too, because one of them made a big deal of everything and called the police just as Phil started throwing plates as punctuation. Now, the social worker is lost trying to drive me to some stranger’s house, her car smells like feet, I have mud on my pajamas, and I cannot make my mouth bend into a smile.

  The car swerves hard onto a side road, and the wheels bump as the road turns from pavement to dirt. I lean forward, pressing my chest to the seat belt, to get into the social worker’s peripheral vision. “Should we maybe go back to my gram’s house?” I say in my nicest kid-trying-to-help voice. It’s the one that works best on adults in these kinds of situations.

  The social worker yawns, gulps a swig of coffee from her thermos, and smiles sleepily. “We’ll find it.” She looks back at the road. I think her name is Randi. Yes, Randi with an i. I pull my backpack onto my lap, reach inside, and wrap the matted fluff of the marabou string Mom gave me tight around my fingers.

  “Ah!” Randi stops the car in front of the driveway of a ramshackle farmhouse built too close to the curb. “Here we are,” she says with forced cheer.

  The headlights pick out shadows along the house’s patchy and peeling white paint. The curtains are drawn across the bay window and no light shines by the green front door.

  “Who lives here, again?” I ask. I’ve never been here before.

  Randi-with-an-i has to look at her folder. “Your great-aunt. Your grandmother’s sister?”

  “I didn’t think Gram had a sister.”

  She flips pages. “Your father’s mother. Her sister.”

  That explains why I don’t know her. I unwrap my fingers, tuck the marabou away. “Okay.”

  Randi squeezes my knee. “This isn’t the end of things, Reenie.”

  “Maureen.”

  “Right. Maureen. Sorry.” She glances at the folder. “It’s another step in the path, that’s all.”

  I pull the handle and pop open the door. “Sure.”

  There isn’t much ceremony in my transfer of custody. The social worker gives the alleged aunt the thick folder and some paperwork. I can guess what the folder has in it: the whole story of me and Mom. How I’ve been living with my gram all summer, ever since Mom’s sadness got so big, it pushed everything else out of her. It’s not the first time this has happened, so we all knew what to do: Gram got Mom admitted to the psychiatric ward at the hospital, and I camped on the futon in Gram’s junk room. Why’d Phil have to mess everything up? Why’d the neighbor have to be such a light sleeper?

  The alleged aunt signs some papers, hands them to Randi-with-an-i, keeps others. In less than ten minutes, Randi’s back on the road, and I’m standing on the warped wood floor of the wide foyer of a potentially falling-down house with a total stranger who’s supposed to be my replacement parent.

  “I’m Beatrice,” the alleged aunt says. “Beatrice Prince.” She’s tall and old. “You can call me Beatrice.” She’s got long gray hair strapped back in a braid with scraggles poking out. She’s wearing men’s flannel pants and a T-shirt so faded I can’t make out the words, only the letters R and T in a few places.

  “You’re Will’s kid?” she says after a minute of me saying nothing.

  “I guess.” My dad has never been around.

  She gives me the up and down with her eyes. “You look like him.”

  “I’ve seen pictures.”

  She considers me for a moment more, then says, “Huh.” She turns and walks toward the back of the house. “Come on,” she says, beckoning from halfway down the hall. Clearly, Randi woke her from a deep sleep.

  I follow her. The floorboards groan and shift beneath my sneakers. The foyer narrows to a hall alongside the stairs, then opens into a kitchen. There are jars and bowls everywhere. A breeze slithers in through the open window, carrying a stink that’s wild and musky and rank.

  “What’s that smell?” I ask, pulling my T-shirt over my nose for emphasis.

  “I keep birds,” she says, stopping beside the counter and taking a sip of water from a mason jar. “This is the kitchen. You can eat whatever you want. That over there is the living room.” She points to the room next to the kitchen. “I don’t have a TV.” She says this as if daring me to complain about the fact. “There’s a dining room, but I don’t use it for dining.”

  “What do you use it for?”

  “My birds.” She walks toward me, back to the front of the house. We stand there, facing each other in the narrow hall. I don’t feel like moving.

  She raises her hand, pointing behind me. “I’ll show you your room.” When I still don’t move, she squeezes around me, then turns and heads upstairs.

  I follow her up the steps to a landing. Right leads to her room at the back of the house. Left leads to my room at the front. Between them is the one bathroom in the house.

  “The blue towels are yours,” she says. “I also found an extra toothbrush and hairbrush. I wasn’t sure—” She stops midsentence, scratches her scalp near the base of the braid. “I’m sorry about your mom going to the hospital. I didn’t know—”

  My fingers claw the canvas of my backpack. “It’s been two months,” I say. “I’m over it.”

  The alleged aunt takes a moment, then nods. “I’ll leave you to get yourself to bed.”

  I must look unusually awful for the aunt to feel the need to start in with the “I’m sorry about your mom” stuff, so I poke my head into the bathroom. It’s clean enough, with a pedestal sink, a rickety-looking shelf over the john, and a claw-footed tub with a white curtain hanging from a circular bar above it. The window looks down the road, back south where I came from.

  There’s a mirror over the sink. My brown hair is a snarl on top of my head. There are circles under my brown eyes and the whites are bloodshot, some of those “signs” adults like to point to when identifying the “troubled kids.” I splash a handful of water on my face, dry off on one of the blue towels, crack open that new toothbrush, and brush my teeth. The toothpaste tastes too minty, but too minty is maybe a good thing. At Gram’s house, there was only one bathroom and four adults—Gram, Phil, Mom’s brother Tony, and his girlfriend, Lisa—plus me, so I didn’t have a lot of chances to brush my teeth. Not that that was a big deal—I mean, I didn’t even have school. But your mouth begins to feel fuzzy after a while. Here, there’s a little metal stand for the toothbrushes. I drop mine in and it jingles. It doesn’t have to act so happy.

  Back in the hall, I approach the closed door identified as “my room.” “My
room” is huge. The walls are yellow—not my color, but whatever—and there’s a round rag rug made of all different-colored strips in the center of the floor. On one side is a desk with a chair; on the other, a big old bed with a quilt and two pillows. The closet is a cavern of empty hangers.

  I open my backpack and take out my two T-shirts. I hang them. They spin listlessly in the vast space. I hang my jean shorts, my four clean socks, and three pairs of underwear on the remaining hangers. I unzip the hoodie I’m wearing and hang it, too. The closet still looks empty. The clothes drift around like they’re looking for someone.

  My backpack lies on the floor, split open like a skin. The marabou hangs out over the zipper. Mom splurged on it one night as we checked out of the Dollar General. We went home and had a karaoke party, taking turns wearing the marabou string as a boa, dancing and belting out Taylor Swift until the neighbors banged on the wall for us to stop.

  That familiar buzz crackles up from my belly button and prickles the inside of my ears. Words fizz out of it: afraid, stranger, alone. The buzz careens around inside of my skull and the words flash like lightning and my fingers start to tingle and I can barely keep the tears from trickling out, but I do. I take a deep breath. Suck it all back in. Squeeze the buzz down to a tummy rumble. Lock all those words up tight.

  “Good night,” I hear from the hall. The strip of light beneath my door goes dark.

  I could say something back, but I don’t.

  The floorboards squeak under my feet as I cross the room. There’s a night table next to the bed. The shallow drawer has a nub of pencil in it, some old hair bands, and a wrinkled paperback book, My Side of the Mountain.

  I’m in someone else’s room. Or what was someone else’s room. So many questions, but I have to wait until the alleged aunt is asleep to begin a proper investigation. I mean, she got a whole file on me. It’s only fair.

  I dig out the paperback. It’s about a kid who runs away to the middle of nowhere because his house is too crowded. I hate it when books make it seem like kids have a choice about this stuff. It’s like, Where’s this guy’s Randi-with-an-i? But whatever—the story keeps me awake.