[#062] Fire in the Eyes

The statue had already come into view at the top of the mountain by the time I noticed the shape following us through the snowy pines. It stood upright like a man, but that alone wasn't convincing anymore. I tugged on Mother's sleeve and pointed back, watching as it melted into shadows just before she turned around.

Her eyes gleamed blue in the moonlight as she scanned the slope beneath us. Her voice whispered in my ear from inches away, and still I jumped at the sound of it. "Just a bird, little one," it cooed. "They cannot stop us now."

My heart raced laps around my insides as we carried onward up the hill. The shape emerged from the brush below to trail at least a hundred yards back, while above the towering figure of the Owl came into view.

It perched atop a fallen log itself a dozen feet tall. The Owl stood at least four times as much, and I wondered how they hid it for so long at such a height. The road we traveled ended right at the bricks mortared over the entrance once carved between its talons into the stone foundation. Above I could just make out the bundles of straw and twigs bound tightly in the statue's eyes, constructed by the supplicants who brought this curse upon us almost ten years ago.

We wouldn't need the door, of course.

Mother drew her bow and lit the arrow, and this was the only signal the shape needed to attack. I watched as yellow orbs of hatred opened up behind us, and the thing which had followed us for a hundred miles stretched its wings and dove.

Talons raked across my mother's face, blood pouring from her cheeks as she fell to her knees and cried out. She tossed the bow to the ground and stabbed at the thing just as it swooped on her for the second round, driving the point of her arrow into its feathered chest and screaming righteous fury.

She had said the owls were prideful. She knew they would only send one to stop us. And she was right.

Which is why I came. No bird would suspect a child so young to be a threat, but a child who's lived their entire life beneath the rule of monsters has little to lose.

And so I drew my own short bow from the pack around my arm and lit up. I nocked the arrow, took my aim, and fired at the massive, leathery eggs resting in the nests above. The fire spread quickly, and an entire parliament of owls went up in flames by the time my mother had wrestled the thing onto the ground and extinguished the glow in its eyes.

We stood beneath the fire and waited for its warmth to drown out the cold winds blowing over the mountain top. We breathed in victory, and we breathed out a promise. We knew they would send more next time, but we had nothing to lose.

One nest down. One hundred thousand more to go.