Read Online First Came the Owl by Judith Benét Richardson - Free Book Online Page B

and fierce talons.
    Quickly, Petrova found a metal tag in her bag and slipped it around his ankle. She squeezed the tag shut with pliers. Nita read the words engraved in the aluminum: Advise Fish & Wildlife, Washington D.C., and a number.
    â€œWonder where he’ll go next,” said Petrova. “Do you want to take him out?”
    â€œOh, yes, ” said Nita. She wasn’t afraid of him anymore, and she hated seeing him in the tin can. She couldn’t wait to get him out.
    â€œHold him like I did,” cautioned Petrova.
    Nita got hold of his feet, and they stood him up, still inside the cans. As the tube slipped off over his head, Nita put her arm around him. He was heavy and very warm and soft. Nita held on. “Good-bye,” she whispered, and let go of his wings. Instantly, he spread them, and Nita released his feet with a little down and then up motion. It couldn’t have been enough to throw him into the air, but he caught the rhythm and the wind took him. He soared over the dune and was swept down the beach until he was a white dot in the distance that finally dissolved in the winter sky.
    â€œI need my earmuffs,” said Nita. “I’m freezing.” As she covered her ears with soft fur, she remembered the downy warmth of the owl in her arms before she released him into his real world, the sky.
    Nita laughed. She took off and ran down the beach. She held out her arms like a pair of soaring wings and the wind blew her. She soared, laughing, all the way to the end of the sand.
    Breathless, she ran back to Petrova. “That was so great,” Nita said.
    Even Petrova smiled. “We were really lucky,” she said. “Lots of times they get away.”
    I forgot I was never going to speak to her again, thought Nita. Oh, well. I can’t be mad at her after she let me hold the owl. They walked back to the Stillwaters’ in a friendly silence. The day was so bright with sun on the snow, and the memory of the wonderful bird, that she hardly noticed the long walk back.

Twelve
    T HE STILLWATERS ’ woodburning stove made the living room cozy on this chilly afternoon. Anne played the piano. Petrova sat in front of her paper owl model, made of hundreds of tiny cutout pieces. It wasn’t flat but rounded, a three-dimensional model.
    Nita slid onto the other chair at Petrova’s card table and watched Petrova fit A to B and E to F.
    â€œDo you have another pair of scissors?” she asked.
    Petrova shoved them over. Nita began to snip at a big scrap of paper. She cut bits of paper off the edges here and there, and the round head and streamlined body of the owl appeared. The feathery legs and huge talons were a little harder. But in a few minutes, Nita trimmed out quite a believable owl.
    Anne stopped playing the piano and looked at Nita’s creation. “It’s a shadow puppet,” she said.
    â€œI think … I think they have them in Thailand. When I was little I saw a show,” said Nita, suddenly remembering. Like the lizard moment, another picture flashed into Nita’s mind. A warm summer night with lanterns hung in the trees and huge black shadows sword fighting on a white screen. Nita had sat on a wooden bench and leaned on someone’s knee, but she couldn’t quite remember whose knee it was.
    Now, in the Stillwaters’ living room, Anne aimed the lighted lamp at the wall and Nita held up her cutout. A big black shadow soared around the living room.
    â€œEek!” said Anne. Even Petrova looked a little surprised. “It’s a really good owl. Maybe we could use it in the play,” Anne went on.
    â€œMa-jah says in Thailand owls are evil spirits,” said Nita. She hadn’t remembered this until she made the shadow leap across the wall.
    â€œThat’s ridiculous,” said Petrova. Nita bounced the owl shadow on the shadow of Petrova’s head and Petrova shrank back in her chair.
    â€œSo there!”