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ask.
    â€œGreat-grandmother, was my father a human being who turned into an owl?” I had thought she might hesitate, but to my distress, she did not. Her answer was as quick and simple as it was disappointing.
    â€œNooooo,” she hooted, “he was never anything but an owl.”
    â€œOhhh,” I said, lowering my head in dejection.
    My thought had been that if my father had turned himself into an owl, perhaps the ability to turn into a human being would be in me.
    â€œListen to me, Wabi,” Great-grandmother hootuled. “Your father was very brave. I never told you, but he gave his life to save me before you were hatched. One night, after I had been hunting very late, I did not choose a good place to hide for the day. A mob of giant crows found me. They would have killed me had not your father flown in and attacked them. He led them away and was never seen again.”
    I lifted my head up. The story of my father’s sacrifice made me feel both proud and sad.
    â€œWhy did you wait so long to tell me?” I asked.
    Great-grandmother dipped her head. “Because of me, you never knew your father,” she said. “I did not want you to hate me.”
    I rubbed my head against my great-grandmother’s shoulder. “I could never hate you,” I said in a soft voice. Then I sighed. “I just thought that if my father had been a human, that might explain why I have always been so attracted to them.”
    â€œNooo,” Great-grandmother said. “My brave grandson was always an owl. It was your mother who was once a human.”
    I almost fell off the branch. My beak gaped wide in amazement.
    Great-grandmother nodded at me. “It is not a long story, Wabi. Your mother did not like being a human. She did not like all the things she had to do, such things as cooking and skinning deer and making clothes. She wanted to be an owl so that she would never have to do those things again. Long ago, someone else in her family had made such a change, so it was in her to do this. So she went to the place in the forest where the old stories said such things could happen. It was the place where seven stones made a great circle near the foot of a giant oak tree. And she became an owl, leaving behind all that was human.”
    Great-grandmother chuckled. “Your mother is a beautiful owl, but she has never been very good at being an owl. If your father had not taken pity on her, she would have starved. And after he was gone, when she had you little ones to care for, I stayed close by. Most of the mice she fed you were ones that I caught for her.”
    My head was truly spinning now. I finally understood why my lazy mother had done such an awful job of caring for me when I was young, why she had not even tried to find me after I fell from our nest. Perhaps it even explained why, after my brother and sister had also left the nest, our mother just disappeared. Being an owl had turned out to be harder than she had expected. Had my mother found some way of going back to being a human again? But that was not what I needed to ask now.
    â€œGreat-grandmother,” I said. “I have one more question.”
    My great-grandmother looked off into the forest before she turned her head back to me.
    â€œI am sure that you dooo,” she said.

CHAPTER 15
    Seven Stones
    â€œAH,” GREAT-GRANDMOTHER SAID. THEN SHE sat silently for a long time after I had asked that one more question. It was this:
    How can I change into a human being?
    I could tell how much my question troubled her. Her eyes were closed and her ear tufts were lowered back on her head. Finally she clacked her beak, opened her eyes, and swiveled her head to look straight at me. Then she made one of those soft little whoot-a-luls that is an owl’s way of sighing.
    â€œSo-oo-ooo, you are sure this is what you want?”
    â€œYes.”
    She sighed again. “Look down.”
    I looked down over my right shoulder.