Wabi Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  CHAPTER 1 - First Memories

  CHAPTER 2 - Falling

  CHAPTER 3 - Little Food

  CHAPTER 4 - Who?

  CHAPTER 5 - First Flight

  CHAPTER 6 - Questions

  CHAPTER 7 - Listening

  CHAPTER 8 - People-Watching

  CHAPTER 9 - Better to Be an Owl

  CHAPTER 10 - The Greedy Eater

  CHAPTER 11 - A Wolf Cub

  CHAPTER 12 - Miserable

  CHAPTER 13 - She Goes By

  CHAPTER 14 - One More Question

  CHAPTER 15 - Seven Stones

  CHAPTER 16 - In the Light of Day

  CHAPTER 17 - Hello, My Friends

  CHAPTER 18 - His Name Was Nadialid

  CHAPTER 19 - Stringing the Bow

  CHAPTER 20 - The Feast

  CHAPTER 21 - What I Needed to Do

  CHAPTER 22 - The Wide Valley

  CHAPTER 23 - Head Breaker

  CHAPTER 24 - Big Crows

  CHAPTER 25 - The Deep Spring

  CHAPTER 26 - In the Cave

  CHAPTER 27 - Cooking Meat

  CHAPTER 28 - Wigowzo’s Story

  CHAPTER 29 - Into the Swamp

  CHAPTER 30 - No Human Can Resist

  CHAPTER 31 - The Old Mother Wolf

  CHAPTER 32 - The Bone Lodge

  CHAPTER 33 - The Torn Feather

  CHAPTER 34 - The Circle of Flame

  CHAPTER 35 - The Steep Slope

  CHAPTER 36 - The Weight of the Great Bear

  CHAPTER 37 - Good Medicine

  CHAPTER 38 - Seven Stars

  Something is different....

  When I opened my eyes again, it was no longer night. I was flat on my back and the bright sun was shining down on me through the leaves. Things looked different. It was as if I was seeing the light in a different way. I tried to close my inner eyelid, but nothing happened.

  I wasn’t in pain, but when I turned my head, my neck felt unusually tight. I raised my wing to my beak and was shocked at how soft it was. What were these even softer things under it and around my mouth? Lips. I had lips. For that matter, what were these wiggly worms at the ends of my wings? Fingers?

  I started to sit up, but was pushed back by two big paws that pressed down on my chest. A large head thrust itself into view, mouth open, long sharp teeth exposed.

  Then a tongue came out and lapped my face.

  Are you you? Malsumsis whined.

  I lifted my legs, as an owl would do, and pushed against my wolf friend with my feet.

  “Get off me,” I said.

  My voice sounded strange, but it seemed to please Malsumsis.

  Other books by Joseph Bruchac

  The Arrow Over the Door

  Children of the Longhouse

  Code Talker

  Eagle Song

  The Heart of the Chief

  The Winter People

  SPEAK

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3

  (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

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  (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)

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  (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Registered Offices: Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published in the United States of America by Dial Books,

  a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2006

  Published by Speak, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2007

  Copyright © Joseph Bruchac, 2006

  All rights reserved

  THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED THE DIAL BOOKS EDITION AS FOLLOWS:

  Bruchac, Joseph, date.

  Wabi : a hero’s tale / Joseph Bruchac.

  p. cm.

  Summary: After falling in love with an Abenaki Indian woman, a white great horned owl named Wabi transforms into a human being and has several trials and adventures while learning to adapt to his new life.

  eISBN : 978-1-440-68441-8

  1. Abenaki Indians—Fiction. [ 1. Abenaki Indians—Fiction. 2. Great horned owl—Fiction. 3. Owls—Fiction. 4. Indians of North America—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.B82816Wab 2006 [Fic]—dc22 2005015392

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  To the young people of Ndakinna

  CHAPTER 1

  First Memories

  I ALMOST DIED BEFORE I could fly. That is what I remember most about when I was little.

  It’s not the first thing I remember. The first thing was feeling surrounded by a wall that was wrapped around me. The wall had never bothered me before. I’d always felt warm and secure. But then a frantic feeling came over me. I had to get out of there. I pushed against the wall with my head, attacked it with my beak. Finally, when it seemed as if I couldn’t fight any longer, I broke through.

  My brother was waiting for me on the other side. He is the second thing I remember. Unfortunately. He gave me a big shove. Then he bit me.

  “That hurt!” I said.

  “Get used to it,” he replied.

  Actually, what I said was, “Hrttt-rrrrllll!” And what he said back to me was, “Hrrllll.” Then he bit me again.

  There wasn’t much I could do to fight back. I was really little. You wouldn’t think it to look at me now, but I was the smallest one in my family. My sister and brother were both bigger than me.

  My sister never paid much attention to me. She had bigger things to worry about, namely our brother. But I learned a lot from her, just by watching. I saw how she could sidestep to keep out of my brother’s way when our mother wasn’t around. I started doing the same thing and began to avoid most of his pecks and pushes. When our mother came back, my brother ignored us. He was too interested in seeing what food she brought and making sure that he got most of it.

  “KURRULLL, KURRULLL, KURRULLL,” he would shriek, opening his mouth as wide as he could and shouldering us aside.

  What he said meant: “Mine, mine, mine!”

  That was pretty much it as far as the food our mother brought to us. From the half-digested bits of yummy little critters that she coughed up when we were owlets to the nice crunchy whole mice that hung limp and delicious from her beak as we got older, my big brother always got more than my sister and me.

  Of course I got the least. That is what happens when you are the last one to hatch.

  My sister kept her eyes open for anything else that might be dangerous. Lots of creatures like to eat little owls. She was always looking up, looking down, turning her head around. I learned to do that too. Or at least I did so when I wasn’t sidestepping as fast as I could to keep away from my big brother’s beak. The only good thing about his eating more than us was that it also meant he slept more.

  Keeping very quiet and still was also something my big sister did really well, especially when the shadow of another wide-winged bird
went over. Being silent is useful in other ways than avoiding the attention of a hungry hawk or crow. For one, it makes you a better listener. Listening is very, very important. When you are small, you can hear things that might eat you. When you are grown, it’s the other way around.

  Although I learned a lot from her, I know that my big sister wasn’t trying to teach me. She acted as if I didn’t exist.

  My brother, though, did pay attention to me. Unfortunately.

  “Whoool-tooo, Rrrtrrbrrll!” Move, Runt!

  “Grrraaaccc!” Drop that food!

  “Hrrllll.” Get used to it.

  I’m not sure how I survived. From other owls, I’ve learned that every nest was not as bad as ours. In most nests, the chicks squabble a little around feeding time, but otherwise just live and let live. It was just my luck to have been hatched into one with an ornicidal maniac.

  I remember waking up one night from a dream in which our whole tree was being shaken by a big scary wind. I was being thrown around, all right, but not by the wind. The next violent push against me made me realize two things real fast. The first, of course, was that my brother was the one shoving me. The second realization was that I had been pushed up onto the edge of the nest. I was about to fall.

  I didn’t know for sure what was down there. I’d never touched the earth or seen things like grass and flowers close up. My whole world was our nest and the branches around us, the sky, and my mother’s wide wings overhead. There was also, every now and then, another presence in the high branches of the tree some distance from ours. It wasn’t threatening, like the crows our mother warned us about.

  “Black-wings come in, they eat you then,” was what she said. Things that wanted to devour tender little owlets made up a good part of her conversations. “Don’t get eaten,” was the only advice she ever gave us.

  But even though that distant presence seemed to me to be another owl rather than a crow, it never came close to feed us the way our mother did.

  At the moment when my brother had shoved me to the very edge of our nest, I didn’t think about that other owl. All I could think was that I was about to be pushed out.

  I grabbed the side of the nest with both feet, dug my claws in hard, and shoved back at my brother. To my surprise, he yelped and went rolling into the center of the nest. He landed on his back and stayed there, threatening me with his claws.

  I ignored him as I hopped down to safety. Even though I was small, I was tougher than I’d thought. Was I stronger than my big brother? It was an interesting thought. All the rest of that day he didn’t push me or nip me even once. He clacked his beak a time or two, but I could live with that. Especially as opposed to being pushed out to fall to what I suspected was certain death below. Foxes, weasels, wolverines, wolves, minks, fishers, bears, snakes. Our mother had mentioned all of them as well as a few more creatures that were even larger, scarier, and just as likely to view a little owl as a nice snack in between bigger meals. “Monsters,” she said. “They want to eat you.”

  The thought of being strong enough to actually defend myself made me feel self-confident. I wasn’t used to feeling confident. Hungry, uncertain, wary, confused, disappointed, and bruised, yes. But not confident.

  It turned out that being confident was not as good a thing as I thought. I felt so self-confident that I stopped watching my brother as closely as I had been. Instead, when my mother fed us the next day, I hopped forward, beak open, and got a limp fat mouse all to myself. As I gulped it down, I watched her spread her wings and float into flight. It looked easy. I’d never thought about being able to fly before. I hopped over to the edge of the nest and peered up as she sailed away.

  I could do that someday, I thought, extending one wing to look at it. My feathers had been growing in nicely. Not one bit of yellow fluff was left.

  Then something hit me hard from behind.

  My brother had seen his chance. My feet grabbed at the small sticks that edged our nest, but I was too late. I had been pushed right out. I was falling.

  “RRTTTTBLLL!” my brother hooted triumphantly as I plummeted. Down I went, down, down toward the deadly ground below.

  CHAPTER 2

  Falling

  MY DROP COULD NOT HAVE taken long, but it didn’t seem that short to me. I had far too much time to think about far too many things as the wind of my fall whistled past me.

  Our mother had warned us so many times about what was down there that it seemed to me impossible I could survive. “Stumps and stones will break all your bones,” she would burble whenever she saw one of us even leaning toward the edge of the nest to try and look over.

  And if getting all my bones broken didn’t kill me, that would not be the end of it. I could then look forward to some hungry creature coming to eat me up.

  All of that might have happened if I had just kept tumbling, beak over tail. But at some point I remembered those new wing feathers that I had been admiring.

  Birds don’t fall, a voice inside my head said. They fly.

  I thrust my wings open. It stopped my descent almost as suddenly as a spider coming to a halt in midair at the end of its silk thread. Almost. You see, I didn’t stop completely. Opening my wings just turned my plummeting fall into a slow glide. Slow enough for me to realize I was heading right toward a big pine tree whose lower branches had died and broken off, leaving stubs that looked as sharp as fangs. If I ran into one, I would be impaled. I wouldn’t have to worry then about hungry predators. I would already be dead meat!

  I tried wildly to remember how my mother looked when she flew. What was it that she did to stop or change directions as she came in to land? Feet out, shoulders hunched up—that was it. I thrust my legs forward and shrugged my shoulders. It worked! Not only did I slow down, I managed to turn away from the pine tree entirely.

  But in my excitement, I thrust my feet and flapped just a little too hard.

  Whooops! I flipped backward in midair and landed—if you can call it that—totally upside down. I hadn’t struck any of those stumps or stones my mother had warned about, but I had been introduced to something else that wasn’t exactly friendly. Blackberry bushes. Their thorns had grasped me as firmly as a wasp stuck in pine sap.

  I thrashed around trying to work free. All that it did was make those thorns stick even more firmly into my feathers. I was caught, even though the top of my head was less than a wing’s width from the ground.

  “That was a very impressive landing,” a friendly voice said from somewhere behind me. “Yes, it was. Yes, indeed.”

  I tried to turn toward the voice. Usually that would be an easy thing for an owl to do. Our eyes don’t move in our heads the way human eyes do, but we can turn our heads all the way around on our necks to look behind us. However, the stubborn blackberry thorns held me tight. Being upside down was bad enough. Not being able to look around made me even more nervous.

  “Ah,” the friendly voice continued. “You cannot turn your little head around to see me? Do not worry. I will make it easy for you to see me. Yes, I will.”

  Owls have very big ears. We can hear such things as a vole shuddering in the dry leaves at the base of an oak that is twenty trees away. So even though the one who was talking to me moved softly, I heard every footstep that he made. It was the sound of someone who was used to creeping up on the unwary.

  I clacked my beak in frustration. I had a feeling that I knew what I was about to see and that I would be no match for it. But if I just had my wings and talons free, I could at least put up a fight.

  “Here I am,” that voice said, a voice that I now realized was not friendly at all. It was pleased. And hungry.

  “Here I am. Yes, here I am, indeed,” said the red-coated animal that smiled down at me. “As you can see, I am a fox, yes. Are you glad to see me? I am glad, yes, very glad to see you.”

  The fox slid closer. He was so close that I could feel his hot breath on my beak. He opened his mouth wide. His teeth looked longer and sharper than the broken
branches of that pine tree.

  CHAPTER 3

  Little Food

  I KNEW VERY LITTLE ABOUT life outside our nest. But as that fox’s mouth opened even wider, I realized that I had now learned two new things. The first was that foxes have very bad breath. The second was that my own life was apparently going to be very short.

  I didn’t like what was about to happen at all. It wasn’t having my little hollow bones crunched between those drooling jaws that bothered me the most, although I certainly didn’t look forward to it. It was being unable to do anything about it. Even more than to escape, I wanted to fight back.

  I clacked my beak again and struggled against the blackberry thorns. I was so agitated that I was actually able to free one of my legs. Without hesitation, I thrust my foot out toward my enemy’s face, claws first. To my surprise, my long middle talon poked the fox right in his black nose.

  “YOWP!” The fox jumped back and shook his head. He was even more surprised than I was. A little drop of red appeared on the tip of his nose.

  “Little Food, why did you do that?” the fox growled. “Yes, why? I held no resentment toward you, no. I was feeling quite fond of you before you did that. Why, yes, why?”

  I didn’t answer. There was no point, really. I just kept my eyes on him and my one free foot ready.

  “Ah,” the fox said, the grin coming back onto his face, “the Little Food does not answer me. I was just going to eat him in one quick gulp, yes. But now I think I will first pull out all his feathers. Then I will eat him just one little bite at a time. Yes, I will.”

  He took a step toward me and I thrust my talons out at him again. This time, though, he stepped back before I could make contact.

  “Oh, how sweet. The Little Food likes to fight,” the fox said. His voice was amused again. “But he is still stuck in the thorny, thorny bushes. Yes, he is. He will not be able to see me if I go behind him. No. So that is what I will do. Yes, yes, I will.”

  The fox began to move off to one side, as smooth as rainwater flowing down the trunk of a tree. I tried to follow him with my eyes, but he was right. I was caught so tightly I could not turn my body. A few more steps and he was out of my line of vision.