The Mournful Cry of Owls

Christopher Golden

Christopher Golden is the author of novels including The Myth Hunters, Wildwood Road, and Of Saints and Shadows, and the Body of Evidence series of teen thrillers. With Thomas E. Sniegoski, he is the coauthor of the dark fantasy series The Menagerie, the young readers fantasy series OutCast, and the comic book miniseries Talent. Golden was born and raised in Massachusetts, where he still lives with his family. He is currently collaborating with Hellboy creator Mike Mignola to write Baltimore, or, the Steadfast Tin Soldier and the Vampire. Please visit him at www.christophergolden.com.

On a warm, late summer’s night, Donika Ristani sat on the roof outside her open window—fat-bellied acoustic guitar in her hands—and searched for the chords that would bring life to the music she knew lay within her. The shingles were warm from the sun, though an hour had passed since dusk, and the smell of tar and cut grass filled her with a pleasant summery feeling that kept her normally flighty spirit from drifting into fancy.

The radio played in her room, competing with the music of the woods around the house—the crickets and owls and rustling things—which grew to a crescendo as though attempting to draw her down amongst the trees. Her fingers plucked and strummed, for she despised the use of a pick, and she discovered a third melody that created a kind of balance between the radio and the woods, the inside and outside.

Joe Jackson sang “Is She Really Going Out with Him?” Donika liked the song well enough, but her thoughts were elsewhere, thinking about inside and outside—about the person she was for her mother’s sake, and the person that all of her instincts told her she ought to be. She found herself strumming Harry Chapin’s “Taxi,” lost in her head, and singing along to the weird bridge in the middle of the tune.

I’ve been letting my outside tide me over ’til my time runs out.

The truth frustrated the hell out of her and she brought her right hand down on the strings to stop herself playing another note of that song. Her gaze drifted down her driveway to the darkened ribbon of Blackberry Lane, searching for headlights, for some sign of her mother’s return. Without so much as a glimmer from the road, she looked out across the thick woods north of the house, impatient to be down there, following the path to Josh Orton’s house. He’d be waiting already, and she could practically feel his arms around her, his face nuzzling her throat.

Donika laughed softly at herself; or perhaps she sighed. She couldn’t tell the difference sometimes.

The DJ did his cool voice and introduced the next tune. Donika smiled and started playing the first notes on her acoustic before it even started on the radio. Bad Company. “Rock and Roll Fantasy.” Good song. Her bedroom walls were covered with posters for Pink Floyd, Zeppelin, and Sabbath, but she liked a little bit of everything. Most of her girlfriends would have laughed at some of the stuff she sang along to on the radio. Or maybe not. Hell, most of them thought Donna Summer the pinnacle of musical achievement.

Now she wished she’d listened more closely to the Joe Jackson tune. She might have to break into her babysitting stash to buy that album.

Her fingers moved up and down the frets, playing Bad Company by ear. She’d never played the song before, but the guitar was like an extension of herself and picking out the notes presented no greater difficulty than singing along. The crickets had gotten louder, but she managed not to hear them. The radio crackled a bit; some kind of interference, maybe the weather or a passing jet. She didn’t understand such things very well. Turn on the box, the music came out. What else did she need to know?

The heat of the day still lingered in her skin the same way it did in the shingles. No more sticky humidity, so that was nice. She felt comfortably warm up there in her spaghetti strap tank top and cutoff jeans, as if the sun had gotten down inside her instead of setting over the horizon, and it would hide there until morning.

Owls cried out in the woods, and Donika glanced up, searching the trees as though she might spot one, the strings of her guitar momentarily forgotten. Other people thought they were funny birds, but she had always heard something else in their hooting, a terrible sadness that she wanted to answer with her own frustrations.

A flash of light came from the road. She watched the headlights move along Blackberry Lane and her breath caught as she thought of Josh again. When the car drove by without slowing, she sighed and lay against the slanted roof, the shingles rough and hot against her back. She hugged the guitar and wondered if Josh was sitting outside, waiting for her, or if he was up in his room listening to music on his bed. Both images had their appeal.

Somehow she missed the sound of an approaching engine and looked up only as light washed across the trees and she heard tires rolling up the driveway. Donika sat forward as her mother’s ancient Dodge Dart putted up to the house. When she turned off the engine, it ticked and popped, and then the door creaked open.

“Get off that roof, ’Nika!”

The girl laughed. The woman had eyes like a hawk, even in the dark.

She slipped in through her bedroom window and put away her guitar before going downstairs. Her mother stood in the kitchen, looking through the day’s mail. Qendressa Ristani had lush black hair like her daughter, but streaked with gray. She wore it pulled back tightly. Though her mother was nearly fifty, Donika thought her hairstyle too severe, more appropriate for a grandmother. Her clothes reflected the same sensibility, which probably explained why she never dated. Though she’d given up wearing black a decade or so back, Donika’s mother still saw herself as a widow. Men might flirt with her—she was prettier than most women her age—but Qendressa would not encourage them. She’d been widowed young, and had no desire to replace the only man she had ever loved.

Her life was the seamstress shop where she worked in downtown Jameson, and the home she’d made for herself and her daughter upon coming to America a dozen years before. But her Old World upbringing still persisted in many ways, not the least of which was her insistence on using herbs and oils as homegrown remedies for all sorts of ills, both physical and spiritual.

“How was your day, Ma?”

“Eh,” the woman said, “is the same.”

Donika grabbed her sandals and sat down at the table, slipping one on. Her mother dropped the mail on the table. As she slipped on her sandals, she looked up to find her mother staring at her.

“Where you going?”

“Josh’s. Sue and Carrie and a couple of Josh’s friends are there already waiting for me. We’re going to walk into town for pizza.”

“You going to hang around those boys dressed like that?”

Donika flushed with anger and stood up, the chair scraping backward on the floor.

“Look, Ma, you need to get off this stuff. This is 1979, not 1950, and we’re in Massachusetts, not Albania. You want me to be home when you get back from work so you won’t worry about me? Okay, I sort of understand that. I don’t like it, but I get it. But look around. I don’t dress differently from other girls. Turn on the TV once in a while—”

“TV,” her mother muttered in disgust, averting her eyes.

“I’m going to be sixteen tomorrow,” Donika protested.

Qendressa Ristani sniffed. “This is supposed to make me less worried? This is why I worry!”

“Well, don’t! I’m fine. Just let me enjoy being sixteen, okay?”

The woman hesitated, taking a long breath, and then she nodded slowly and waved her daughter away. “Go. Be a good girl, ’Nika. Don’t make me shamed.”