Wildwood Imperium (Wildwood Chronicles 3)

“No,” said the owl.

“Oh, c’mon,” the squirrel chided. “It’ll just take a sec.”

The owl glanced ruefully at his branch-mate and gave no answer, which the squirrel took to be an emphatic yes. He held up a single digit of his paw before leaping from the branch and disappearing into the canopy of trees.

Hmm, thought the owl. That was easy. He returned his attention to the ground below, a dark blanket of ferns and vines, hoping for the promise of a lunchtime meal. He sat there for a time and only occasionally did his thoughts go to the squirrel and his strange question about the nature of the owl’s simple and, he had to admit, fairly contented, way of life. Why should he long for more? Wasn’t everything he needed right here? Wasn’t there a kind of solace in the repetitions of his life, how every evening and every day were, more or less, exactly the same, barring whatever minute interruptions he might have to suffer on very rare occasions—like, say, a squirrel distracting him from his nightly surveillance? Oddly enough, the more he pondered these questions, the more he began to see holes in his timeless logic. Maybe the squirrel was onto something. . . .

Before he had a chance to delve deeper in his own meditations, the branch shook and the squirrel reappeared at the owl’s side. “Hi,” said the squirrel.

“Hi,” said the owl.

The squirrel was carrying something. He held it up and showed it to the owl; it was a large postcard, human-sized, and on it was a photograph of a very strange and elaborate structure. The structure seemed to be made of sticks, or sticklike objects, and it stood on four stick-made legs. The sticks made a kind of lattice as the four legs met each other at the midsection, and from there a pinnacle-like tower sprouted upward, skyward, to reach a fixed point at the very top, which seemed to end in a spired arrowhead-like design. What’s more, there seemed to be a viewing deck at the top of the structure; small figures, ant-size relative to the structure they were standing on, milled about on the observation deck.

“What is it?” asked the owl.

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; “That’s the thing,” said the squirrel. “I don’t know. But look at it. Look at that thing. I have no idea how big it is, or how many squirrels it took to build it, or even where it is. This picture just literally fell out of the sky one day while I was busily collecting sunflower seeds. Like you, I spent my days as if I were adhered to a track, like I was trying, busily, to simply re-create the exact events of the day before: forever collecting seeds and nuts, forever skittishly running up and down tree trunks, forever making this kind of weird squeaking noise with my front teeth.” Just then, he made the noise. It surprised the owl, whose attention was firmly engaged with the picture the squirrel was holding. “See?”

“Mm-hmm,” said the owl.

“But boom. This picture floats down from the sky and I look at it and suddenly—wow—my worldview, like, instantaneously doubles. Or triples! And suddenly my rote daily exercise of sustenance and survival seems awfully puny in the face of such, like, flourishes of creative spirit. You know? Simultaneously, I experienced this very true understanding—this epiphany—of the oh-so-trivial nature of life, and yet, despite the trivialities, a life that is so full, so chock-full, of an almost infinite promise. You see?”

The owl was dizzied by the squirrel’s monologue. “I guess so,” was all he could say.

“It’s okay,” said the squirrel. “I was where you were, once. I was in the dark. My eyes were closed to the possibilities.” He flipped the postcard in his fingers, away from the owl, and gave it a long glance. He then handed it to the owl.

“Here,” he said. “I want you to have it.”

The owl gulped. “Don’t you want it?”

“It did me some good. Time for me to pay it forward.”

“Okay,” said the owl, taking the postcard in his talon. And then: “What are you going to do now?”

“I’m off to have some adventures,” responded the squirrel. “I’m off to see the world.”

And with that, the squirrel gave the owl a puckish wink and a little salute. He then tiptoed off the end of the branch and nimbly dove into the surrounding dark.

The owl sat for a time on the branch, alternately looking at that same patch of forest floor he had for years upon years, and looking at the postcard picture the squirrel had given him. The thing—the tower—on the postcard was truly a work of dizzying beauty. The night passed like this, with the owl in deep contemplation. Finally, a hint of sun broke through the low branches of the Douglas fir saplings, and the forest awoke to the morning. The owl walked back into his nest in the hollow-of-a-tree, and he proceeded to do his morning ritual: He made himself a cup of cocoa and he climbed into his cozy chair with his book—but not before he had taken the postcard and attached it to a little twig that had ingrown just above the fireplace. And there he continued to look at the strange structure until he drifted off to sleep.

When he awoke, he knew what he had to do.

That night, rather than standing on the branch, as he had for so many nights prior, he instead began flying around the neighboring trees, retrieving branches and twigs in his talons. Once he’d amassed a nice pile at the base of his broken tree, he began to select the straightest and the strongest of these branches.

He then began to build.

Using the picture as a rough template, the owl, in the dark of night, began assembling the tower’s four legs. They each collapsed a few times, that first night, before he was finally able to get one to stand firmly. From that, he guessed that the little maple branches he’d salvaged were best for the job, and once he’d built a strong enough foundation, he fortified the legs by weaving dogwood twigs through the branches, which also managed to fabricate the latticed look of the tower he was modeling. Before he knew it, the sun was rising and the songbirds were chirping, and he settled back in his hollow-of-a-tree for the night, staring at the tower on the postcard until he drifted off to sleep.

And so his life continued, for some time, night in and night out, as he collected scavenged forest debris and used it as building blocks for a scale model of the incredible edifice on the postcard he carried with him wherever he went, a structure that the owl believed to be a testament to the dynamic thinking and ambition of organic life. The squirrel had mentioned that he believed it was his fellow species that had built the original; the owl now suspected that his own, Strix varia, had been responsible for this particular feat. He was intent on re-creating it.

It happened, after many months had passed, that the owl finally came close to finishing his laborious endeavor. The neighboring forest floor had been largely picked over in his pursuit, and he found he often had to go farther afield to source the right building materials; some miles off, he’d found a green pinecone, perfectly conical in shape, that would serve perfectly as the final piece, the pinnacle of the tower’s top. That night he intended to set it.

And set it he did, in a moment that seized his little owl heart and gave him such an electricity that he could barely keep his talons from quivering as he laid the pinecone at the apex of the latticed tower. Seeing it affixed, the owl flew back to his perch on the branch on the broken tree and looked down on his creation with pride.

Just then, the owl heard a noise. It was a kind of rumbling noise, coming from somewhere distant, and it seemed to unsettle the forest in its growlings. The greenery rustled and the birds whistled in alarm; within seconds, it rolled into the small clearing below the owl’s hollow-of-a-tree: a kind of bulbous wave, echoing out from some far-off point, in the vegetation itself. He saw it coming several yards away, creating a weird roll to the landscape, but could barely dive down to his creation before the wave had come upon him.

It bucked the wooden tower and caused it to sway, dangerously, in the wake. The pinecone, so recently affixed, began to topple from its perch and the owl swooped down, in a panic, to catch it. But no sooner had he saved the cone from falling than the rest of the structure began to tremble and snap. Seized with terror that his beloved creation was about to come tumbling down, the owl desperately flew about the tower, bracing all the struts and supports that were threatening to break apart. Seconds passed like hours. Time seemed to still to a stop. Finally, the owl, his one talon braced on one of the legs of the tower, his other talon somehow extended to the midsection, felt the structure settle back into place, and he breathed a long and very exasperated sigh.