II – The Owl

Aedan the Ancalite is a bony sort with alabaster skin and the jawline of a corpse. Little hair grows on his face because his crotch hoards it all, and those messy black curls on his head speak nothing of his mother and everything of her father.

His eyes are the darkest night, and beneath his broad pebble nose is a permanent frown. Spindly legs with rangy feet are weapons against anyone foolish enough to pick a fight, but his mind remains his deadliest instrument.

His life is defined by how much pain he brings his mother.

Twenty-two years ago, Ciniod left her princely father’s house to live with a coastal druid named Fintan, who, for all his holistic prowess, never suspects she’s already caught. Her pains begin on the autumnal, and her unborn babe insists on coming out ass first. The old druidess tending the delivery cut her belly to liberate him, and she reminds her son of this trauma every time she forces a fart.

Aedan journeys north with his mother to her girlhood home on the Tamesa, a slovenly river with sandless banks. Dragonflies hop foamy islands over puce waters, their frenetic wings passing through the reedbeds, where hungry toads hide their calls behind gull song—nothing on this water survives without feeding on something else.

Ciniod tends to her dying father while her son spends his day handling cunts.

His midwifery skills pale against his knowledge of a woman’s anatomy. Rarely does he tend a birth, for his talent lies in rooting out the unwanted. If a high-born woman or marsh girl gets caught, she seeks out The Owl’s son.

His line of patients grows as word spreads of his arrival.

Some prove too far along, requiring an agile hand to execute a deft ear poke before the undercooks first cry. He deposits them in a tidal marsh, where the waters bring top feeders that devour their fill. He scrubs meconium from his nails but takes the smoke to rid its stink from his nostrils.

Weary of new faces, Aedan abandons the bonfire drums and joins the horses eating their share of grass. Hippos, the Greeks call them—father taught him to speak Greek, but he’s never met a Greek man. He misses his father, he misses their horses, and he misses the fisherman’s beefy son who chokes him until his cock spits.

Aedan rarely speaks, and while this social muteness drives away girls, it lures men foolish enough to reach under his robe. His taste for cock is renowned, yet his violent desires frighten even the most sadistic warriors.

He strips off his smock and climbs atop the thickest mare. She smells of last night’s rain, the humidity dampening her ears. Her coat feels rough against his skin, and she snorts her approval as he braids her mane.

“You’re taller than I remember.” Ostin the Ageless is a druid who is so old he has no tribe. He strolls over the pasture, his twisted staff compensating for a useless left foot.

Aedan doesn’t sit up, keeping his cock safe between the mare’s back and his belly.

“You might be too young to take your father’s place, but you’re needed all the same.” Ostin collects the discarded smock, his mouth rolling those toothless gums.

Once browner than the wettest sand, the druid’s teeth fell out when Aedan’s father was a teen. Aedan resolves never to lose his biters, scraping them daily with a cat bone and whitening them with his piss.

“We must divine the future,” he adds, pitching the frock at him. Long, snowy hair dances in the wind as craggy, dry lips spread. “Chaos shrouds the present,”

Chaos indeed.

Fintan the Owl’s absence puts the tribal peace at risk. He keeps the northern warlord, Cassibelanus, from acting impulsively, taming the bastard’s spirit when murder becomes a logical solution to a problem.

Cassibelanus loses control shortly after Fintan departs.

At the last tribal gathering, the strapping chieftain’s desire for the Trinovantian prince Mandubracius boils into something ugly. Plucked egos spur wars among their kind, and when the prince’s rebuke comes with him besting the warlord in a sporting fight, a raging channel storm breaks loose.

Cassibelanus demands compensation for the insult, but Mandubracius’s father, King Imanuentius, refuses. The old monarch pays for this decision with his life, sending his son to the continent for Fintan.

“We need another Owl,” says Ostin.

Aedan regards the old seer with disinterest.
“All sparks will burn out when Mandubracius returns,”

“You’ve found your voice,” Ostin speaks as if born an hour ago. “I recall when many believed you dumb,”

“The Owl will return with my uncle,” Aedan says, sitting up. “And the Gods will show our future through the guts of whatever tipsy fool he chokes out in your prayer circle.”

Ostin rolls his gums and hardens his tenor.
“Your father is dead, boy,”

Aedan’s heart slows to a crawl.

“Mandubracius didn’t find Fintan.” The old man sits on the grass—not easy to do at his age. “Mandubracius found a Roman wolf,”

Aedan’s stomach hardens.
“The legions fled last summer,”

“They left, boy,” he snaps. “They didn’t flee,”

Aedan thrusts out his jaw.
“Who says my father’s dead?”

“Your…” Ostin considers his words. “Your uncle Taran returns with his head.”

Fintan the Owl now roams spaces unseen, searching for a new body to begin again. He will be reborn as someone’s son and then grow to be another boy’s father.

A tear falls for the man who loved him unconditionally, the man who hoisted him high on bare feet so Aedan could fly like a bird, the man who taught him everything under the sun and skin. He taught him to swim beneath the waves, climb above the trees, and read and speak Greek and other Celtic languages.

“Swallow your pain,” Ostin advises. “You’ll take his place in ritual and verse.”

Aedan cannot formulate a refusal.

“You’re my Ancalite,” the old man declares. “You strangle the offering, and the Gods will reveal the fate of your people.”

Morning comes, and his mother puts on quite a performance.

Fintan’s head sits like a vulgar plea for attention on an altar outside her tent. His skin isn’t quite green yet, the gash under his chin sutured with meadowsweet. Duck eggs sit behind his eyelids, and flowering buds fill his caving cheeks.

Ciniod kneels before it, wailing as her brother, Taran, sheds genuine tears for the man who fucked them both—oh yes, Fintan’s taste in womanly men and masculine women was never a secret.

Aedan stands closer than willing, with no more tears to cry. His father’s last day replays in his mind; the druid didn’t wish to leave their coastal home.

A full moon means the Gods are watching.

Aedan stands naked beneath his father’s owl-feathered robe, its horned cowl tickling his nose and its sandy aroma raising memories of cobalt eyes and straw-colored hair. He possesses none of his father’s physical attributes, favoring his uncle and grandfather more than his mother, and this is a scab he cannot help but pick.

Smooth river stones encircle an oak deck, where a handsome druidess, Eadaoin of the Bibroci, climbs the slate stairs alongside it, a green-painted spear in her hand.

The redcap tea loses its bitterness after the first swallow. Aedan dances with an owl mask on his face, twisting his decorated nudity to the harmonic strings and the beating drum. The tribal songstress’s wail hardens his nipples. He swings right, and his sizable cock bounces left. He tumbles around the fire, his cartwheels mesmerizing and his agile sway intriguing those still sober.

A tickle crawls up his spine as bone softens within his flesh. Skin splits into feathers before his humanity retreats. Wings fan out, and his talons rise from the earth. Beneath him, revelers outside the circle make merry, some holding their children above their heads so they too, can fly like the owl.

The bonfire rages, casting light through the crowd and creating shadows that everyone regards as long-dead kin. A muddy stretch pulses in the firelight, outlining large toe-bean prints. A beastly feline stalks the shadows. It is a lion, like the one Heracles fought in that Greek story Fintan told him as a boy.

The songstress’s feminine howl morphs into a chilling scream. The lion’s majestic mane shakes with each bold trot. Without warning, it falls upon a little girl, sending all those around her to fall back. Her parents become stone as their screams break the night.

No one can stop the monstrous cat from shaking her body in its powerful jaws until a leg comes free and tumbles to the fire. Red maw dripping, it begins circling the owl, gaining distance with each new revolution.

Fear warns him and he kicks up his wings when the golden cat pounces. He soars for the moon, its round milky face welcoming until a wave collides with his path.

Saltwater surrounds Aedan, surface light quelling his confusion with no hint of where it looms. A distant rumble pulls his attention to a messy splashdown. A paw swings in the bubbly froth, until from it, comes a strapping man.

Dark green eyes confront him through the murk. Swollen lips part in beautiful symmetry, baring a mouthful of perfect white teeth. He strokes toward him with a bone-deep virility that is now close enough to touch—this man is everything Aedan wants and nothing he needs.

Body to body, lips to lips, the barrier between him and this hairless dream weakens with each slippery pass. Drowning matters little if it’s this pleasurable. Fingertips crawl over his manhood, tickling the foreskin on their way down to…

Crisp night air surrounds him.

Ostin stands within the ring, sickle blade in one knotty hand and his staff in the other. A lamb awaits on the ledge, another bearded innocent sitting on his heels with a belly full of porridge laced with root magic.

Behind his mask, Aedan curses his return and trudges up the stacked stones.

The lamb weaves to the music, coherent enough to remain upright, yet blind to the sinew cord sinking past his face. Aedan jerks both ends to test its strength, but the lamb never hears its twang.

Below, the seer raises his curvy blade to the stars and speaks a litany of words only Gods comprehend. The Owl waits for no seer.

Aedan pulls the cord tight around the lamb’s neck, crossing his arms and yanking the ends away from each other with the power of a running horse.

The offering’s backside topples off his heels. Portly flesh bounces while his arms thrash. Suddenly sober, the offering fights for his life, legs wrangling until his feet leave the platform. The drums cease, the strings stop, and the crowd grows quiet when the lamb’s flailing dislodges the Owl’s mask.

Pleasure soaks Aedan’s brain, his cockhead stabbing the lamb’s slick hair—he won’t drop this kill. Not tonight. Not ever. His smile, rarely seen, forces many to turn away. Even the seer, no stranger to violence, stands slack-jawed as the Owl’s delight turns his seasoned stomach.

Suddenly, a pointed spear drives past Aedan’s chest, its sharp end poking a clean hole in the lamb’s crown. The offering goes still, and a sullen Aedan drops him, watching as the corpse hits the ground in a fetal pose.

Ostin’s blade comes for the man’s throat…

Deep water engulfs Aedan once more.

An arm surrounds his neck, and a hard cock stabs his cleave.

Aedan drives his head back, bringing pain to his skull. He reels about to find the lion-turned-man drifting away, blood snaking from his nose.

He swims to him and eagerly swallows his prominent arousal. Its outer skin tastes of apples, bringing up honey as it stabs the back of his throat. Aedan feeds greedily, his hands full of the man’s buttocks. Hot brine floods his mouth, and he pushes away from the lifeless beauty, letting the water slowly take him.

Sinking into the darkness, a trail of milky white curls from his lips…

Sun blinds him yet warms the morning wind.

No revelers remain, their tents gone with the night.

“You’re not your father’s son,” Ostin grouses, leaning on his rod.

Alone on the platform, Aedan stares down at the bloody sand where Eadaoin stands with the old seer.

“What did you see, Ancalite?” she asks.

“He saw nothing,” Ostin interjects. “The Gods tasted his murderous glee and showed him only his destiny, not ours.”

“I saw my tribe in chains among the wolves.” Water bleeds from her eyes. “What of your people, Ancalite? What of Cassibelanus?”

Aedan dips into a handstand before rolling off the platform and lands on his feet before her. “My tribe will pleasure the wolves before drowning them,”

“That is your fate,” Ostin barks, limping away. “You’ll be the last Ancalite to die, but you’ll die all the same, along with your bloodline,”

“I’ll be free,” Aedan yells after him.

“Free as an owl in a lion’s cage can be,” come Ostin’s final words.

Her son enters the mourning tent, and Fintan’s perched owl moves one step left; last night’s rumors are true—a new Owl stands before her.

Aedan takes the head by the ears and presses his lips to it. Though flowers pack the mouth, it stinks of decay, and the boy’s kiss lingers long enough to pluck her nerves.

“Our gods gave your father to the Romans,” she says.

“You dare mourn him,” he seethes, “when you nagged and cajoled him across the water to his death.”

“I loved him!”

“You loved him so much you sent him to die!”

“They attacked our kin across the water!”

“Your kin,” he cries. “Your fight,”

Taran enters, and Ciniod raises a hand.

“Matrimony is a shared life,” she tells Aedan. “Best times and bad, two remain one.”

“And with you, the best times are always bad.” He steps into her, no longer the gangly boy from yesterday. “My father died because of you. Not Gods and not the Romans. You.”

Taran comes between them, but Aedan slinks around him.

“You defeated every alternative,” her son accuses, “and gave him no peace until he did what you wanted when you wanted and how you wanted.”

Ciniod stands on virgin territory—words are things her son never spares.

“Your father died with honor,” Taran says. “Tell him, Chinny,”

“What did you see last night?” she asks, eyes narrowing.

“You took my father from me,” Aedan declares. “And I will never forgive you for it.”

A second passes before spite becomes her.
“Fintan’s not your father, boy,”

Aedan’s dark eyes condemn her.

“You’re a product of stupidity between me and my brother,” she adds.

Taran’s head pivots from Aedan to her and then back to Aedan.

“Ravens have nothing on you when it comes to misdirection.” Aedan folds his arms. “Stand up accountable for what you did to him, and stop hiding behind the things you’ve done to me,”

“I gave you life, boy,” she speaks at his scowl. “I think that warrants some respect,”

“You think wrong,” he counters.

“Well then. You may carry your anger to your deathbed, boy,” she turns her back on him, knowing she won’t be able much longer. “My life continues either way.”

Aedan comes up behind her and whispers in her ear.
“I hate you, mother. I always have and forever will.”