II – The Owl

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 suspected her already caught. Her pains began on the autumnal, and her unborn babe insisted 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 the Ancalite is a bony sort with alabaster skin and the jawline of a corpse.

His messy black curls, broad pebble nose, and permanent frown speak nothing of his mother and everything of her father. His spindly legs and rangy feet are weapons against anyone foolish enough to pick a fight, but all know that his mind is his deadliest instrument.

Aedan joins his mother on the journey north 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 Aedan spends his day handling cunts.

A novice druid, his midwifery skills match his knowledge of anatomy, but his unique talent lies in rooting out the unwanted. High-born women and marsh girls alike seek out Aedan, son of Fintan the Owl, for he roots out mistakes, accidents, and criminal fruit.

Word spreads of his arrival and the line outside his tent grows. Some pregnancies prove too far along, requiring an agile hand to execute a deft ear poke before the late-term mistake’s first cry. Aedan deposits these undercooked in a tidal marsh, where the top feeders quickly devour their fill.

The day is long, and afterward, Aedan scrubs meconium from his nails with scented lard and vinegar. He takes the smoke to rid its stink from his nostrils.

Weary of new faces, the young druid abandons the bonfire drums. Mute in the company of others, his social quietness drives away girls, but lures men foolish enough to reach under his robe. He 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 strips off his smock and climbs atop the thickest mare. The beast smells of last night’s rain, the lingering humidity dampening her ears. Her coat scratches his skin, but she lets out an approving snort as he braids her mane.

Aedan misses his father, and he misses their shoreline home, where the fisherman’s beefy son would choke him until his cock spat. His taste for men is renowned, yet his violent desires frighten even the most sadistic warriors.

“You’re taller than I remember, boy.”

Ostin the Ageless, so ancient he has no tribe, moves over the pasture with the help of a twisted staff. Aedan, with his cock safe between the mare’s back and his belly, doesn’t rise to greet him.

The archdruid retrieves Aedan’s discarded smock, mouth rolling those toothless gums. Once browner than the wettest sand, his teeth fell out long before Aedan’s birth. Watching the old man approach, Aedan resolves never to lose his biters, scraping them daily with a cat bone and whitening them with piss.

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

Chaos indeed. Fintan the Owl’s absence has disrupted the tribal peace, for only he could keep the northern warlord, Cassibelanus, from acting impulsively. Fintan tamed the bastard’s spirit when murder seemed a logical solution to any problem. Naturally, the warlord lost control shortly after Fintan’s departure.

At the last tribal gathering, the chieftain’s desire for the Trinovantian prince Mandubracius escalated into a violent confrontation. The prince’s refusal and subsequent victory in a sporting fight triggered a storm of rage.

Cassibelanus demanded compensation for the insult, but Mandubracius’s father, King Imanuentius, refused him. The old monarch paid for this decision with his life, sending his heir, the prince, to the continent seeking Fintan.

“We need another Owl,” says Ostin.

Aedan presents the old seer with his best disinterest.

“All sparks will burn out when Mandubracius returns,”

“You’ve found your voice,” Ostin says. “I recall when many believed you dumb,”

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

Odin rolls his gums and hardens. “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 reconsiders his words. “Your uncle Taran returns with his head.”

The air abandons Aedan’s lungs.

His father roams the world unseen, searching for a new body to begin again. Fintan the Owl will be reborn as someone’s son, then grow into another boy’s father—a cruel truth that Aedan loathes.

A tear falls for the man who loved him unconditionally. The man who hoisted him high on bare feet so he could fly like a bird. The man who taught him the name of everything beneath the sun and under the skin.

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

Aedan cannot refuse.

“You’re my Ancalite,” the old man adds, hobbling away. “You strangle the offering, and the Gods reveal our fates.”

He wanders back to Ciniod’s tent and finds her whoring for attention.

Fintan’s head sits on an overturned jug like a vulgar decoration. 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 among them replays in his mind. Fintan didn’t wish to leave their coastal home, but his wife’s incessant goading cut through him like a fire-bathed dagger.

Unable to endure another moment of his mother’s existence, Aedan seeks solace in the druid camp. As the sun rises, he finds an empty blanket large for his long body, but finds no man willing to fight him upon it.

---

A full moon means the Gods are watching.

Aedan stands naked beneath his father’s owl-feathered robe, its horned cowl tickling his nose. Old sand smells acrid within its feathers and raises memories of his father’s cobalt eyes, straw-colored hair, and muscular physique. He possesses none of Fintan’s attributes, favoring his uncle and grandfather—it is a scab he cannot help but pick.

Smooth river stones encircle the oak deck. A handsome druidess, Eadaoin of the Bibroci, ascends its slate stairs with a green-painted spear in her hand, and the redcap tea she shares with him loses its bitterness after the first swallow.

Owl mask over his eyes, Aedan twists his decorated nudity to the harmonic strings and the beating drum. The tribal songstress’s wail hardens his nipples, and when he swings right, his sizable cock bounces left. Performing since boyhood, he cartwheels around the fire, his acrobatics mesmerizing those still sober.

A tickle crawls up Aedan’s spine as his bones go soft. His humanity retreats in the firelight, skin splitting and feathers taking form. Wings fan out, spreading smoke as his talons rise from the earth.

Those outside the circle make merry, some holding their children above their heads so they, too, can fly like the druid owl. The bonfire rages, its light marking the revelers, creating shadows everyone regards as long-dead kin.

Beneath him, a muddy stretch glistens, and the fire’s glow reveals large animal prints. A beastly feline stalks the shadows—a Leo, the cat that Heracles fought in that Greek story Fintan told him as a boy.

The songstress’s feminine howl morphs into a chilling scream as the majestic cat shakes its mane with each blithe trot. It fears nothing among these people, for no one here can kill it. It falls upon a little girl, sending all those around her to fall back.

Her parents become stone as the owl lands between them and their dying child. The monstrous cat shakes her little body in its powerful jaws, staining her white druidic robes crimson. A torn leg comes free and rolls to the owl.

Its red maw dripping, the monstrous feline drops its prey and begins circling the owl, coming closer with each new revolution. The owl takes flight as the golden cat pounces. A bright moon beckons, its round, pocked face a beacon for the rising owl—

–a wave collides with his path, drenching its feathers—Saltwater surrounds a very human Aedan. Surface light quells his confusion, yet the saline doesn’t burn his eyes. A messy splashdown booms through the depths, and from the bubbly froth is a paw.

The bubbles fade and reveal a strapping man.

Dark green eyes confront Aedan through the murk, and swollen lips part in perfect symmetry, baring a mouthful of pristine teeth. The man strokes toward him, bringing his bone-deep virility close enough for Aedan to touch.

This man is everything he wants and nothing he needs. Body to body, lips to lips, the watery barrier between them weakens with each slippery pass. They sink deeper, falling from the light. Drowning matters little when it’s this pleasurable.

Fingertips graze Aedan’s manhood, tickling the foreskin—crisp night air wakes him. Ostin stands within the ring, sickle blade in one knotty hand and his staff in the other.

A lamb awaits on the ledge, a bearded innocent sitting on his heels with a belly full of porridge laced with root magic.

Behind his mask, Aedan 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. He jerks both ends, testing its strength, but the offering takes no notice.

Below, the seer raises his curvy blade to the stars and speaks a litany of words only Gods understand. Aedan tires of the pomp. He is the Owl now, and the Owl waits for no seer. He drops the cord around the offering’s neck, crossing his arms and yanking the ends away from each other.

The offering topples off his heels, his backside slipping off the deck, his portly flesh bouncing as his arms thrash. Suddenly sober, the offering fights for his life, legs wrangling without a platform. The drums cease, the strings stop, and the crowd grows quiet.

Aedan loses his mask to the offering’s struggles. 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.

Pleasure soaks Aedan’s brain as his cockhead stabs the offering’s slick hair. He won’t drop this kill. Not tonight. Not ever. Suddenly, a pointed spear drives past his chest, its sharp end poking a clean hole in the offering’s crown.

The offering goes still, and a sullen Aedan drops him. The corpse falls away, hitting the ground at Ostin’s feet in a fetal pose. The archdruid’s blade comes for its throat—

—Seawater engulfs Aedan once more.

An arm surrounds his neck, and a hard cock stabs his cleave. He drives his head back, striking his captor and bringing pain to his skull. He swims free and turns to find the lion-turned-man drifting away, blood snaking from his nose.

Aedan cannot look away. He cannot fight his desire. He swims to the floating man and eagerly swallows his prominent arousal. Its outer skin tastes like apples in Aedan’s hungry mouth. Then, it spits out honey as it stabs the back of his throat.

Aedan feeds greedily, his hands full of the man’s buttocks. Honey gives way to a hot brine that floods his mouth. He pushes away from the lifeless beauty, letting the water pull him into the darkness. A trail of milky white curls up from his lips—Sun blinds him in the warm 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 sees the bloody sand.

Eadaoin appears alongside the old seer.

“What did you see, Ancalite?” she calls to him.

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

“What did you see?” asks Aedan.

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

Aedan folds into a handstand before tipping off the platform.

He lands on his feet before her. “My tribe will lure the wolves into the water and, while pleasuring them, drown them,”

“There is no water. There is no drowning,” Ostin barks. “You see, but you cannot divine,”

“I am the Owl,” he says. “I will lead the Ancalites,”

“You’ll be the last Ancalite to die, but you’ll die all the same,” Ostin says, limping away. “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 pet owl moves one step left along her perch. Yes, last night’s rumors are true; a new Owl stands before her.

Aedan takes Fintan’s 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 Ciniod’s nerves. “Our gods gave your father to the Romans,” she says.

“You dare mourn him,” he seethes, his ugly face made tolerable with anger. “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 says through his teeth. “Your fight,”

Taran enters with hands balled, but a look from Ciniod stays him.

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

“And with you, the best times are always bad.” Aedan steps into her, no longer the gangly boy from yesterday. “My father died because of you. Not the 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 it.”

Ciniod stands on virgin territory. Words are things her son never spares, but, at this moment, he’s bountiful. Her eyes narrow as she studies him. “What did you see last night?” she asks.

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

“You took my father from me,” Aedan says. “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.” Her son folds his arms. “Stand up accountable for what you did to him, and stop hiding behind the things you’ve done to me,”

“Done to you? I gave you life, boy,” Ciniod speaks at his scowl. “I think that warrants some respect,”

“You think wrong,” Aedan counters.

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

“I hate you, Mother,” Aedan whispers in her ear. “I always have and forever will.”

“Yes,” she says as he leaves her ten. “But I’m all you’ve got!”