Little Castle Boy

This particular kind of owl is extra special, said Mother. Do you want to know why?

The boy nodded.

Because the very first barn owl was once a little boy, just like you. Didn’t you know this?

The boy shook his head.

It was very late at night and he had cried out to Mother for comfort because a strange creature had perched itself up on his windowsill. He’d never seen a bird like this. One with a white, heart shaped mask for its face. What was hiding beneath the mask? He thought. Those round, watchful dark eyes looked like Mother’s did some nights when she stayed awake until the sun came up. Eyes that don’t miss a beat, watching and waiting for a rise.

Mother fidgeted and cleared her throat. Her voice carried off the hardwood floor, soft but firm.

It all began a long, long time ago in the ancient Castle of Austerios, she said. There was a poor, little castle boy who got caught staring at something he shouldn’t have.

He saw things he did not understand but would have the power to ruin. The more he stared and tried to make sense of it, the rounder and larger his eyes grew.

The most beautiful queen who had fought for so long to get to where she was. Knew that the boy now had the power to take it all away in an instant. Mother snapped her thumb and forefinger for emphasis, her chipped red acrylic fingernails clicked in his ear.

So, the young queen blew a gust of wind at the little castle boy freezing his eyes into place, so they would remain enlarged and rounded forever. Mother slowly traced large circles around the boy’s eye sockets gently with her fingernail.

Her lesson to the little castle boy, she continued in a whisper, was that if he chooses to stare and stickybeak where his eyes don’t belong, he must now become the protector of secrets.

Before the little castle boy could cry out to his mother and tell her about the horrors he had witnessed. Before he could cry out for his mother to rescue him from the trouble he had gotten himself into, the Queen of Austerios turned him into a bird.

A bird with a large beak and bulging round eyes.

The boy gasped in his bed.

There's more to it, said Mother. The little castle boy who is now a bird becomes very frightened and, not used to flying, flaps his wings so hard and fast he flies into the white castle wall. Mother squished her fist into her palm with vigour.

The sheer force flattened his face and caved his beak in. That is why barn owls have such a flat, white face, Mother concluded.

It’s not all bad, she said lightening the mood. The Queen of Austerios also gave him the gift of stealth and silence to hunt his prey. Prey that will never hear the flap of his wings coming. The boy studied the owl on his windowsill. It’s true, he never did hear it coming. One minute he rolled over and there the creature was. It’s white ghostly face so close to the glass.

But with that being said, Mother insisted, now that the little castle boy is a great barn owl, he must never ever talk again. The owl becomes the messenger without a tongue to speak. Just his presence alone and hooting in the night is a warning of danger to anyone who hears it from that day forward. A universal symbol of an omen – good or bad depending on what knowledge he holds in his eyes.

Mother met the boy's gaze in the dark bedroom and peeled her eyes wide open with her fingers pretending to be the owl.

BOO! she said.

Mother cackled and backed out of the room into the hazy lit hallway. She headed back to the heavier footsteps that beckoned for her presence downstairs.

The boy laid there with his head on the pillow feeling uneasy. Trying to decipher the knowledge behind the owl’s headlight gaze as the bird twisted and rotated its head from the front to the back scouring for prey. The boy pulled the blankets up to his nose so his little brown eyes could peer out at the owl in the moonlight. He wondered if the bird was a good or bad omen. Unsure if the secrets it held tonight were there to protect or warn him.

The little boy shut his eyes content with his decision of taking Mother’s advice. The decision that he must keep and protect the secrets he too has witnessed. For he does not want to end up like the little castle boy, silenced for eternity and forced to watch the world and its chaos pass on by.

But it was the little castle boy with his round, bewildered eyes who came to the boy in his dreams that night.

He spoke to the boy softly and prodded him with these words;

"Do not lose sight of what the story really means, remember the things I saw that I could not unsee."

"You must say something to someone, don't be silenced like me," said the little castle boy.