I flew from branch to branch until I found Ruby. “Stop making a racket,” she told me. “You’re scaring away my dinner.” I’d already searched through thick drifts of fallen pine needles. A rich smell drifted upward through the debris, roots smelling sharp and nutty as I uncovered a millipede coiled up and playing dead, but the bright yellow of Ruby’s eyes were still wide with hunger.
“Let’s fly back to my nest,” Ruby said. “I need to find something.”
We ducked into her knothole. The place was filled with owl pellets stuck with hair, bones, and skeletons. She sat in front of a screen that was built on a makeshift wooden table. “I’m scanning for rats, mice, voles, or even lizards within a 500-foot radius.” She squawked and disappeared, causing any number of owl pellets to roll across the floor.
I kicked one hard and it burst open.“Yuck.” I peered through her screen. A shadow crossed before my eyes.
“Wo-hoo!” It was Ruby. “You wouldn’t believe what a juicy mouse I found for dinner. Cracked open its skull and ate its sweet meet.” She rolled her eyes. “I could eat two or three of those an evening.” I felt slightly sick. “You eat bugs, don’t you? Well, then neither of us are vegetarians.”
Point taken. I could no more eat a bowl of chicken soup than I could ice cream. “Ruby, I’m worried about Samuel. No one knows a remedy for the ghost plant except some woman named Molly. She used to be the landscaper at the Pool of Knowledge.”
“Why are you still worried about those humans? Forget it. Look at you—purple feathers, a gorgeous jeweled beak, and claws. What else do you want?”
“You don’t understand. In one moment, I was Iris, Cleo and Samuel’s adopted daughter, and in the next, a bird. It happened so fast.”
Ruby rotated her head several times. “You never were human. Wrap your head around that.”
“But I have to help Cleo and Samuel.”
“Okay. But right now I need to take a long nap.”
She coughed up an owl pellet that rolled across the floor. I was careful not to step on it.