Chapter 2
Bowen
Present
Sitting alone on a park bench was my favorite part of the day.
Mostly because I wasn’t alone, but I could finally let my guard down and not have to pretend to be polite or pretend to care about small talk.
Small talk was exhausting, and I never really knew how to shift the conversation to something more interesting, especially when my attention was often divided.
How could I focus on the trivial words of a person when there were far more interesting conversations happening around me?
Except… I couldn’t let anyone know I was hearing a conversation no one else could.
I’d had to learn that the hard way. Sure, it was cute when I was little, talking with imaginary friends, until I knew things I had no right to know.
Once I moved into my teenage years, it was less cute and more, “there’s something wrong with him, he needs medical help.
” I went along with it for a while because maybe I did need help; I mean, who doesn’t?
After several different medication regimens, where some dulled me not just to the voices I heard, but to everything, and others only enhanced the intensity of it, making the world too loud to focus, I decided to keep my mouth shut and pretend I was just like everyone else.
I only heard human voices, not animals. Nope, definitely didn’t hear the squirrels laugh and tease as they chased each other through the bushes, or the cat that told me his tale of woe at only being fed once a day, or the birds that loved to talk about the best places to get crumbs and scraps of food.
None of that. Just regular, boring, small talk from humans who never actually spoke their minds, and who I couldn’t figure out what they actually wanted.
The thing about animals… they don’t lie.
Some of them were tricksters and tried to get you to do what they wanted, but they didn’t lie.
At least not to me. Especially not once they knew I could understand them.
Unlike most people, they genuinely seemed pleased to see me and didn’t simply tolerate me.
Any time I met a new animal that discovered I could hear them, they would get so excited they couldn’t stop themselves from sharing all kinds of information with me.
Deciphering what I heard from them didn’t come easily.
It wasn’t that each squawk or squeak had a corresponding word in English.
There was no Google Translate for mourning doves or mountain lions.
It started with impressions, basic instincts, and emotions that were conveyed, but the longer I spent listening and interacting, the more I could pick up.
Now, after twenty-six years of listening, I had a pretty good handle on most land animal languages.
Water life was a bit more challenging; it was like hearing it through a distortion filter.
It took a great deal of concentration to pick up the simpler concepts, but the more complicated communication they tried to convey was just beyond my grasp.
On a bench near the duck pond was one of my favorite places, at least in the city, where I didn’t have to pretend around people.
I put an earbud in my ear, not that I had anyone to call, but I wore it in case someone saw me talking to myself.
My lips stretched into a smile as the familiar V in the water formed, pointing directly to where I sat.
A few minutes later, the beautiful mallard duck with iridescent green and blue feathers on his head hopped onto the shore and zoomed toward me, his little webbed feet slapping delightfully on the cement.
“Bowen!” the duck quacked with enthusiasm. It was always funny to hear the way each animal interpreted my name, but they loved using it. I think it made them feel special, like I honored them by sharing my name.
Pulling a bag of peas from my messenger bag, I threw a few on the ground. “Hey, Bill. It’s good to see you. How are you doing?”
Bill snickered in his duckish way, amused at the name I’d given him. Many animal names were hard to say properly with a human tongue, though I tried when I could. Bill, like many others, seemed to find a lot of humor in having a human name. “Good. Water good. Boats little. Sun good.”
He chittered as he scarfed up the peas, talking through each bite, and I looked out at the water.
It was calm, and the sun shone off the surface.
Being a weekday, it wasn’t as busy as the weekend, meaning fewer people and fewer paddle boats stirring around the water. A good day for the ducks, it seemed.
Another V formed in the water, and a few more ducks popped up. It wouldn’t take long for me to be surrounded. They always seemed to sense when I was here. Bill, the mallard, looked up at me and tilted his head. “Bowen good?”
I sighed and gave a nod. “Yeah. I’m fine. I don’t know, maybe, maybe not.”
When the other ducks reached us, they each greeted me with happy wags of their cute little duck butts, and I threw out more peas. Bill came closer and nipped at my leg, drawing my attention down.
“Not good?”
There was no reason to play it off the way I did in the many human conversations I tried to end as quickly as possible. “I don’t know. I’ve been feeling weird, I guess. Like, really antsy.”
Bill looked at the edge of the grass under the bench, and I followed his gaze to see a trail of ants streaming in the crack of the sidewalk toward the grass. “Ants?”
I chuckled and shook my head. “No. Not ants. Antsy, it’s like… restless, like you need to do something but you don’t know what.”
This feeling had been stirring in me for a while, but I couldn’t place what was causing it. Nothing had changed recently; no new job, new partner, or anything. Nothing new, but this feeling churning in my gut.
“Bowen swim.”
At the suggestion, all the ducks around me chimed in. “Yes, swim. Swim with us.”
Another laugh popped out of me. Animals always had easy solutions to problems. “Thanks, guys, that’s a nice thought, but humans aren’t supposed to swim in this pond.”
“Many rules.” Bill gave a flutter and a twitch of his wings.
“So true. Humans have way too many rules, but sadly, I have to live in the human world, so I must abide by them.” Not for the first time, I wondered what it would be like to escape civilization. Unfortunately, being human also meant having bills and needing a way to pay for them.
I played with the worn, brown leather cuff bracelet on my wrist, as I often did.
A pewter medallion sat in the center of it with an intricate knot design that formed the shape of a wolf’s head.
The bracelet was given to me by my great-grandfather before he passed.
He told me it was an heirloom that had been passed down through our family for generations, and he knew it was meant for me.
I had only seen him a few times when I was a child, but I always felt a special connection with him.
It was a connection I had been unable to replicate with anyone else in my life and I couldn’t put a finger on why, especially since I’d been so young and he so old.
The ducks chattered around me, drawing my attention back to the present, and we talked casually, but mostly I listened.
Closing my eyes, I let the peace I felt with them surround me.
It was so much easier. I’d yet to find a person I could sit with contentedly like this.
The birds didn’t expect anything out of me; I didn’t have to fit a role they thought I should play, and they didn’t think I was rude for not doing my part to fill the silence.
We could simply exist together. The ducks seemed to appreciate my company as much as I did theirs, though the peas didn’t hurt either.
A chill suddenly swept around me, and the chattering came to a dead stop.
My eyes flew open, and I sat up, swinging my head around.
Nothing looked out of place, but I felt that restlessness return.
The waterfowl had clearly felt something, too.
They all stood still, in a loose circle with their tails inward, each looking out in a different direction.
“What is it?” I whispered.
None of them responded immediately until they all flapped their wings and let out an assault of quacks and honks. Their actions unsettled me and had me launching to my feet, clinging to the messenger bag that hung at my side.
I still didn’t see anything, but I felt a knot in my chest. “What’s happening?” My words came out in a louder whisper, laced with dread.
“Cloud,” Bill honked and began flapping his wings and lifting his body off the ground. The other ducks began lifting as well.
It was sunny and clear as far as I could see. “Cloud? Where? I don’t see anything.”
“Cloud coming. Bowen fly.” The ducks began to swarm around me, a feathered tornado, as if they could shield me from something. Each one chanting in panicked quacks, “Fly. West. Bowen. Go.”
Trying to peer through the flurry of wings and tails, I lifted my hands to cup around my eyes. “I don’t understand.”
Bill stopped in front of my face, his wings flapping to keep him steady. “Go. Bowen. Go west. Now!”
With that final word, the ducknado lifted away from me, and they flew out over the water, leaving me behind.
Animals had great instincts when it came to danger.
Even if I didn’t understand it, I wasn’t going to ignore the warning.
I tightened the strap on my messenger bag and fled, hurrying to get to my car.
What was the cloud, and why did it freak them out so much?
I kept looking over my shoulder even as I started my car.
Nothing but sunshine and a few puffy white clouds in the distance.
So why did my chest grow tighter and the stirring inside me make my stomach queasy?
And west? That wasn’t a lot to go on. Not knowing what else to do, I headed toward the freeway. West.