With a click and a hum, a camp lantern turned on, and fluorescent light dispelled the worst of the shadows. Holding the lamp was a man with a long beard full of feathers. A long stocking cap dangled haphazardly from his head, the star bauble at its tip swinging near his elbow.
“Where did I put…oh, here it is.” The old man lifted a pair of thick-lensed glasses from a mound of feathers, blew the worst of the dust off them, and then sat them crookedly on his nose. “Oh, hello, Mila,” he said to the thief. “Goodness, I hardly recognized you in all that. Do an old man a favor?” he trailed off meaningfully.
The girl—Mila—scowled. She skulked through another door, and Oriell stared after her, surprised at her reaction to the old man’s cryptic request.
“I don’t believe we have met,” said the old man. “Please, forgive my rudeness. I am Athelstan,” he said in a booming voice and bowed low, “and this is my abode. I fear ‘humble’ fails to quite cover it.”
Oriell stammered something polite about the wreck, but Athelstan quelled him with a look and a laugh. “Don’t try to comfort me with kind lies. I am quite aware of the state of the place. At any rate, I suspect Mila did not bring you here just to meet me. Is there a purpose to your visit?”
“Well,” How much should he tell the old man? “I have this owl—a white owl—and she…” There was no use in half-truths, at this point. “She has a human heart.”
Athelstan looked at Oriell sharply. “Is this true? You’re not jesting with an old man?”
Arnica hooted a disdainful, “hmph.”
“She means that if there’s a joke at anyone’s expense, it’s hers,” Oriell explained. Taking a deep breath, he relayed the last part of the story. “She used to be an old woman, you see, a hermit. I don’t know what happened, but she just…” Stupid. Athelstan would surely think he was lying now. He wouldn’t help them after that.
“Did you just say that bird is an old woman?” Mila’s voice had lost its slurred accent. Oriell turned to defend Arnica, but the words died in his throat. Mila was transformed.
Her face, which had been covered in scars and cheap tattoos, was clean and unmarred. A single scar remained, moon-white on her lower lip. Inch-long hair held swirling traces of pink, silver, and blue, and she was…pretty. The thief returned Oriell’s stare. She raised an eyebrow in challenge. Oriell blushed and dropped his eyes.
“There is a legend,” said Athelstan, oblivious to the battle of stares, “scattered records of a curse of old.”
