Curse of the Owl Clan

Within our shared tipi, my bride lay with swollen stomach on furs. A strong fire blazed beside her. Draped in loincloth and feathered shawl of the owl clan, her honey colored flesh still inflamed my loins.

Winter had descended, the cold wind taking its icy bite into me whenever I neared the mouth of the tent, but perspiration beaded on my woman's skin. Lelvep stretched herself out on the pelts and moaned. "Tusrok, I am hungry. Make me a rabbit."

"Anything for you, my love," I breathed. The winter had been harsh, but we had some crops, and game.

As I undid the tent flap, the jeweled hilt of my broadsword glowed with a supernatural green light, indicating the presence of evil. 

Bearing the weapon, I emerged from the tipi, wrapped in a heavy mantle of skins. My eyes searched my dusky surroundings for danger.

Our tent stood in a clearing, among others of the Owl Clan. Leaves had departed from the trees, exposing twisted skeleton branches.

Sensing motion, I turned my head and saw a figure prancing around a watch fire. Our lean, bony hipped shield dancer Averzo practiced movements before the tribal shaman. The woman, narrow where my wife was round, had freckles bedecking her tawny flesh like leopard spots. Her feathered cape flashed, creating constellations of sparks from the fire. An owl mask obscured her face, making silent hoots. Tail feathers flapped behind a fuzzy thong.

Averzo seemed to be ready for the winter dance. Her bearded mentor nodded approvingly.

A bald, thick limbed man sat on a log next to the withered elder, Lelvep's brother Motqah. It seemed clear that Averzo's lithe movements raised more than sparks for him. I, on the other hand, preferred that the woman keep her mask on.

Our rabbits hung from a nearby tree, kept fresh by the freezing weather. As I raised a knife to cut one down, an antlered figure materialized from the shadowed forest surrounding the clearing.

Female, draped in robes the color of wine, a skull mask concealing her face. The body, like finely chiseled marble, wore very little, just a long, matching loincloth, and jewels across the breasts. The full moon artfully illuminated a curvacious form I still lusted after. Only sorcery kept her from a death of cold.

"Witch queen!" I gasped.

She raised a staff, topped with a large silver snake head, slammed it into the ground. "I gave you everything. I blessed your crops with fertility, gave you game in abundance, and this is how you repay me!"

It did not take me long to guess her meaning. I had once tasted the lips beneath that mask, felt those polished white thighs wrapping around my waist, her full hips grinding against mine. I laid on her royal couch, breathing in her exotic perfume, her musk. 

She promised me everything. My tribe would receive large harvests, the women would be fertile, the game would come to the hunters, and we would not go hungry as long as she lived. 

But things happened. I caught her sacrificing children to her gods. She'd poisoned family members.

And then I met beautiful, good natured Lelvep. We made love, we thought, in secret, our shaman providing wards against the witch queen's evil eye. Did the wards fail us? "...How have I betrayed you?"

The woman let out a bitter laugh. "Do not feign ignorance! I have seen the whore's swollen belly! You were her sole male companion!"

She slammed her staff into the hard, frozen dirt. A pair of red glowing embers appeared in the skulls eye sockets. "You behave like an animal, now receive an animal's curse!"

Fierce north winds buffeted my body, each gust like knives slicing my skin.

I watched, with horror, as my nose elongated, taking on the form of a beak, my feathery gray mantle growing...more so, fusing with my body. Flesh fell away from my legs, exposing feathers and scales. My feet no longer fit in my moccasins.

The witch loosed another bitter laugh. "You named your tribe in honor of owls. Now you are one."

The fires grew cold in the mask's eye sockets. "You have until the new moon, ten days, to destroy your lover, and devour her child, or you and your tribe shall remain like this for ever."

I drew my sword, but her staff struck dirt again, and she vanished into the darkness.

I returned to my woman, and found she'd been similarly deformed. However, her transformation gave the witch's pronouncement an especially ironic turn.

Lelvep had literally been "Made a rabbit."

Long lapine ears spread from her head like hair, mouth bearing teeth like a buck. I tearfully brought her the requested meat, but could not bear to remain in her presence. I salivated at the thought of consuming her flesh in non poetic ways. I tended a watch fire outside, in the cold.

The others of my clan soon awoke to find themselves also in the grips of the witch's curse.

They were all owls. Averzo's snowy owl mask now appeared permanent, the shaman like a great horn, Motqah the spotted breed.

As the sun rose over the horizon, I described the night's events, the witch's words.

Our white feathered dancer was the only one not to suggest surrender. "You should seek Kapnoba the toad."

"That is a five day journey over the mountains," said the elder. "Who knows if the solution he provides will be provided in time?"

"What choice do we have?"

The plan being settled, I will only needed to come to a decision regarding my betrothed and child. I could not take her with me, as the journey could be hazardous, yet I could not trust myself alone with her.

I doubted the others, newly transformed into owls themselves, would fare any better.

I discussed the situation with the shaman, and he suggested a bitter poison, one which could not be absorbed by the skin, but make you violently sick if you consumed it.

"Lelvep, my love," I told her as the shaman applied the poison to her body. "I must go and make this right. If I remain with you, I fear you will not be long for this world. You will forever remain a rabbit, and I an owl. I must not allow myself to destroy you."

"I know," she moaned. "You are gentle. Predator or prey, I would gladly surrender my body to you, again and again."

"No, my love. If I do not depart at once, and find a cure for you, you will be murdered, I fear, by my own hand. Already I am weak against the urge to strip your flesh from its bones. I must go, but will return to you in within ten days."

My woman, possibly feverish, did not seem to understand my words. "You mustn't go! I need you here!"

I said many other things in attempts to convince her, with the shaman adding advice of his own, but she only saw it as abandonment. Alas, I could not do otherwise.

"Wait until the child arrives," the shaman joked. "Perhaps she will kill you!"

I just shook my head.

I left Lelvep with the shaman and females of the tribe, taking with me Averzo and Motqah, the latter, being a weaponsmith, I saw as useful.

Averzo led us through a dry ravine and up a steep grade, along a mountain trail. Motqah, following her close behind, bore an axe, her bow, and quiver of arrows, as well as everyone's moccasins. We'd removed the footwear due to our new taloned feet, but hoped to again make use of them.

Only Averzo seemed to find joy in our predicament. Immersed in her role as a dancer, she sprang from logs to rocks and tree roots with spread wings. The success of the experiment led her to more daring feats: Grabbing the bark of trees, leaping onto their limbs, then actual flight.

We soon discovered we all could fly, reducing a seemingly endless slog in the frigid wind to a four day voyage, with only two brief pauses in between for rest and acquisition of food. Our changed bodies made fire unnecessary - we consumed squirrel and rabbit meat raw, gagged up pellets of bone and cartilage.

We swooped down on a small campsite at the edge of a frozen lake. A bony green figure in skins sat on a rock amidst dead lotus plants and cattails, smoking a pipe. From time to time, its tongue would shoot out and snatch a flying insect. "The bones told me you would come."

I grabbed him forcefully by the shoulders, telling him all that happened. "Please! You must tell me what can be done to end this curse!"

The toad handed me a medicine pouch. "Administer this to bind her to the earth, then sever her head from her shoulders. I will guide you to her lair."

"No need," I said. "I know the way all too well."

"Regardless, I must go. The witch must die."

The green creature had been dwelling within some sort of metal carriage with black wheels and silver and glass accents. He retrieved a spear and medicine bag from its upholstered interior, joining us on our quest.

The Toad slowed our travels down somewhat, but in between carrying him in the air and his own strong legs, we still made good time, reaching the witch's cursed land four days afterwards.

Her country, largely devoid of trees, held copious amounts of cracked, paved roads, scattered with abandoned metal carriages and weeds. An engineering marvel, massive sloping ramps supported by pillars.

The witch lived in an immense glass and metal tower in the heart of this barren land. The moment we got near the place, arrows rained down from the windows, steel carriages fired bolts at us, and the queen's soldiers flooded the paved grounds.

Muscular beast men, looking like warthogs with cattle horns and armor, rushed after us with brandished weapons. The Toad was felled by arrows and moved no more.

"Into the tower!" I shouted.

We shoved our way through a revolving glass gate, entering an elegantly decorated corridor, fitted with brass all about. Dozens of pig soldiers charged out to attack as we proceeded up the red carpeting. I drew my sword.

Although bleeding in many places, and our feathery wings in tatters, we made it to a stairwell. We climbed to the topmost floor where I and the witch queen had once shared a bed.

Her minions got in our way, at times loosing arrows upon us, but Averzo was quick, and only Motqah suffered an injury. He pulled a shaft from his leg, and would be forced to walk with a limp from then onward.

We entered the vast bedchamber of the queen, decorated with gold, statues, fine furniture and tapestries. Devices on the walls and ceiling illuminated the room like torches, though dimly and without warmth. I found myself remembering things I did not wish to.

"You should not have come here," the witch queen's voice boomed.

At once, the shadows in the room gathered into one cloud before me. I readied the medicine pouch in one hand, sword in the other.

A clawed hand burst from the darkness, grabbing hold of my throat. My sword clattered on the carpeting.

Gasping for breath, I tore the pouch apart, white powder erupting in a spray.

At once, her naked form became visible. "What have you done!"

I pried her hands loose, shoving her to the floor. 

The woman's snake staff fell from her hands with a sharp crack. Her skull mask fell away, revealing a pale, but beautiful face. 

Motqah raised his axe, but the witch queen was not powerless. The staff flew back into the witch's hand, and his large, muscular body went sailing through a window. He fell with a shriek.

Averzo nocked an arrow, but the queen deflected it with her power, and a flying vase rendered my ally unconscious. I would face the queen alone.

I dove for my weapon, but the witch used her power to cast it hilt deep into a ceiling beam. "Just like when we first met," she mused.

The witch transformed herself into a bird form similar to my own, tackling me to the ground. "You think I want to kill you? Just the opposite."

She pressed her beak to mine, inserting her tongue. "I can be anything, anyone, you want, and yet you impregnated that ignorant savage."

"You have the flesh, witch, but no soul."

"You left your betrothed and unborn child to seek me," she said in husky breaths. "What does that make you?"

I shoved her back. "I came to undo this curse."

"Pah. A fool's errand. I told you how to end the curse. None other will return you to human forms." She shrugged indifferently. "Still, the curse will take care of itself.. You have left your beloved Lelvep in the presence of predators. As we speak, the repellant salve is wearing off, and she gives birth."

"No!" I rolled her over, slamming her head into the floor. She reached for her staff, but I threw it far from her grasp.

The witch appeared to enjoy the abuse. She kneed me between the legs, clawed my eyes.

My enemy flew, with spread wings, to an upright position, kicking me repeatedly in the stomach with her clawed bird feet. The staff returned to her hand.

She pushed me down, straddling my chest. Her large avian eyes glanced out the window. "Already we near dusk of the tenth day. If I were you, I would pray that your tribe devours the woman and child quickly."

I screamed, my voice coming out in bird squawks. My fist shot out to strike her face, but her powers imbued her with supernatural strength. She caught my punch, and I found the brittle bones in my feathery hands cracking under her crushing grip.

The shaft of an arrow disappeared into her chest. The witch let out an agonized shriek.

I glanced back at the shield dancer, found her still unconscious.

"What!" my enemy cried, only to have a second shaft embed itself in the hand that held her magical staff.

"You were always a liar, Rauxula."

The voice of my betrothed!

I turned my head backwards (as is natural for an owl) and saw it was indeed Lelvep. Still with swollen belly she raised a bow, nocking a third arrow. "You have strength, my dear Tusrok, but I have stealth, and an iron constitution."

A gray shape swooped through the broken window, and a flying axe buried itself into my foe's breast. My sword clanked to the floor beside me.

Rising to my feet, I held my sword aloft with my good hand, brought it down.

The blade struck true. The witch's head rolled bodiless across the floor, blood gushing freely from the opened neck.

Her death did not end the curse.