Page 60 of By the Orchid and the Owl
Something crunchy, but without bones. Something that would one day become something else—perhaps a flying beauty—if left unharmed. Something that needs eternal warmth, but lives in darkness. They all seemed to contradict each other.
“Any more qualifications?” I threw up at the owl weakly.
“The answer lies beneath.”
I couldn’t look Mr. Conine in the eye. Had it been this hard for everyone else, too? Should I just open a cage at random and hope it happened to be right?
In that moment, my ears perked up at the peahens’ gossiping conversation.
“—he wouldn’t even fertilize it, the bastard.”
“No! That’s just immature, honestly, even if he’s mad at you.”
“Well, he did later, but only after we’d made up.”
The answer lay beneath: beneath the peahens who were… nesting.
My eyes flew wide as I realized what the owl wanted.
Eggs. Crunchy, warm eggs living in the darkness beneath their mothers’ breasts. If they were early enough in the fertilization process, there wouldn’t be any spindly bones in the yolks yet, but if theywerefertilized, they’d turn into flying beauties—as long as the owl left them alone. Left them untouched.
Which he wouldn’t.
“Do I really have to do this?” I asked Mr. Conine.
Mr. Conine’s eyes seemed to gutter.
“The test is the test, and the cycle is the cycle. Part of being a Wild Whisperer is bearing the pain of that cycle, of balancing the love and suffering of predators and prey alike.”
I nodded, even as my heart cracked in as many pieces as those eggs would.
Feeling it, embracing it, hating it anyway, I walked forward and unlatched the wired door of the coop.
The mother hens, realizing what was about to happen, began to scream.
The owl swooped down.
The next test was indeed through the other door—which I rushed through as soon as Mr. Conine gave me a pass, if only to get away from the screaming.
Mrs. Wildenberg sat in this room, in an identical bloodred velvet sofa, but this time with a pleasant rustic table before her. An array of potted plants spread across this table, along with some steaming cups of what smelled like hibiscus tea.
“Rayna, right? Rayna Grey?” Mrs. Wildenberg squinted at me through the steam of her tea.
“Oh, it’s actually Drey.”
“Right, right.” She nodded and gestured weakly. “Please sit down.”
I sat opposite her, in a wooden chair that clashed rigidly against my spine.
“Okay, Ms. Grey. Here are some—oh, I forgot. Would you like some tea?”
I almost said yes, because the smell of it made my mouth water and surely it was dinnertime. But I remembered what Coen had said:don’t drink random shit at a party when you don’t know what might trigger your condition.Perhaps the same applied to a testing room. And since I didn’t know which instructors would report to the Good Council if they witnessed any slice of superfluous power…
“No, thanks,” I said, folding my hands neatly over the desk.
“Okay, okay, no problem.” Mrs. Wildenberg’s ash-white hands shook as they picked up a pile of cards before her and handed them over to me. “Here are some questions that I would like you to ask the hibiscus and passion flowers and poinsettias. Listen well, and tell me what you think they are saying back to you. You should be looking for simple yes or no answers for now, dear, nothing more.”
“Got it,” I said, looking down at the first card.
