The House of Owls (Patreon)

I do, very occasionally, write! I have been yearning to create more things that are my own; Yeehawgust was a nice dip into it, but I've never been very good at marathons-- I'm a sprint creator. Very dangerous over short schedules.

Patreon also feels like a good place to put the thoughts and lines that run through my head when I create a piece. Here goes.

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Eulenloch. (Oi-len-lock). German, n. A hole for owls built into the roof of a house so that they may roost within the rafters. 

The cottage named Eulenloch perched at the edge of the Witchwood like the barn owls that settled on its thatched roof at dusk. At any moment the trees that loomed a quarter of a mile down the old road might reach out and snatch the cottage up- lavender rows and lime-washed walls and all. New moons came and went, darkness obscured the candlelight in the windows, the north wind howled out from the forest beyond, but come dawn the little house always remained. 

None of the riding party's faces held surprise, approaching the cottage at speed, when they saw Alba standing on the front step. She was shrouded in a thin blanket and woollen clothes, still dressed from the day despite the late hour. Their horses skidded and circled at the boundary of her front gate, a paltry barrier to the steeds. Little to nothing stopped them from leaping over the lavender, past the furrowed lines of onions and sprouts and carefully tended grave marker, and straight to her door. Yet the half-dozen young men held tight to their reins and sat tense in their saddles. They didn't cross the threshold. 

"It's too late for sport, Tomas," she called. The creases beneath her eyes felt deeper after dark.  At the end of a day her shoulders felt heavier. She didn't step down from her porch- she didn't need to. Her voice was clear and loud. Her blue eyes were as sharp as the day they first opened. "What's your business?" 

"The fifty-silver business," Tomas shouted back. His brows creased fiercely, gingery red hair aflame even in the low dusk light. "If you tell us where he's gone, I'll cut you in for three." 

Alba squinted across the herb garden. "Where he's gone?" 

Sneers and mutters were passed around the riders. Horses stamped their hooves and the men's' agitation seeped down into their mounts. A flutter of feathers above Alba's head drew their eyes upwards and a couple of young men blanched.

"Don't mess us about, widow!" A rider leaned forward to growl at her, but Tomas' hand shot out to stay his friend. The gate creaked on its hinge at the shudders the horses sent through the ground. Boys hissed chides and curses at their unruly friend.

"The keeper, the new one," Tomas said quickly. Of all the riders, his mare was calmest. She was too used to pulling ploughs and carting children to temple to be fired up by rowdy boys. "He's a wanted man. Elsewhere, not here." 

Alba felt for the mare. She preferred the screaming of children to this bravado, too. 

"And you hope to remove him?" Alba asked, though she knew the answer already. So did Tomas, if his uncertain expression was anything to go by. She blew out a breath sharply through her nose and straightened her back. 

"He's the Witchwood keeper. You might try looking in the Witchwood?"

Somewhere atop the thatched roof of her cottage, a piercing shriek rang out through the gloom. A single, owlish laugh. 

Horses reared and Tomas' mare swayed indecisively- should the draft horse decide it was time to go back home there was little Tomas could do to stop her. The young men looked at one another and to Alba, and to the towering oaks that swallowed the old road where it cut north away from them. 

"Hm," Alba said. She turned to open the cottage door, leaving them to their faltering bluster.  Once the door was closed again, the oncoming night kept out and the heavy iron bolt pushed into place, she shed her blanket and folded it. 

"Did you hear that? Fifty silvers," She mused as she slipped off her shoes and made her way back to the warmth of the fire and the chairs beside it. Alba draped the blanket over the empty seat. "A tempting sum." 

The Witchwood keeper grinned from the other arm chair, the lines at the corner of his eyes all from mirth and none from age. He was barely on the cusp of middle age, or so it looked to Alba. He had none of the grey in his dark brown hair that was shot through hers, but he sank into the fireside chair like one who'd worked every day for forty years. Alba did the same.

"In the city it's five hundred," he chuckled. The keeper rubbed a worn hand over his mouth, obscuring his smile even more than his full beard already did. "Having second thoughts about your hospitality, my lady? I can leave you now, if the morning isn't soon enough. Fifty pieces of silver is tempting." 

Alba smoothed out her felted dress and set long legs out to rest her feet closer to the fire. There was no silence in her cottage, the scuffle and shuffle of beasts in the attic and the crackle of the fire saw to that, but she waited so long to speak that the keeper leaned around to see if she hadn't dozed off in her chair. 

"You can stay," she said at last. Her hands folded in her lap. "I've already fed you. And the longer you're here, the bigger that bounty gets." 

The keeper laughed- a bright, hearty laugh of surprise at her dryness. "Pragmatic, my lady." 

"No," Alba said, and did close her eyes for a moment to smile. "Just greedy. I want a thousand."