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I crumpled my pajama pants into a wad and placed it on the pillow. It would serve as the head for the twin bundles of pajamas and shirts I’d spread over the mattress cover. I pulled the blankets up until they covered the bundles and the wad.

I stepped back. I was gauging the effect of the lump under the blankets when, carelessly, I grazed the wound on my cheekbone. It flashed with pain. I clenched my teeth and waited, my carotid pounding, for the surge to settle.

The lump in the blankets hinted at a child sleeping beneath them, not a teenager, but it would suffice to trick Father until he pulled back the covers.

I layered myself in a thick wool sweater. Tightened my waterproof boots. Jammed on a fleece hat, and tugged wool gloves over my hands.

In the dim starlight sieved through the curtains, I scanned the wardrobe, the dresser, and the desk as if they were waiting with raised hands for me to grant them speech. What would I regret abandoning? I’d leave the pencils, crayons, and looseleaf paper, but they’d be abundant in that overseas land.

Halfway between the bed’s headboard and the dusty cobwebs on the ceiling hung two still lifes. In one painting, a basket heaped with apples and pears sat on a table, with a mortar leaning against it. In the other painting, a green pepper, an onion, and a garlic clove clustered on wrapping paper. The canvases had been smeared for years with skin flakes and mite droppings. Father and Mother believed a bedroom needed paintings to fulfill its purpose, and the first ones they’d found had sufficed.

I would forget it all. None of it belonged to me, never had. I’d arrived on Earth as if I could have just as easily touched down on some icy planet light-years away, and now I’d escape to where I wanted.

I drew the curtain. When I opened the window, careful to silence the hinges’ creak, a gust swept in, chilling my face and burrowing under my sweater collar like an animal seeking warmth. I climbed onto the window frame and let my legs dangle over the facade.

Each night, my window framed the cork oak, but the tree stood three strides away, and none of its twisting branches reaching toward me hinted they’d hold my weight.

My heart revolted. My arms and legs trembled. Once I jumped, if I changed my mind and opened the house door to creep back upstairs, I’d wake them. I inhaled sharply and scrubbed my palms over my thighs. As I slid my butt forward on the frame, I contorted to grip the inner ledge before letting go. My right hand’s fingers clawed the bedroom-side jut of the frame, but my backside slipped loose.

I blinked. Darkness veiled my vision, then fractured into pinpricks of stars. Meters above, the cork oak’s sinuous leaves writhed on their gnarled branches, wind-lashed. The house’s facade loomed like a cliff, its surface pierced by the rectangular void of my open window. Wind battered my right ear, numbing the fiery throbbing in my cheekbone.

When I peeled myself from the grass, a headache stabbed my skull. I clamped my palms to my temples as if to trap my brains inside. I stood, but my legs threatened to buckle. My vision lurched. I slumped against the cork oak’s fissured bark, shut my eyes, and summoned the mental map of the route I’d carve through the night. Five or six hundred meters to my refuge. By the time Father came searching, hours would bleed away before he found me.

I waded into the forest’s blackness, hurrying toward oases of starlight streaming through tangled branches. Scents guided me. I decoded familiar trees as landmarks. I climbed and slipped down slopes slick with shredded bark and rotting leaves.

By day, I would have combed the trees for the brook’s curve to pinpoint my shelter. I sat against the moss-sheathed root of a beech, jutting from the soil like an octopus’ tentacle. I dug my elbows into my thighs and clutched my throbbing skull.

The wind surged and faded, hissing through branches, shaking loose fruits that cracked the leaf litter. An owl hooted. A rivulet snapped like a dog lapping from a bowl.

I shut my eyes. I rose, angled an ear toward the stream’s murmur, and fumbled forward. In my mind, the golden serpent of the brook slid between the beech silhouettes, its current swaying and swelling with each step.

I opened my eyes. Eight meters downhill, amid the gray beech grove, a smudge of withered grass circled the ground. A meter and a half above it, perched on an invisible plinth, the emperor owl fixed his gaze on me.

I scrambled downward. My steps kicked up debris; I windmilled my arms, skating the slope like ice.

The owl emperor arched his neck, rotating his head in a full circle, as if calibrating the dark. Gems studding his sash glinted white.

“Trouble sleeping?”

Breathing through flared nostrils, I halted two meters from the circle, thrust my face forward, and jabbed a finger at my swollen cheekbone.

“You see it, yes? The pain’s so sharp, it’ll glow in the dark.”

“I assume you didn’t walk into a door.”

“I’ve never spoken of the rest of my life—where I live, with whom. You never asked. I preferred that. For a couple of hours each day, I forgot my fate. But after tonight, I can’t return, and if I stay here, he’ll find this refuge in less than a day.”

“Who?”

“A monster.”

The emperor owl spread his wings behind his head, splaying the black-striped feathers, and adjusted his conical crown. His cavernous voice hesitated.

“You wish to leave tonight.”

“Please.”

“Girl, I care for you. I hope you know that. But you ask me to attempt something I’ve never achieved.”

“Is it possible?”

“There are rumors.”

I recalled myself soaring through the skies. I could swear I had glimpsed, hundreds of meters below, constellations mirrored on the waves. A warmth flooded through me as if I were swaddled in blankets. I steadied my legs, and when I spoke, my voice quivered.

“It will be perfect. You’ll return where you belong, and I’ll accompany you as your right hand.”

The emperor owl opened and closed his beak. His gaze darted across the forest as if anticipating an interruption. When he leaned toward me, moonlight streaked white bands over the embossed owls and chalices on his conical crown. The plumage around his round eyes blazed pumpkin-orange in the shape of a mask, while the black strokes of his brows split into a V-shape.

“My world allows no returns. Once you see it, you’ll spend the rest of your life gazing through it.”

My throat constricted. My lungs fought to hold air.

“I’ve seen all I wanted to see here.”

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Author’s note: I wrote this novella in Spanish about ten years ago. It’s contained in the collection titled Los dominios del emperador búho.