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I descended the slope toward my refuge among the beech trees. A meter and a half above the circle of blackened grass levitated the emperor owl. Sunlight blazed on his conical crown. His folded wings peeked from the open sleeves of his purple dalmatic, and the drapery of his coiled sash hung beneath his talons.

Hobbling on trembling legs, I halted about five meters from the circle, and a gasp of surprise slipped out. I paced side to side, testing if a mirage deceived me, yet the emperor owl’s amber eyes tracked my every shift. I tilted my head, jaw slack.

The emperor owl raised a brow and parted his beak.

“Hello.”

When his cavernous voice swept through me, my face and hands prickled. My throat clenched. I fought the urge to leap for joy. Instead, I clenched my fists and pressed my knees together, tense like a spring.

“It’s you. Of course.”

I stepped closer. The emperor owl ruffled the black-and-olive striped feathers of his throat, eyes widening.

“You see me.”

I nodded frantically. A mouse-like squeak escaped me. I inched forward, but he unfurled one wing and stretched his neck.

“Remember. Keep your distance.”

I swayed, then crumpled to the grass, dropping my portfolio. Joy flooded me, stifling my speech—if I opened my mouth, laughter would stream out.

“You see me and do not fear me,” said the emperor owl, his tone like a man reassessing his world’s foundations.

“Why would I? You’re magnificent.”

The emperor owl flared his neck feathers, and a grin split his face.

I stood even though my legs threatened to buckle. My congestion made me dizzy; I shook my head to clear it.

“So, now I know. No more secrets. You’ve wandered from your land, lost, because we must have met by chance. But I think I’ll remember the path, or at least the direction.”

“What path?”

“I’ve seen the fleet waiting for you.”

The emperor owl gaped open his beak, his gaze wandering as a lemonade-pink tongue emerged, flickering faintly in the dark hollow of his mouth.

“Please,” I pressed. “How many kilometers separate you from your home? No one should have to live here.”

“Countless.”

“You can go back accompanied.”

“Girl, I don’t know what kind of world you’re imagining.”

“I’ve seen it, and miss it. You could have moved away from my refuge—you said so—but you had decided to stay for a while.”

“My world can’t be reached the way your kind travels.”

“I know. I’d follow you from land, and on the coast, I’d rent a boat—or steal one. Even if rowing wore me down, I’d know what lay ahead. And if I needed to sleep in the boat, you could alight and keep me company.”

The emperor owl narrowed his eyes. He snapped his wings open, shook them with a rustling whoosh, and folded them.

I rubbed my sweaty palms. My stomach tightened. Why was it so hard for him to accept that I recognized him? Did he distrust the person who would become his right hand? He must have met some of the inhabitants of this land and learned to avoid them. How could I convince him that I was worth the risk?

A meter and a half from the circle, near yesterday’s vomit—now a metallic crust—I swept aside rotten leaves and knelt on the grass.

“I swear allegiance to the emperor owl. I renounce all ties to this dark land into which I have unfortunately been born, and I vow that for the rest of my days, I will turn my back on it. I will obey the laws of the domains you rule and serve you in whatever manner you see fit.”

I furrowed my eyelids as I held my breath. The emperor owl would descend from his invisible pedestal and rest a wing on my shoulder.

A couple of fruits thudded into leaf litter; the narrow stream of the nearby creek hissed.

I stood. The emperor owl’s pupils quivered behind half-closed lids. I shook fragments of leaves and twigs from my palms. When I spoke, my voice faltered.

“Do you reject my oath?”

“What has happened to you?” asked the emperor owl, and though he had softened his tone, it reverberated like a cavernous echo.

“Too much. I must seem nervous, impulsive. Things are going badly for me. But test my loyalty however you wish. I swear I would leave today.”

The owl shrank and lowered his head.

“For now, I will stay.”

My muscles strained to keep me upright. I swallowed a lump of phlegm. How could I convince him beyond swearing my loyalty? Or was I striving in vain, because I could never deserve for the emperor owl to take me with him? But how could I ever deserve it, having been born here, among these people, tainted? What place could I belong to other than this darkness?

“Soon, right?” I whispered. “We’ll leave before long.”

The emperor owl inflated and deflated his chest beneath the dalmatic as he held my gaze with his amber eyes.

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.

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I lowered the blankets down to my nose as bile surged into my throat. The bedroom had shrunk as if the missing furniture had been holding up its dimensions. From the mattress sprawled on the floor, the bedroom door towered, its jambs slanting toward the narrow lintel, resembling a monolith.

Feverish tremors rattled me. I sucked air into my lungs, but they rejected it.

I blinked, and the door burst open as if rammed by a battering ram. It swung on its hinges and slammed the wall, exploding into splinters. In the doorway loomed Father’s hulking frame. His inflamed breath illuminated black nostrils and a bristly snout.

I blinked again, and the door stayed shut. I strained to hear footsteps beneath the roaring gale in my ears, where screams floated like driftwood from a shipwreck.

As my vision prickled into blackness, I levitated in a void—but jolted awake, back to my starlit bedroom. I buried my head under the blankets. Once darkness swallowed me, nothing could hurt me.

My swollen bladder pulsed. I clenched my thighs to trap it. A lapse and I’d wet myself. I thrashed on the mattress—rolling onto one shoulder, the other, my back—shuddering as cold sweat glued my pajamas to my skin. Urine clawed to escape. When I imagined leaping from bed, sprinting down a kilometer-long hall to the bathroom, then emptying my bladder, relief flooded me.

Why hold back? Would it matter if I peed myself? Was I afraid of disturbing him?

I spread my thighs and relented. A hot stream soaked my crotch, fused my panties to the pajama pants, and pooled between my buttocks. My body from navel to thighs felt warm as if I were sinking into a bath.

I peeked from the blankets. In the view quivering like a tuning fork, the cork oak outside stretched toward the star-patched sky. An owl clung to a branch, hunched in black-and-olive streaked plumage, wind ruffling its citrine underfeathers. Its crest and beak-framing feathers had grayed; the rest of its head camouflaged with the forest. Two tufts spiked from its crown—antennae of a space helmet. Wide amber eyes locked onto mine as if commanded to witness what came next.

The owl spread its wings, flapped them, and swiftly soared out of sight. The branch and its sinuous leaves shuddered, then stilled.

Tears boiled in my ducts, glazing the oak. Even the owl wouldn’t stay. I cocooned under the blankets. Blind blackness greeted my opened eyes. I gulped stagnant, warm air that reeked of ammonia.

In the void, the owl’s outline gripped the branch. Its eyes warned me in a language to which I was born deaf.

I rose. The owl watched as I neared the window. When I opened it, cold air rushed in. The bird spread its wings, flapped them, and swiftly soared out of sight. I craned into the night, twisting to scan the roof.

“Wait.”

I climbed the window frame. Jumped, and found myself dangling between the facade and oak, suspended by an invisible thread tethered to the sky. I clawed upward through air, soaring past the roof as pine-clad hills and valleys shrank below.

The owl’s silhouette fluttered ahead, a black smudge against a spatter of stars.

My chest swelled. I chased the bird for ten minutes while muscles I never knew screamed in my limbs.

A hundred meters below, a greenish sea stretched horizon-to-horizon, waves wrinkling with reflections of the stars and moon. The owl glided toward a fleet of anchored galleys, and landed on the central ship’s deck. Two rows of figures flanked the bird. A delegation approached.

I swooped to the stern and landed feet-first, but momentum slammed me down, dragging me five meters across planks. I stood.

Two long-necked egrets in slashed doublets and ruffs slid a purple dalmatic over the owl’s wings and head. They wrapped its shoulders and torso in a sash embroidered with gold and silver filigree. Across its stripes glittered dozens of gemstones. Another egret wedged a conical crown onto the bird’s crest—silver adorned with raised reliefs of owls, runes, and geometric patterns.

The deck’s flanking figures converged on me, stalking like a cat encircled by hounds. Eagles clad in bronze helmets and breastplates tilted halberds my way.

“Sir, they followed you,” growled the lead eagle soldier.

A hiss echoed above. Bird silhouettes aimed crossbows from the crow’s nest and rigging.

The owl adjusted its dalmatic, waddled closer, and raised a wing. Lemon-sized amber eyes fixed on me.

“I recognize this human. She hails from that sorrowful overseas land.” His voice dropped. “You were born into a bleak country, girl.”

I shuddered. Swallowed to unclench my throat.

“It is, sir.”

The owl glanced at his guards, then lowered a wing. The eagles retreated, nodding.

It stepped nearer, wingtips resting on my shoulders, fanning black-striped feathers.

“I hoped you’d choose to follow me.”

I clasped my hands, voice shrill.

“May I accompany you, sir?”

“Of course.”

He encircled my back with a wing, and guided me toward the prow.

“Rest as long as you need. When you wake, you will breakfast with me. Tomorrow we reach my domains.”

In the morning, as I stepped out of the captain’s cabin onto the deck, the orange hole in the sky dazzled me. It bathed chalk-white cliffs. Salty air cleansed my lungs.

The fleet sailed through the mouth between two capes into a gulf, its shores teeming with houses, towers, and multicolored crops, while the sparkling waters were dotted with fishing boats and cargo ships. We docked at a harbor. The towering masts of hundreds of vessels rose like a forest of bare trees and tangled vines.

On the cobblestones of the harbor, the owl invited me to a carriage that would be drawn by six horses. The vehicle was decorated with golden garlands that gleamed in the sun, and up close, you could make out the stylized figures of birds perched on branches or in flight. The wheels were rimmed with gilt flowers, the interior of the carriage covered with purple velvet curtains. The cherrywood panels depicted the emperor owl and his retinue.

Inside, I settled onto a cushioned bench. The owl positioned himself across from me and drew the curtain across the window. I insisted on speaking, but utterly exhausted, I kept babbling incoherently. The emperor suggested I rest. I stretched out along the bench, burying my head in a feather pillow, and closed my eyes.

The carriage wheels glided over earth and grass, clattered along cobblestone streets. The clamor of villages poured in. The music of street performers emerged and vanished amidst vendors’ cries. Every few minutes, the uproar of crowds swelled around the carriage as they cheered for the emperor.

That noon, I dined in his castle, within a throne room as lofty as a cathedral. Rows of marble pillars supported a ribbed vault, its surface carved with rosettes and inlaid with colorful mosaics depicting heroic deeds. I sat beside the emperor owl at a table whose ends curved at the horizon. Bathed in the soft glow of candlelight, dozens of birds dipped their spoons into bowls of soup and purée. They pecked at pork ribs drenched in a tangy vinegar and lemon juice sauce. Between sips and bites, they chattered and laughed.

Seated across, a kingfisher dressed in a doublet, with an indigo head speckled in turquoise, poured cider through its long beak. To its right, a peregrine falcon, its head a smoky gray, adjusted a monocle that magnified one brown eye. Boasting, it boomed its deep, braggadocious voice over a plate of sea bass and potatoes.

As I savored the third bite of my lasagna, the emperor owl clinked a knife against his goblet. The clamor ceased. The guests turned their attention to him as if he were a revered professor.

“Listen.” His voice echoed through the throne room and returned as if a choir were mimicking it. “I thank you for having restrained your curiosity. This human, as you may have heard, followed me from the overseas land. Just as with the rest of its inhabitants, every day the shadows that ravage those lands hammered her body with mallet and chisel, and one day they would have reduced her to nothing.”

Emotion clouded my voice.

“But the emperor owl found me, and in his wisdom, he allowed me to accompany him to his domains.”

He pulled back the chair and settled in beside me. His warm wing draped over my shoulder. He gazed at me with amber eyes, their gleaming pupils reflecting the flickering flames of candles. The corner of his beak curved into a smile.

“And from this day onward, brave girl, you will be my right hand. Your belly will never writhe with hunger. You will forget fear. Never again will you endure pains you were never meant to know.”

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.

Today’s song is “White Rabbit” by Jefferson Airplane.

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When I rounded the hallway corner toward my bedroom, my dresser blocked the path, its drawers slightly ajar as if they had slid forward while the piece was being pulled. I pushed the dresser aside until I squeezed through the gap between its edge and the wall. From my open bedroom spilled a harsh scrape. It was punctured by the footsteps of a hulking mass, their vibrations trembling the floor.

I crept forward on tiptoe, fingertips grazing the grainy texture of the wallpaper. Congestion glazed my eyes, and static fogged my mind. My mouth, through which I was breathing, tasted stale.

From the bedroom doorway jutted a hand’s breadth of desk. It inched outward in jerks until halfway. Father growled. With a shove, the desk emerged fully, revealing the man behind it, his meaty palms planted on the furniture. When his gaze flicked toward me, I ducked my head as if I risked turning to stone. The desk legs screeched against the wooden floor as Father wedged it flush against the wall.

I lunged to the bedroom threshold, arms flung wide to block it.

“No.”

Father marched toward me and swatted me aside like a curtain. The bristles of his arm pierced the skin of my shoulder and chest through my sweater, shirt, and bra. I staggered against the hallway wall and crumpled to the floor.

Father muttered in the gutted space. He yanked open the screeching doors of my closet.

I rose as if waking from a faint. I couldn’t stop this man, nor persuade him to leave me alone. What could I do? Had he warned Mother? Told her he planned to strip my room of furniture that might barricade the door? Was she absent because she objected, or because she didn’t care?

My vision blurred. After wiping my nose on a snot-crusted handkerchief, I hurried down the hall, descended the stairs, crossed the living room, and stepped into a dusk that chilled my face and hands. The moon and first stars pierced clotted clouds. I scanned the pasture for Mother’s gaunt silhouette.

Chains clinked. The cows.

I rushed to the barn, plunging into its musky, dung-thick air. The beasts, chained in their stalls, chewed hay. Mother sat hunched on a stool beside one of the cows, squeezing the swollen teats of its udders, which were ridged with bulging veins. Milk jets splashed into a half-full bucket. She tilted her face toward the wall, hiding behind straggly, unkempt hair.

I halted beside her, fists clenched.

“Tell him to leave my furniture alone. Please.”

Mother tugged another udder, spraying milk. I crouched to glimpse her profile: features scratched into rotted wood, lips a mere slit. She stared down at the milk-filled bucket, making it seem like she had closed her eyes.

I softened my voice as much as my trembling allowed.

“Mother, do you know what he intends? If he told you, I don’t know if you could’ve stopped him. But you have to help me.”

“Don’t call me that.”

The volume of her voice had matched the splashing in the bucket, her words as though I’d imagined them in the gurgle of aching guts.

When I placed a hand on her sweatered shoulder, a bony lump pressed my palm.

“Do you know why he’s taking my furniture? Do you know what he does to me?”

She shot upright, the stool clattering on stone. Mother clamped her hand around my cheeks and squeezed. It hurt as if she might rip my mouth off with a tug. Her tangled gray mane framed creased and shovel-colored skin, and the paint with which her eyes had been drawn threatened to flake away. Her breath smelled of garlic.

She let go of my face. With her other hand, she gripped my nape, then shoved me beneath the cow and plunged my head into the milk bucket. I gulped a mouthful that flooded my lungs. I convulsed, trying to sneeze the milk out, but each spasm swallowed more, drowning my eyes, drenching my brain. Mother pressed my head deeper, the bucket’s curved edge digging into my collarbones. I grabbed the cow’s hide—it mooed and thrashed about, the chains binding its legs clinking.

Mother yanked my hair, and I fell backward onto bits of straw. I coughed bursts of milk. Sneezes and hacking shuddered through me, raking my nostrils and throat raw.

When I lifted my gaze from the straw-strewn floor, Mother was gone. The bucket lay overturned by the stool, and a milk puddle spread around the cow’s hoof.

Rising would waste energy. Someone should chalk my outline.

The cow nudged its muzzle close and lowed. Its nostrils exhaled a cloudy breath that warmed my cheek, glassy eyes gazing at me as if I were a wounded calf.

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.

Today’s song is “Screen Shot” by Swans.

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Before I stifled the sneeze, snot shrapnel sprayed my drawing, speckling the page with translucent blotches, smothering some strokes with globs. What did it matter? My trembling hand had sketched shaky curves. The scene I’d created was hazy, mirroring my mental fog, as if I were glimpsing a landscape through greased paper.

I crumpled the sheet into a ball. When I dropped it beside me, it rolled over the portfolio and lodged between chunks of bark. I blew my nose as if I were filled with liters of mucus, but ten seconds later, a trickle slid from one nostril. The wings of my nose were raw. My mouth tasted of phlegm. I should—and wanted—to lie in bed, but why stay under that roof when I could escape for a few hours?

I twisted my nose with the handkerchief, which muffled my voice.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Whatever you like,” said the man. “We’ll see what I answer.”

“Do you like me?”

The air thickened near the blackened circle, charged like static.

“You think I don’t?”

“Would you betray me?”

“Have you given me reason?”

“I don’t know. You might think I have, even if I didn’t mean to.”

“Is that cold of yours messing with your head? Why worry?”

“It is messing with me. I can’t think straight. But maybe you’re pretending to like me as a distraction.”

“A distraction from what?”

“From planning to hurt me.”

The man sighed, his breath prickling my face.

“I’m not planning to. Though if I were, I imagine I’d hide it.”

“If someone I thought cared for me switched sides, I assumed I would know.”

“It’s been years since anyone entertained me like you. Though, to be fair, I’ve never delved deeper into a relationship than telling someone to leave and watching them flee.”

I blew my nose until I needed a fresh handkerchief. The sight of the charred grass circle wavered, and the taste of my saliva sickened me. I set the cloth-covered tureen on my thigh, loosened the elastic, and lifted a corner of the fabric. If I could smell, maybe the aroma of marmitako inside would’ve stirred my hunger.

“Will it taste like anything to you?” said the man.

“Maybe it’ll taste like something to you.”

“Want me to try it?”

“I brought it to offer you. Even an invisible man needs to eat. What kind of person would let you starve?”

At the edge of my hearing floated the murmur of clashing thoughts, mingled with wind whistling, birds trilling, and the creek’s whisper.

“I should refuse.”

I crawled forward, but stopped a meter and a half from the circle to avoid the pins stabbing me. Bowing, I placed the open tureen on the grass. I jerked backward, then leaned on my hands, damp leaves and grass beneath my palms.

“If I ate, it’d be wasted. It’d taste like phlegm.”

“Charming word to hear while I consider eating.”

I opened my mouth to speak, but the image of the circle, the beeches, the tangle of branches beyond, slid toward the tureen as if painted on a stretching rubber band. The distortion coiled around the tureen like a claw, contracted, and swallowed it into a mirrored lake. The rustle of crumpled fabric. Chewing. A gulp.

A cough exploded, convulsing the beeches and the circle, the shockwave knocking me onto my back. The tureen flew past my head. My legs folded against my chest—firecracker-like coughs jolted me as if trying to make me roll. Needles stabbed my face and hands like a swarm of bees, their stings piercing my sweater and pants.

When the man stopped coughing, I lay supine. Above the quivering lattice of branches, a mass of gray-blue clouds slid south. I sat up. Snot bubbled in one nostril, and my exposed skin burned.

Before the circle of withered grass, a black, mercurial vomit had flattened the blades and buried the debris. I couldn’t smell, but the fumes attacked my nose like smoke-itch. The view of the blackened circle had stilled.

Had I poisoned the invisible man?

“Please, tell me you’re still there.”

“I’d forgotten how vomiting feels.”

I covered my mouth. I wanted to kneel and weep.

“I didn’t mean to. I swear. If I’d known it’d affect you like this, I’d have eaten it myself, even if it tasted like phlegm.”

“Relax. Years ago, I tried your food and it ended in another puddle. I thought this time might be different.”

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

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The bathroom door opened with a click that rippled through the bathwater, mingling with the pressure in my eardrums and the submerged gurgle of bubbles rolling across my skin. A draft seeped through the door crack and slithered over my knees and shins, that jutted from the water like ice cubes. Light footsteps entered the room.

I shrank deeper while trying to avoid disturbing the water. Who’d entered, knowing I was bathing?

I lifted my head into the cool air. I expected the shower curtain to silhouette the hulking mass of thick arms and legs, but the lamp lightened the nylon. I peeled the curtain back a hand’s width. Mother, leaning against the sink, stared at me.

I loosened my shoulders. Better her resentful glare than Father’s.

“Hurry up,” Mother said.

She rummaged through my pajamas, bra, and underwear, heaped on the toilet lid. She bundled them. Snatched the folded towel from the sink, and added it to the pile.

As I hunched over the tub’s edge, my wet hair and face splattered the tiles.

“What will I wear when I get out?”

Mother tilted her head to address me but hid her ashen face behind her silver hair.

“If you want clothes, ask your father.”

She left the door ajar.

The chill prickled my skin as my heart galloped. She’d return, I thought, and toss fresh underwear and pajamas onto the toilet lid. But her footsteps faded into silence. The cold air invading the bathroom through the cracked door whispered that if I emerged from the warm water, I’d risk pneumonia.

I shut the curtain and submerged myself up to my nose. Had Father ordered her to steal my clothes? Why had she obeyed? Mother knew she’d condemned me to shuffle naked toward that man, clutching my breasts and groin. To beg.

A searing heat in my chest overwhelmed me. As I shut my eyes tight, my body jerked in silent, tearless spasms.

I shoved the curtain aside and clambered out, hunched, as droplets drummed the tiles. At the sink, I froze, legs trembling as if I’d bathed in an icy river. In the mirror, wrinkled strands clung to my forehead, and rivulets snaked down my pallid skin. I recognized the gaze of a lamb hearing the bleats of its kin as it’s dragged through bloodied puddles.

I swept the hair from my face. Wringing my mane, it dripped down my back and spattered my buttocks.

I nudged the door further, and its knob grazed the wall. To my left, the shadowed hallway led, past a corner, to the bedroom. To my right, Father’s silhouette clogged the far end like cholesterol in an artery. The ancient bellows of his chest wheezed, swelling and deflating. Though darkness veiled his face, his stare pierced mine as if pinning a moth to cork.

A shudder seized my legs. Dizziness blurred my vision. I fixed my eyes on the wallpaper ahead, its lumpy patterns like spider eggs. I stiffened. Swallowed. I shielded my breasts with one arm, cupped my groin, then strode into the hallway.

What did it matter? He’d already seen. That man assumed forcing me to parade naked would render me helpless, yet I’d barricade my room even as I became stiff from the cold.

I let my arms drop. As if sleepwalking, I turned toward my bedroom and marched stiffly. Father’s gaze scorched me from hair to Achilles’ heels. When I rounded the corner, his stare detached. I sprinted to my room, stomach acid searing my throat. I opened the door, closed it behind me, and pressed my back against it.

A threadbare sheet covered the mattress. I recognized it from the storage closet in the attic; the sheet had been buried beside a yellowed pillow and hole-riddled slippers. I rifled through the dresser drawers—empty. When I jerked the wardrobe open, the draft rattled unburdened wire hangers.

My jaw quivered. Cool droplets slid down the gooseflesh on my arms.

I shoved the dresser screeching across the floor to barricade the door. Dragged the desk and wedged it against the dresser drawers.

I switched off the lamp, but starlight and the pockmarked moon bled through the window. As I neared the glass, an owl burst from the cork oak’s branch, wings thrashing. I yanked the curtain shut.

Clambered onto the bed as if escaping lava. Slid under the frayed sheet, pulled it over my head. Faint light seeped through the fabric’s cracks. It reeked of mold and old clutter fermented in the closet’s depths. The damp sheet clung to my skin.

I shut my eyes, hugged my knees. Counted to four again and again to drown out my hammering heart and chattering teeth.

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.

Today’s song is “Pink Moon” by my boy Nick.

This story is written in a manner that makes my skin crawl, and I don’t mean just the subject matter. I’ve long forgotten what headspace I was in at the time, but it reminds me of my teenage years, which were spent mainly slipping in and out of psychosis. Maybe that’s a huge part of why I didn’t want to revisit this story.