Asha and the Second Sky

"Hoo. Hoo-hoo. Hooo-oo-oo." Nico's hoot came out sideways again, like a hiccup wearing a hat. Asha was a small desert owl, speckled all over as if someone had thrown a handful of sand at her and most of it had stuck. She had heard a great many hoots in her short life, and that one was the strangest. "Try it again," she said. "But mean it this time."

Nico tried again. It came out worse. He was younger, and his voice had a wobble in it that he couldn't find the end of. They were sitting on the flat rock above the Last Well, where the stone still held the day's warmth and the air smelled of cool sand and, from the camp beyond the ridge, of mint tea cooling on a stone. Beyond them the dunes hummed as the wind combed them, long soft strokes, the way you would pet a sleeping cat.

Grandmother came out of the crevice then, holding one wing a little stiffly. She had flown to the far ridge at dusk and back, which for an owl her age was a long way to go for news. "Asha," she said, "my wing would like a rest tonight. Will you keep the well for me?"

Keeping the well wasn't about the water. It was about the hooting. Every so often, all night long, someone had to sit on the sitting stone and call out that everything was well, three notes, low and unhurried. The small creatures of the desert, the jerboas and the sand foxes and the beetles with their tiny careful feet, waited out in the dark and listened for it. A hoot like that meant nothing was wrong, and out they would come to drink.

"Every time the moon climbs a hand's width, you hoot," Grandmother said. "Not before and not after. And you hoot from the sitting stone, because a hoot from anywhere else is only a noise." She smoothed Nico's feathers, then Asha's. "Mind you, when the water is still, the well keeps a second sky. Some nights you get two of everything."

Then she went to the mouth of the crevice, where she could see them both, and tucked her head under her wing.

Nico leaned close. "Tonight's the spill," he whispered. "The stars are going to fall." It was true. Every so often the sky loosened and let a few stars slip, thin silver threads that slid down the dark and were gone. Everyone knew the best place to watch was the Sugar Dune, the tall one, where you could see the whole sky at once and it looked like spilled sugar. Asha's feathers prickled. She wanted to go. She wanted it the way you want water after a long fly.

"Grandmother?" she called. "The spill might come tonight." "It might," said Grandmother from the crevice, without lifting her head. Asha looked at the Sugar Dune. It looked back at her, patient and silver. Then she sat down on the sitting stone and wrapped her toes around the edge of it.

The moon climbed. Nothing happened. Asha discovered that keeping the well was mostly sitting still, which was not the same as doing nothing, but felt a great deal like it.

The moon rose a little more. Asha hooted, three notes, low and unhurried. The wind took them and carried them off over the sand. The dunes hummed. She hooted again, and this time her voice cracked in the middle like a dry twig.

"That one was thin," said Nico, who was honest the way a stone is honest. Asha fluffed her feathers. It was true, and worse, she was afraid it was the truest thing about her. Grandmother's hoot filled the whole valley. It rolled. It made the small creatures nod. Asha's hoot was a small owl's hoot, and a small owl's hoot, she thought, might not count.

Out at the edge of the dark, something moved. Two ears lifted, small as spoons, and a jerboa stood up on its back legs and did not come any closer.

Asha hooted louder. The jerboa flinched, sat down and stayed where it was. Nico tried to help. "Hoo-hoo-hooo-oo," he went, like a hiccup in a hat, and the jerboa's nose twitched, but it didn't come. Asha's toes tightened on the stone. The moon was two hands up now. The spill could come at any moment, and Nico kept glancing at the Sugar Dune, and the jerboa kept waiting, and everything felt like a knot.

So she thought about the shape of a hoot. Grandmother's hoot wasn't big because it was loud. It was loud because it was certain. It wasn't a warning at all. It was company. It meant: I'm here, I'm not going anywhere, and nothing is wrong.

So Asha changed her hoot. She made it small and steady, three warm notes, the way you would hand somebody a stone that had been sitting in the sun. She didn't hoot at the jerboa. She hooted with it, as if the two of them were keeping each other company in a very large, very dark room.

The jerboa listened with its whole body. Then it came, quick and low across the sand, and put its small careful feet in the water and drank. It drank for a long time. Then it looked up at her, and its whiskers were wet, and it did not run away.

That was when the sky loosened. One star slid down, then two more, thin and silver, so quick you almost missed them. Nico gasped and nearly slid off the rock. Asha's heart pulled toward the Sugar Dune so hard it felt like a hook on a string. But the sitting stone was hers, so she stayed where she was and hooted, three warm notes, while the stars fell.

And then she looked down. The water in the well was perfectly still, and the spill was in it. One star above, one star below, both falling at the same time. She couldn't help it. She stopped hooting for a moment and watched the whole sky drop into the well and gather there, quiet as coins in a pocket.

Nico came down beside her with a soft thump of feathers. He looked at the well, then at the sky, then at the well again. "There's two of everything," he said. "There's two skies." Asha nodded. She could not have said it better herself, and she had been trying all evening.

When the moon cleared the far ridge, Grandmother came out and walked carefully across the warm stone to stand beside them. Asha's job was done. She hadn't been to the Sugar Dune. She hadn't seen the spill from high up. She had seen it twice. "Your hoot came out right in the end," Grandmother said. "I heard it from the crevice. It sounded like someone who meant it."

The little jerboa drank its fill, washed its face with both paws, and went home across the sand. The wind slowed to a stroll. The dunes kept humming, but softer now, the way a hum goes when the hummer is nearly asleep.

Nico yawned, which owls almost never do, and tucked himself into the crevice. A moment later he hooted once in his sleep, one soft, perfect hoo, and Asha nearly laughed. Grandmother smoothed Asha's speckled feathers and told her the well would keep her hoot for her now, tucked down in the water with all those stars.

Asha sat on the sitting stone a little longer with her eyes half closed, listening to the small sounds of a desert at rest. Sand shifting. A beetle's careful feet. The well going plim, once, quietly, to itself.

Below her the second sky lay still in the water, every star in its place. Somewhere in it a single star blinked, slow and silver, like someone saying goodnight. Then Asha went in and tucked her head under her wing, and the well kept its watch, and the whole desert slept.