I duck down, push a branch aside to enter the nearly vertical hidden trail, slide down it perhaps fifty feet. Then I stop, holding on to the base of a sapling to keep myself from slipping. If I go any farther the sounds of brush rustling and stones dislodged by my feet rattling down the hill may give me away.

Just in time. I hear heavy feet—coming not from one direction on the trail but two. Then there is the scratching sound of flint striking steel, a spark, and then light as torches are set flaming. I can barely see the light through the heavy brush above me, but even so I close my eyes and lower my head so that no stray beam of light will reflect from my face.

“Did . . . you see . . . the boy?” Though his voice is still slurred by drink and he is breathing hard, I recognize who is speaking. It’s Udagehi’s father.

“We . . . we . . . were right behind him,” a second voice speaks, the voice of the man who raised his hand and threw that knife at me.

“No,” says a third voice, that of the man I sensed waiting in ambush. “I saw nothing. Are you sure he went this way?”

I listen as they continue to talk, stumbling about as they do so. I keep my head down, trusting that they will not find the hidden entrance to my secret trail.

Then there’s another sound.

Whoot-too-whoo.

The call of an owl from the branches of one of the trees next to the trail. Although another thought comes to me as I hear that call. Is it really an owl? Or is it my father, who can make any sound like that of the kingfisher when he came upon me at the stream?

“Eeee-yah!” one of the men cries, fear in his voice. “Did you hear that?”

That first owl’s call is answered by another from deeper in the woods.

Whoot-too-whoo.

“Ah-ah-ah!” Udagehi’s father says. “Two of them!”

Among our Tsalagi people, the owl is usually seen as a bird of ill omen. Some say that sorcerers can take the shape of an owl, and it is believed that the call of an owl can mean someone is about to die.

But I also know that it is not at all unusual to hear owls hoot like that at this time of year. It’s the time of year when the owls call to one another this way, hoping to find a mate. I learned that from my uncle Red Bird, who told me that sometimes an owl is just an owl and that people who are feeling guilty will always find something to fear.

Like those three men on the trail above me. Those men do not like the sound of those owls. And whether it is really an owl or my father protecting me, the result is the same.

“Forget the boy.”

“This is an evil night.”