Joe Country

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The owl flew screaming from the barn, its wingtips bright with flame. For a moment, silhouetted against the blank sky, it was a dying angel, scorched by its own divinity, and then it was just a sooty husk, dropping like an anvil into the nearby trees. He wondered if it would set the wood ablaze. But the trees were thickly layered with snow, and any spark that survived the fall would be smothered on contact. He turned back to the barn in time to see the roof collapse, and a cloud of dust burst upwards. Kind of beautiful, if you liked that sort of thing. This must be what got arsonists stoked.

But he was no arsonist; just following instructions. They’d burned the barn to erase their recent presence, and it hadn’t occurred to either of them that this was an extermination; that there’d be an owl inside, plus any number of mice, rats, spiders, whatever. Not that it mattered. But he should have been aware of the possibility. That way, his heart wouldn’t have leaped up his throat when the burning bird emerged, desperately hunting the last few seconds of its life.

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