Smoke curled up and through Thornsong’s fingers as he held them over the fire. The pine sticks crackled and spit in the shallow bowl he’d scooped in the snow.

A loon wailed somewhere nearby. Thornsong leaned back on his buckskin cape and held his breath.

No, not a loon. Deeper. Throatier.

He scooped up a handful of snow and doused the fire, patting the sticks until the smoke stopped. The sun was already low. The beech trees seemed to press in, their shadows almost palpable in the twilight.

“It’s cold,” said Raspberry. “What’d you do that for?”

“It was a risk making a fire at all,” Thornsong said. “Besides, you’re always cold.”

Raspberry bared a double row of pebble-sized teeth and let out an exasperated hiss.

“For a giant in a fur coat, you’re pretty sensitive,” Thornsong said, tossing Raspberry a few hunks of pemmican from his pack.

“I can handle the cold,” Raspberry said, tossing an apple-sized chunk into his mouth. “I just don’t like it.”

“Eat quickly. The lechuza should be coming this way directly.”

“Still convinced we’re hunting a monster?”

“Completely. Three missing children. Partially devoured. Bones uncracked. Deep, parallel cuts punctuated with deep stab wounds. Near water, the lake that supports the tribe. That’s a lechuza. The Big Owl.”

“Or wolves. Or cats. Or cannibals.”

“Lechuza. You’ll see. Chew, swallow, and let’s get out of sight.”

Thornsong stood and adjusted his kit. Meteoric iron dagger tucked into his heavy cotton breechcloth. Stone tomahawk in its leather holster alongside his buckskin leggings. Oak plank covering his heart and woven into his beaded war shirt. A line of cobalt-blue paint across his eyes.

Raspberry stood. He had no kit to adjust except for a thick strip of rawhide banded around his waist. He stood a head-and-a-half taller than Thornsong, covered in a simian coat of coarse, reddish hair.

“Is there a plan this time?” he said.

“There’s always a plan.”

Another not-loon wail pierced the trees. Closer, this time.

“Want to share? Something tried-and-true? Net? Tripwire? Arrow in the back?”

“Have you seen a lechuza before?” said Thornsong, rummaging in his pack.

“It’s an owl, but bigger. Or so you’ve said before,” Raspberry said.

“Not quite,” Thornsong said. “It’s not just a giant owl. If it was, sure, I’d say the old net-and-arrow technique would be fine. But it’s not a natural animal. The young ones have owl bodies and the faces of old crones. As they age, their features swap - owl head, feathered crone body.”

“Monstrous,” Raspberry snorted.

“Based on the size of the marks on the children, this one is particularly old. Should be eight, nine feet tall. Could hold your head in its talons. Feather shafts a finger-thick. We’re not getting an arrow through those, and we’d just waste a net.”

Thornsong pulled a small leather pouch from his pack.

“Hold out your hand,” he said.

Raspberry stretched out a slablike palm and Thornsong poured a pinch of some white, floury substance into it.

“Poison?” he said. “Wish you’d told me before you poured it on me.”

“A special, finely ground salt,” Thornsong said. “It doesn’t burn on its own, but when you toss it into a hot flame, it burns brilliantly white. Has magnesium woven through it.”

“You’re going to blind it.”

“It’s not a natural owl, but the spirit has borrowed elements of that form,” Thornsong said, tucking the pouch into his breechcloth. “But the salt burns quickly, and the lechuza isn’t going to just stare at it. I doubt it’d approach an open flame, anyway.”

The wail came again, loud enough to set Thornsong’s teeth on edge.

“We have to hurry,” he said, gesturing toward a nearby pine copse.

“Crouch there. When I give the signal, I’ll take any help you can give.”

Thornsong sat cross-legged in the snow, his tomahawk laid out in front of him. The wail came on again, ending in a raspy trill.

“There you are,” he said under his breath. “Bigger than I expected.”

The lechuza walked with measured steps, talons flexing into the forest floor. What little of its body Thornsong could make out was pink and wizened. The vast majority was coated in dirty gray feathers, overlapping like armor plates. Its skinny arms were short but bladed with vestigial wings and terminated by a second set of talons. Its face was dominated by fist-size yellow eyes and a small, cruelly hooked beak.

It hadn’t seen him yet - but it would momentarily.

He reached into his pack and brought out the remainder of the greasy pemmican. Bear fat, chokecherries, and a little dried and powdered salmon. He crumbled the pemmican in front of the tomahawk, forming a mound.

The lechuza trudged ahead, rotating its head smoothly side to side, cooing softly. Thornsong reached back into his pack. Timing would end this monster.

He pulled out a small meteoric iron stick and a knapped lump of flint. Twenty feet now.

He scraped the flint along the stick, raining a shower of sparks into the greasy mound. A spark caught, spread, lapping up the grease and vomiting up a strong yellow flame.

The flame reflected in the lechuza’s eyes. It opened its beak and screamed. It spread its wings, such as they were, and flexed its claws in Thornsong’s direction. Its steps picked up pace. Fifteen feet. Ten.

Thornsong jumped to his feet and snatched the salt pouch from his waist. In a fluid motion, he emptied the bag onto the grease fire and rolled forward, snagging the tomahawk as he went.

The salt flared and Thornsong screwed his eyes tight as he rolled. The lechuza’s scream rose in pitch and it threw its scabby wings up to cover its lidless eyes.

“Razz, now!” he said, bringing the tomahawk down on one of the lechuza’s wrist-sized talons. The bone inside broke with a wet crunch.

Thornsong came to his feet behind the lechuza, one wing still covering its eyes and the other cutting quick, deadly swipes through the space where lechuza had been sitting. It listed to the left, its foot shattered.

Thornsong rotated the tomahawk and smashed the flat of it into the wing covering the lechuza’s face. It reeled but reached out with its good foot as it fell, leaving a deep gouge on the oak slab across his heart. Thornsong drew the meteoric iron dagger.

“Razz!” he shouted again, but his sasquatch friend was already in motion and bellowing with his peculiarly strident war-cry. He charged the lechuza holding part of a rotted log in front of him. He bowled into it, but the lechuza spun and sent him sprawly, snapping saplings as he tumbled.

Thornsong flicked the dagger across the lechuza’s face, aiming for those giant rolling eyes.

It caught his wrist and picked him neatly up off of the ground, bringing him level with its face. He kicked, moccasins bouncing uselessly off of the sharp guard feathers at its waist.

It opened its beak and screeched inches from his nose.

Thornsong dropped the dagger and reached for the falling blade with his free hand. It nicked his fingers but fell straight through to the forest floor.

The lechuza reared back, almost mirroring his earlier movements, flicking open a single curved, black talon.

The world turned upside down. Thornsong hit the ground, hard, and the lechuza’s feathers bit through the back of his war shirt. Razz stood over them both, rotten log held out like a club. He raised it overhead for another swing.

The lechuza was faster. One wing was pinned beneath it, but the other pinwheeled wildly. A talon sunk through Razz’s foot and into the pine straw beneath it.

Razz roared - a sound Thornsong hadn’t heard in a long, long time.

The log came down. The lechuza was trapped, one wing crushed against the ground, the other stuck in Razz’s massive foot.

Thornsong saw the dagger above his head. He strained for it, palmed it, and brought up his arm in an arc directly between those lurid yellow eyes.

The lechuza squawked and pulled its talon from Razz’s foot. The log came down again, and again, and again. Feathers came loose and started to drift in the light remaining from the failing grease fire.

Again. And again. And again.

“Enough,” said Thornsong. The squawking had stopped.

The lechuza was a ruined heap on the forest floor. Black blood trickled from its joints where ivory splinters of bone poked through. The beak was open and leaking. The yellow eyes went dull.

Thornsong stood and winced.

Razz tossed the log into the trees and rounded on him.

“You burned our food,” he panted. “And my foot hurts.”

Thornsong smiled.

“Let’s get another fire going - a good one - and get ourselves patched up. We’ll burn the carcass tomorrow and harvest the feathers. I think I’m going to want a shield.”

“And the food?” he said.

“I’m sure the lake tribe will be more than happy to fill our packs when we bring them the child-killer’s head in the morning.”