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see them?”
    She chuckled. “You are asking tooo many questions at once, great-grandson. Yes, there are humans who live close by. And you will learn what they are like one day. I am sure of that.”
    I rocked back and forth from one foot to another.
    â€œCan we go see them now?” I asked.
    â€œNot yet, Wabi, but soooon.”
    I stared down at my feet, trying not to ask more questions, but it was no use. “Great-grandmother, how is it that you know so much?”
    â€œIt is because I know what I do not know, Wabi,” she said to me.
    I was confused. How could you know what you do not know? Did that mean knowing or not knowing? I sat staring at my feet through half the night and still didn’t have an answer.
    I had so many questions that I felt as if my head would burst. I could not keep quiet.
    â€œWhy do I ask so many questions?” I said to Great-grandmother one day.
    â€œIt is because you are you,” she answered.
    That led to another bout of foot-staring, and not just for one night. How could I be anyone else but me?
    Â 
    It was many winters later when I asked the question that changed everything for me. I was now the biggest owl in the whole forest. That was a surprise to me, but even more of a surprise to others. Usually female owls are bigger than males.
    The question came about because of a chance meeting one night with another owl. My sister. I came across her while hunting in our far ridge one look away from my roosting place. (A look is as far as you can see while sitting in a high place. That is how we owls measure distance.)
    My sister swiveled her head to look up at me when I floated down onto the branch just above her.
    â€œSister, hello,” I said in a neutral tone.
    I was determined to be polite, even if she had intruded on the hunting territory that great-grandmother and I controlled.
    She fluffed up her feathers, trying to look bigger. Then she realized that she recognized my voice. She stared hard at me.
    â€œRrrtrrbrrll, ull-ooo?” she hooted in a confused voice. Runt, is that you?
    â€œThe name is Wabi,” I said. “I am Runt no longer. What do you think of that? Are you not glad to see me?”
    She didn’t answer me. She just kept staring. Perhaps her narrow mind could not accept the fact that I was not only alive but bigger than she was.
    She may have been surprised too at the way I looked. And here is another thing I have not mentioned before—the color of my feathers.
    In every way but one, I looked like other owls of my kind—from the two tufts of feather that rise like horns on top of my head to the sharp, curved claws on my feet. In every way but one—my color. My color was not like theirs. Where their feathers were brown, mine were pale, almost the color of snow.
    That was why my great-grandmother had given me the name Wabi, which means “white.” By the light of the moon, especially on a night when her face was full and open as it was on the night when I met my sister again, I almost glowed.
    My sister kept staring at me, her ear tufts flattened down against her head. There was no friendship in her gaze and certainly not much intelligence. I lost patience with her.
    â€œHOO-HOO! HOOOO!” I hooted in my loudest voice, spreading my wings as I did so. “MY TERRITORY! MOVE!”
    My sister did just that. She dove off the branch and flapped her wings, not in the leisurely way we do when hunting, but in panic, vanishing into the distance. She would not intrude on my hunting ground again.
    I went looking for Great-grandmother. It did not take me long to find her. She was in the top of a great pine that stood not far from the place where I had just had my encounter with my unfriendly sister. She had probably seen—and heard—it all.
    That was when I asked the question.
    â€œWhy didn’t my sister answer me?”
    Great-grandmother looked at me. It was one of those looks that told me I had to