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be patient and listen closely. So I did, even though I rocked back and forth from one foot to the other as I waited.
    â€œWabi,” Great-grandmother said at last, looking out at the forest as she spoke, “she could not understand you.”
    â€œWhy?”
    This time I did not have to wait for the answer.
    Great-grandmother turned and looked straight at me. “She could not understand because you were not speaking owl talk. You were talking as the human beings do.”
    â€œBut that is how you and I talk all the time,” I said. “Why do those two-legged ones speak the same words that we do?”
    â€œBecause it is the other way around,” she said.
    â€œYou mean we talk to each other with human words?” It was very confusing to me. “Why is that so?”
    This led to the longest silence my great-grandmother had ever forced on me. We sat there so long that my impatient rocking scraped all the bark from the branch under my feet. Moon moved almost the entire way across the sky as I waited for an answer.
    My great-grandmother finally turned to me and sighed.
    â€œWabi,” she said, “you and I have a special gift that most owls do not have. We are able, if we listen closely, to understand the speech of many other beings. Not just owls, but humans and other creatures toooo.”
    â€œWhy?” I asked. As usual, one answer was not enough to satisfy me.
    Great-grandmother shook her head. “On another night, I will answer you. Now the moment is not right.”
    Then she flew away, leaving me with even more questions for which I had no answers.

CHAPTER 7
    Listening
    LISTENING IS VERY IMPORTANT. EVEN the dullest owl knows that. Our survival depends on using our ears, even before we use our eyes, our wings, and our talons.
    â€œWabi,” Great-grandmother said to me soon after she began caring for me, “always remember that you have two ears, two eyes, two wings, and two feet. But you have only one mouth.”
    I understood what she meant, or at least I thought I did.
    Two ears to hear food. Two eyes to see it when it starts to run. Two wings to sweep down on it. Two feet to grab it firm. And then, of course, one mouth was plenty enough to eat it.
    I know now that Great-grandmother meant more than that. I was asking so many questions that it probably seemed to her as if I had more than one mouth. I hadn’t discovered yet that curiosity can get you into more trouble than listening and looking, flying and grabbing. But I was about to learn.
    For some reason, I had decided to watch the setting of the Day Fire all by myself from a tall broken cedar at the edge of the big swamp. I had not told my great-grandmother where I was going. After all, I was a big owl now, even though I was still young. What did I have to be afraid of?
    That, of course, was a question I should have been asking myself.
    That night, though, as I sat there watching the colors of the sky-edge change, I was not thinking of questions. Instead I was just enjoying how it all looked. There were no owl words to express how I felt, but I had learned some new words that seemed right. Since my great-grandmother had told me we were using human words to talk with each other, I had begun to pay attention to those two-legged beings who lived near the waterfall. Some evenings I would sit hidden in a cedar tree to watch and listen and remember what they said about things. So I spoke some of those words now.
    â€œThe sky color is so pretty now,” I said, and then I sighed. A bit too loudly, as it turned out. Someone else heard me.
    â€œYoung one,” a quavery voice called out from deep in the swamp. “Young one, do you hearrr meeee?”
    I turned my head to listen more closely to that voice. It was a voice I had never heard before. It was . . . strange. I might have said it was pleasant, but somehow it made me feel uneasy. Yet it was an attractive voice, a voice that made me curious. I knew