The Bark of the Bog Owl by Jonathan Rogers Read Free Book Online

whole thing up—about the panther, about you, everything. Sometimes I wonder myself if I just dreamed it all.

    Anyway, if you find this letter and if you can read it and if you aren’t imaginary, I hope you’ll meet me here beneath this beech tree whatever day is convenient for you. I’m usually here— tending sheep in the afternoons, exploring the bottomland forest in the mornings.

    Yours very sincerely,
Aidan Errolson of Longleaf Manor
    It had been weeks since Aidan tacked the letter to the beech tree in the bottom pasture. There it had remained, undisturbed, ever since, as the temperate spring yielded to the heavy heat of a Corenwald summer. After such a promising start—a feechie boy, a panther, a wandering prophet—Aidan’s summer so far had proven disappointing. Life at Longleaf Manor had resumed its normal rhythms almost before Bayard was out of sight. Aidan was back in the pasture with his sheep the day after the prophet’s visit, and there he had been most days since.
    In spite of the prophet’s declaration, Aidan’s brothers did not revere him as Corenwald’s great deliverer. He was still their little brother, still inclined toward make-believe,still likely to bite off more than he could chew. For a little while, they had teased him about his interview with the crazed visitor and his claim to have wrestled a feechie boy and killed a panther. But they eventually grew tired of the joke and paid him no more attention than they had before. The fact that no one ever found any sign of the panther Aidan claimed to have killed certainly didn’t help his case.
    Whenever anyone asked what really happened in the bottom pasture, Aidan always stuck to his story. But even he was starting to doubt. Maybe his older brothers were right; maybe he had imagined the whole thing. The lifeless body of a full-grown panther couldn’t just disappear, could it? Perhaps he only knocked the panther senseless, and it came to its senses and slinked away before Ebbe noticed it. If that were the case, Aidan hadn’t slain a panther with a stone, and all this Wilderking business had nothing to do with him after all. He even began to wonder if Bayard had hypnotized him and put the whole thing in his head.
    And yet he could not forget the old man’s eyes—not the blank gaze that convinced his brothers that Bayard was a lunatic, but the eyes that brimmed with tears of joy when they first saw Aidan. Those were the eyes of Bayard the Truthspeaker, Corenwald’s great prophet. Also, there was Father, who never dismissed any of this as foolishness. He certainly had his doubts. What sane person wouldn’t? But he knew not to take any word of Bayard’s lightly. He also knew that his youngest son was neither a fool nor a liar.
    This was a strange and confusing time for Aidan. All his short life he had dreamed of adventure, of great deeds of heroism. Now Corenwald’s Truthspeaker had lookedinto his eyes and told him that he, Aidan Errolson, would one day be Corenwald’s greatest adventurer and hero, the Wilderking foretold in song and prophecy. But Aidan wasn’t overjoyed at the news. It wasn’t just that he doubted the truth of the prophet’s words. The doubt, actually, was easier than belief. It was belief that burdened him with the sense—however unrealistic—that the future happiness of all of Corenwald rested on his shoulders. It was belief, not doubt, that kept him up nights.
    Then there was the vague sense that even thinking about the Wilderking prophecy made him a traitor to King Darrow. He didn’t ask for any of this. Even in his most ambitious flights of fancy, he had never imagined himself the king of Corenwald. His dearest hope had always been to serve the king, not to supplant him.
    It was a lonely feeling. To whom would the Wilderking look for advice and counsel? Who could begin to understand what it was like to be headed down such a path? Not his brothers. They didn’t believe any of it anyway. Father was as