Owl and Sky

By Erin O'Quinn

Two young men reunite across the divide of ocean and against the tide of history.

Owl...it’s the name given to Grant Fletcher by his close friends and allies, the Tuscarora Indians of North Carolina's Ocracoke Island. His best friend is Sky, a native son.

When Grant is forced to leave the island—when his family comes to "rescue" him from the only home he's ever known—he must also leave Sky. His new father takes him to the tall dark city of Edinburgh, center of enlightenment, and of sinister shadows too. When the story opens, he's twelve and Sky is fifteen. But reality has a way of making boys into men, very fast.

Sky is a native of an emerging country...America...an indigenous segment of the New World that its new settlers are trying to eradicate or to marginalize. What happens when this young Indian strikes a fateful bargain with a colonial icon named Daniel Boone? When he teams up with an African man once held in an iron collar?

Owl & Sky is a story of young love, a continuation of the universe that began with “The Renegade and the Runaway” series (Unkilted and Unbroken, c. 2019 by Erin O’Quinn).

• Language: English
• Publisher: Erin O'Quinn
• Release date: Jan 2, 2020
• ISBN: 9780463926550

Erin O'Quinn

Erin O’Quinn sprang from the high desert hills of Nevada, from a tiny town which no longer exists. A truant officer dragged her kicking and screaming to grade school, too late to attend kindergarten; and since that time her best education has come from the ground she’s walked and the people she's met.Erin has her own publishing venue, New Dawn Press. Her works cover the genres of M/M and M/F romance and also historical fantasy for all ages.

Book preview

Owl & Sky

Sweet M/M romance novel

In the universe of

The Renegade and the Runaway

Erin O’Quinn

Copyright © 2020 Erin O ’ Quinn

New Dawn Press

ISBN: 9780463926550

First electronic edition published by New Dawn Press

Published in the United States of America with international distribution.

Cover Design by Erin O’Quinn (Bonita Franks)

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author ’ s imagination or are used fictitiously; and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. Please note: the notion of an illegitimate son of Daniel Boone is pure fiction.

This novel has a heat rating of PG 13. It’s a sweet love story between two young men, but of course the writing itself is at an adult reading level.

I think all men must carry an irksome itch between their leg s.

~Grant Fletcher, also called Owl

~~O~~

Look at Sky, see clouds, all colors.

~Sky (Uren’ya)

Foreword

Those who’ve read the first two novels in The Renegade and the Runaway series (the novels Unkilted and Unbroken ) may wonder about the fate of a lad named Grant. I’ve wondered myself…and so in this novel I weave his story, whose fabric is incomplete without the rich thread of Sky, a young Tuscarora Indian.

Readers will also enter the life of Iain Stewart—a Highland Scot who happens to be an accomplished covert op—and you’ll catch a glimpse of an American icon known affectionately as Dan’l Boone. Somewhere in these pages you’ll also meet a beautiful soul named John and reunite with a couple of old friends, the lovers Gregory and David.

The island called Ocracoke has recently made national news after being ravaged by Hurricane Dorian. That place has a long and fascinating history, including its horses. My story begins there in 1772, on the cusp of the American Revolution. From a young British colony called North Carolina…across the Atlantic to a verra old country called Scotland…here’s a tale of loss and discovery, of quest and adventure, of love with no boundaries.

Blurb

Two young men try to reunite across the divide of ocean and against the tide of history.

Owl …it’s the name given to Grant Fletcher by his close friends and allies, the Tuscarora Indians of North Carolina's Ocracoke Island. His best friend is Sky , a native son.

When Grant is forced to leave the island—when his family comes to rescue him from the only home he's ever known—he must also leave Sky. His new father takes him to the tall dark city of Edinburgh, center of enlightenment, and of sinister shadows too. When the story opens, he's twelve and Sky is fifteen. But reality has a way of making boys into men, very fast.

Sky is a native of an emerging country...America...an indigenous segment of the New World that its new settlers are trying to eradicate or to marginalize. What happens when this young Indian strikes a fateful bargain with a colonial icon named Daniel Boone? When he teams up with an African man once held in an iron collar?

Owl & Sky is a story of young love, a continuation of the universe that began with The Renegade and the Runaway series ( Unkilted and Unbroken, c. 2019 by Erin O’Quinn; the series concludes with Frontier Highlanders ).

Part I: The Separation

~American Colonies~

~Prologue: Dick Bones~

Late June, 1772

Ocracoke Island, North Carolina’s Inner Banks

He’d always thought this island was shaped like a cutlass—long and narrow, curved a little dangerously. ’Twas only twelve or thirteen miles from bow to stern, and barely a few miles wide. The sands were almost untrammeled, where footprints were soon erased by waves and wind, where dunes and grass met fierce blue sky.

Ocracoke Island was the graveyard of Blackbeard’s last ship Adventure , wrecked on the sandbars, and now his own to die in when he was ready to swim with the fish.

He called himself Dick Bones. Aye, a good name for a pirate. He’d lived up to that feared word, for he’d been a scourge and a privateer, a plunderer whose head had carried a handsome price. Now he was a castaway on the sands of Ocracoke, waiting for those same sands to trickle through time’s damned hourglass.

Aye, he’d come to terms with the end of days. Largely forgotten by those who’d once sought him, he found intense joy in his capsized home, in his adopted grandson, and in his memories. And that was enough.

Blackbeard had died here fifty years ago, and his ship had too, running from a godforsaken troop of Colonial militia men. These days, the only souls who came here on purpose were the hardy Tuscarora, fleeing the muskets of men who wanted Carolina Colony for their own. The Indian families who lived here treated him with the respect due his age, if not his warrior-hood. These people of the hemp had even weaved cunning windbreaks for the gaping wounds in the old ship, for the times when strong winds sometimes rocked and shook the whole island.

He had frequent visitors, if he included a wild band of horses, left by the Spaniards after their ships were lost and broken on Carolina’s Inner Banks. The Tuscarora fishermen, like the curious horses, tolerated his eccentric ways.

And most important, Grant Fletcher visited him once a week.

Grant had come to the island a decade ago, along with his strong-willed mother. They had survived—nay, thrived—ever since.

His adopted grandson was a child after his own heart. The boy devoured books, he invented adventure, he took life with a heavy dose of irony even at the doddering old age of twelve or thirteen, he’d forgotten which. Little Grant seemed attached to him with a fervor matched only by his own beloved brother Christiaan Bartholomew.

As for himself... He’d been born Diederick, a damned foolish name, a Dutch aristocrat’s whimsy. He’d abandoned his life and his birth name in Rotterdam—what? Sixty years ago, at least? He’d run away to the sea, to the lure of the waves and the promise of treasures unlimited. Looking back, he regretted nothing.

That was a lie. He regretted leaving Christiaan. But his brother, a decade younger than himself, was then barely Grant's age. The boy needed to put his legs into a man’s breeches, get an education, find a wife. Dick could not wait for that nebulous day. So he’d packed a few books, sold enough personal items to buy passage aboard a merchant trader, and turned his heels forever away from his Dutch home.

Just after dawn, standing on top of the Adventure’s rotting hull, he gazed out to the shifting sandbars that kept him and his Tuscarora friends…and Grant Fletcher…safe from strangers.

Fate was a fickle lanyard—sometimes loose, other times taut—just now letting his sail billow behind a stout wind, and life was good.

Chapter One

~~Owl and the Stranger~~

July 1-2, 1772

The Flower Lodge

Ocracoke Island, North Carolina Colony

July 1, the year 1772

My name is Owl. Because of my eyes? Or my midnight urges? Or my hunter’s nature? All that, and more.

’Tis really what they call a nickname, given to me by Grandfather Billy Sweet Birch and his family. In the Tuscarora language, they say U’wa, with a very long sound, like the bird himself.

Mother says ’tis time to tame my tongue, as Saint Peter advised, and to start practicing my writing. Tonight I put a quill to parchment, to write more than my usual dreary lessons. But I cannot tame my quill. A private jest, very private.

The fish oil is running low in the lamp, so this scratching is merely a few words to introduce me to myself, some day, when I read my own words again. None other shall ever see what lies hidden here.

Or I should say, I hope Mother will never cast her eye on this page. Some things are best kept close to the heart. She may understand the need to hide certain details. I love her dearly, but I know she too keeps her secrets.

Yesterday I turned twelve. Not long ago I found hairs prickling here and there between my legs. Mother says I’m growing up, but I’m not an inch taller than yesterday. Or an inch longer.

My own frail jest.

I asked Grandfather Dick what the hairs meant, and he told me I was becoming a man. Grandfather Billy said maybe he’d start to call me Hawk instead of Owl. In my opinion, both of them told me the same thing.

I think all men must carry an irksome itch between their legs.

There’s not much to say about myself. I never knew a father. Mother says I have a sire and four brothers, and even a cousin. She swears we will all meet some day. Pah! I love her, but I fear she tells herself fables to keep the tears from her eyes and a smile on her face.

I am Owl. But I also have a name given to me by my mother. My true name, she swears, is Grant Fletcher. A writer called Voltaire has taught me his tongue. So—Grant is from the French language, with the meaning of ‘grand.’ A fletcher makes arrows. Both suit me. Not that I’m great, and not that I’m very good at fletching. But perhaps some day—

Some day, if Mother’s dreams come true, I will meet a brother called Duncan, the one closest to my age. And three others, and a cousin, and even a father. ’Tis too muckle to imagine, but perhaps I give in to dreams, as she does, while telling no one.

I know many words in my mother’s ancient Scots tongue. I know English, obviously. I can stumble along in French, and I understand enough Tuscarora to blush when I hear my friends talk sometimes.

I—

Bloody damned light, scarce oak gall ink—

The lamp burns low. Its wee flame gutters and stutters. I shall set this aside until some other time. Tonight I think I’ll dream about Sky Blue Heron, who is brown instead of blue…and his mate U’wa, whose name sounds like the call of a midnight hunter—

Grant blew out the tiny flame. Not wanting to shed the new cotton trousers his mother had made from trade-cloth, he sank onto the pallet Grandfather Billy had braided for him, strands of dune grass interwoven with pliable stems of ground-ivy.

He murmured into the cool darkness, Good night, Sky. Hurry back.

Before dawn this morning, his closest friend had left the island. Grant had stood a small distance away, watching the shadows of Sky and his father board the sturdy ferry boat along with its pilot Peter Strange. They were seeking new supplies in Port Bath.

Their destination was not so distant, but the journey was a treacherous one. Only skilled pilots could navigate the Inner Banks to reach the Pamlico River, and the small white man was one of two pilots who called Ocracoke their home. After the three of them reached the mouth of the swift river, they would find a barge man to carry them upriver to the port, along with the items they would trade.

Grant had never taken the trip. His darling mother wouldnae allow it, and she herself refused to venture from the island. For some reason, she imagined enemies swimming on the crest of every wave, lurking behind every tree. So he relied on Sky’s stories later.

He sighed. Will I ever find my own adventures, instead of living them through the mouth of another? Will I ever truly fly at midnight, a hunter on the wing…?

When he woke, Grant knew he was already two days past twelve years old. Becoming a man. His dreams had been disturbing, and his trousers were wet at the crotch.

He shed the sodden britches and spread them on the floor, hoping they would dry before Mother saw them. She’d think her grown up son couldnae hold his bladder. The woven-grass trousers Billy had made him were almost as scratchy as his new groin, but at least they were dry.

Grant lifted the shutters on his window, allowing dawn and a light breeze to drift into his small chamber. Leaving the room, he firmly closed the thin-wood partition and let his senses guide him through the darkened lodge to the outside portal. The bolt was drawn over the heavy door—as though they didnae live in a house of saplings and mud and braided grass. And flowers.

Everyone on this small island called this dwelling the Flower Lodge. Mother’s fine hand had hung and weaved and grown all manner of fragrant flowers and ivies around and through the clay-and-wattle house. Anyone could smell their home a mile in any direction. Maybe, he thought, that’s why Billy had installed the stout door and menacing latch.

He grinned and strolled around to the rear of the lodge to relieve himself. He stopped short, hearing the unusual sound of a deep male voice…a Scottish lilt…joined with the familiar tones of Billy Sweet Birch.

No’ bloody possible.

He peered around the curved wall of the lodge. Billy was standing still, holding his large net. He was speaking to…someone.

Help me with this net?

Och, ’tis well crafted, said the Scot. By your hand, good sir, or…

A stranger, dressed in dark trousers and boots, was holding two ends of the familiar net, while Billy waited several paces away grasping the other two ends. Billy advanced. As soon as their hands met at the edges, Billy threw the strong net over the man’s head. The dark-haired man cried out, protesting, I’m no’ here to hurt you…

Whatever else he said was lost in a flailing of arms and shouts of alarm, as Billy seized the small end of a broken oar and sent it crashing down on the stranger’s head. He collapsed, a stricken shadow, onto the ground. Grant shrank against the side of the lodge, his gut clenched in surprise and horror.

The next voice he heard was Mother’s.

Billy, what—

He saw her crouch to examine the fallen man, and then he saw a miracle. She leaned close and—and kissed him. Then she rose to her feet.

Billy spoke, too low for him to hear. But Mother’s voice was crisp and clear.

Carry him to my chamber, dearest guardian. Help me apply a poultice. And then take Grant to the pirate ship. We must hurry.

Grant cringed back into the overgrown vine on the outside wall as Billy bore his victim to the front of the lodge, carrying his burden as though the large man was but a wee bairn.

Who is that man? Why did mother embrace him? The deil be damned but I have to piss or burst.

After relieving himself, Grant committed the wise act of sitting on the overturned fishing boat, waiting for Grandfather Billy to return.

The longer he sat on the hull of the boat, the more perplexed Grant became. A man…a stranger…in the private garden of their Flower Lodge. Even Billy’s own relatives would never enter this place, except by invitation.

Why did Grandfather invite him? Or had the fellow been drunk, gotten lost, stumbled back here in pursuit of…of flowers?

But strangest of all was Mother’s greeting. She had knelt in the sand and kissed him. Och, to be sure, she pressed her lips to her son’s brow quite often. But her kiss today was directly on the man’s mouth.

Grant scowled and stood. The broken oar was a once-favorite plaything, an imaginary horse with a cornsilk tail attached to one end. But it belonged to him. He retrieved it from the ground and set it back in its customary place, leaning against the side of the lodge. Billy, who’d never in his life struck another human being, had seized this…this weapon…and hit the bad man.

Billy hit a bad man. And Mother kissed him.

For some reason, Grant felt salty tears rise in his throat. He swallowed them before they could invade his eyes.

Not for the first time, he wished his closest friend was here with him, the one who was named for the blue heron. The natives called him…something that sounded like Uren’ya, bird with head of blue. To Grant, he had always been simply Sky.

Sky was three years older than