Example stories · Animals · Ages 11 to 13

Ottoline and the Wide Dark Wood

A read-aloud bedtime story, about 6 minutes.

High in the crown of an ancient elm at the edge of Hollowmere Wood lived a family of barn owls, and the smallest and most hesitant among them was a young owl named Ottoline. While her older brothers and sisters practiced long, looping flights beneath the moon, tumbling and diving and chasing moths for the sheer joy of it, Ottoline preferred to stay close to the hollow, listening to the wind move through the leaves and watching the stars appear one by one, patient and unhurried, exactly the way she liked things to be.

One crisp autumn evening, Ottoline's father gathered the family on the wide branch outside their hollow, his feathers ruffled by a wind that carried the smell of coming rain. 'The old elm will not hold against the storms this winter,' he said gently. 'Tonight we fly to the great oak on the far side of the meadow, where our roost will be warm and dry until spring.' Her siblings chirped with excitement, already stretching their wings, but Ottoline felt her stomach fold in on itself like a closing leaf.

It was not the height that frightened Ottoline, nor even the darkness itself. It was the sheer, unmeasured distance of it, the meadow and the deep wood beyond it stretching farther than she had ever flown, farther than her short evening loops around the familiar elm had ever taken her. She had always been the last to leave the nest and the first to return, and the thought of crossing so much unfamiliar country, alone in her own small patch of sky, made her wings feel suddenly too heavy to lift.

Her grandmother, an old owl with silver flecked feathers and eyes that missed nothing, settled beside her on the branch. 'You are thinking with your eyes, little one,' she said, 'and your eyes are frightened of the dark, because they cannot see very far into it. But your ears can hear the whole wood at once, the creek, the wind through the pines, your brothers calling to each other. Trust those, and the distance will not seem so wide.' Ottoline turned the words over slowly, the way she turned over everything, but she nodded, and that felt like enough for now.

When the family launched from the elm one by one into the wide night sky, Ottoline went last, as she always did, her wingbeats careful and small against the vast dark canvas above the meadow. Her siblings' pale shapes flickered ahead of her, growing smaller, and within a few long minutes of steady flying, Hollowmere Wood closed in below her, tall dark pines rising like a silent, unfamiliar crowd.

For a moment, Ottoline lost sight of her family entirely. The canopy pressed close on either side, the moon slipped behind a drifting cloud, and every direction looked exactly like every other direction, dark branches and darker gaps and no clear path through any of it. Her heart beat quick and hard, and her first instinct was to land on the nearest branch and simply wait, small and still, until morning.

But then she remembered her grandmother's words, and instead of straining her eyes against the dark, Ottoline closed them for a single, steadying breath and simply listened. Beneath the rustle of leaves, she could just make out the faint, familiar chatter of her siblings calling to one another, a thread of sound weaving through the trees like a path laid out especially for her. Further off, she caught the low, steady murmur of the meadow creek, exactly where her father had said the oak would be waiting.

Ottoline opened her eyes, adjusted her wings, and flew, not blindly now but guided, dipping beneath a low branch, sliding through a narrow gap in the pines where a thin ribbon of moonlight and open sky suddenly appeared before her. The meadow opened wide and silver beneath her, dew catching the moonlight like scattered stars fallen to earth, and for the first time all night, Ottoline felt something unfamiliar rise up beside her fear, small and bright and entirely new. It felt, she realized with some surprise, almost like delight.

She crossed the meadow steadily, following the sound of her siblings' calls, and when the great oak finally rose ahead of her, broad and solid against the sky, her whole family was waiting on its lowest branch, watching for her without a trace of panic in their eyes. 'We heard you were taking the scenic route,' her brother teased warmly, but her mother simply opened a wing and folded Ottoline gently against her side. 'We knew you would find your way,' she said. 'You always listen more carefully than any of us.'

Settled at last on the wide, sturdy branch of her family's new home, Ottoline looked back across the meadow toward Hollowmere Wood, dark and quiet beneath the settling moon. It no longer looked like a vast, frightening unknown. It looked like a place she had crossed, on her own wings, by trusting the parts of herself she had never needed to rely on quite so fully before. She was, she realized, a little bit braver tonight than she had been the night before, and that felt like the truest kind of growing up there was.

Her grandmother settled beside her once more, tucking her silver flecked wings close against the cold. 'Well flown, little one,' she said softly, and Ottoline, usually too shy for such praise, simply leaned into her grandmother's warm feathers and let herself feel proud.

One by one, the family arranged themselves along the great oak's sturdy branches, feathers fluffed against the night air, eyes drifting slowly shut. Below them, the meadow lay silver and still, and Hollowmere Wood breathed softly in the distance, holding all its ordinary nighttime sounds, the creek, the wind, the settling leaves, the sounds Ottoline now knew she could always trust to guide her home. She tucked her head beneath her wing, warm and safe on her new branch, and drifted into a deep and peaceful sleep, certain, for the first time, that the wide dark wood held nothing to fear at all.