"The boy sat still, perched on a granite boulder that had tumbled into Redwater Creek. His body was formed of human flesh, but his two arms were a white owl's wings. He closed his eyes and concentrated, and then he was more human still, with arms that ended in perfect human hands and the smooth, hairless groin of a young boy. He wore only a mask of feathers that covered and formed part of his face, and a necklace with a turquoise stone set into a thin piece of copper. He looked down into the dark water. In the thin light of the waxing moon he could see the Drowned Girl lying there beneath the creek's black surface. He called to her in words for which there are no human translation."

-- Terri Windling, The Wood Wife