Nightbird Read online

  Julia and I worked in the garden every chance we had. It was difficult for me to use one arm, but I did the best I could, and I got pretty good at digging and planting with one hand. If my mother ever wondered where I was, she never mentioned it. In the summers before the Halls arrived, I’d spent most of my time in the orchard, and I assumed that was where she figured me to be. She loved gardens, so I didn’t think she would be upset if she learned I was helping to create one.

  Dr. Hall helped us turn the earth with a shovel and he made the gravel paths that cut the garden into four equal sections, following Agnes Early’s plan. He said clearing the garden cleared his head from doctoring. It was hot, dirty work, but none of us minded. The birds seemed especially interested in what we were doing once the planting began and often gathered around to watch, or to pick out the worms from the turned earth. Slowly, the garden came back to life. I had the feeling that Agnes Early would have been happy to see it this way. That maybe her broken heart would have begun to heal.

  One afternoon when I went to the General Store to buy flour and sugar for my mother, I overheard the Gossip Group discussing recent events in town. One of them said if he ever did see the Sidwell Monster he’d take a shot and wouldn’t miss. Before I could think better of it I blurted out, “You just want to kill things!”

  “Wait a minute, Twig,” Mr. Stern called after me. “Not everyone feels that way!”

  But it was too late. I’d begun to run for the door. I slammed out of the store, even though Mr. Stern had always been so nice when I brought pies and cider for him to sell.

  I ran all the way home. Now that I’d overheard the conversation in the General Store, I understood why James refused whenever Agate begged him to take her flying. It was far too dangerous, and he’d begun to rethink their spending time together.

  Maybe he’d been right to believe his fate was to be alone in the air and on earth.

  I could hardly wait for us to right whatever had gone wrong so long ago. We worked in the garden every day. The more plants we put in, the more birds gathered to sing to us. When Agate came to help us weed, we discovered she could call the mourning doves to her. “James taught me.” A worried look crossed her face. “Do you have a letter for me?” she asked then. I hated that I had to tell her no. “I didn’t think so. He’s not coming to meet me anymore,” she told me. “I don’t know why.”

  “He thinks he’s putting you in harm’s way when he meets you.”

  “Shouldn’t that be my decision?” Agate said.

  I didn’t know the answer to that. I only knew that the curse had hurt too many people.

  When we’d planted all the herbs, we stood there holding hands. We were that much closer to completing our mission. The doves flew around us, calling in their soft voices. It was almost as if Agnes Early was with us, giving her permission for us to go on. The air crackled with heat and magic.

  Something had begun.

  To create the wild garden in the center of the circle, we went into the woods and found lady slippers and ferns, wild asters and little blue flowers in the shape of stars. Sometimes I went out into the woods after dusk, searching for night-blooming flowers. One evening as I walked home in the dark I thought I heard something rattling around in the thickets. Probably a raccoon or some squirrels. All the same I felt goose bumps rise on my arms, even though I’d walked through these woods my whole life. It was then I saw a flash of silver. A spray-paint can. Someone was here in the woods. I spied the shadow of a boy as he ducked behind a tree. He looked about my age, and he was dressed in black. All at once I heard a siren. A car with bright headlights and a flashing red light came up behind me on the path. It was Sheriff Jackson.

  “Twig,” the sheriff called. “What are you doing wandering around in the dark?”

  I blinked. I had actually caught the graffiti artist in the act, but I didn’t want to turn him in until I understood why he was pretending to be the Sidwell Monster. “I’m going home for dinner,” I stammered.

  “Through the woods? You wouldn’t want to run into the monster, would you? This is near the place where those feathers were found. They’ve disappeared from Town Hall. Someone around here is not to be trusted,” the sheriff said.

  “I’ll be careful,” I told him, my heart beating fast.

  “Okay,” he said. “Go straight home.”

  The car pulled away, but I stood still. I spoke into the darkness. “I won’t turn you in. I just want to know who you are.”

  There was no reply.

  “I want to help you,” I said to the woods around me.

  When I got home my mother was waiting for me on the porch. I told her about the graffiti, and how everyone thought the monster was behind it, and how Sheriff Jackson had been driving through the woods searching for whoever was to blame.

  My mother put an arm around my shoulders. “Now that they’re looking for someone they may find James. I don’t know what will happen if they do.”

  My mother usually didn’t confide her worries. She always wanted to seem strong, but now her face was pale and I thought she’d been crying.

  “There must be a cure for every curse,” I told her with assurance. I’d read that somewhere, in a nursery rhyme.

  “Oh, Twig,” my mother said. “The time for a cure has passed.”

  “But maybe there’s another cure, one no one knows about.” I wasn’t ready to tell her about my plans with Julia to undo Agnes Early’s spell. Not until I was sure it would work.

  “I wish there was.” My mother seemed more open to talking than usual. We could see fireflies from our porch. It seemed as if anything could happen, if we just believed it could.

  “What else do you wish for?” My mother usually clammed up when I asked anything too personal. Maybe it made her too sad. Maybe she wished that things had turned out differently and we could have more of the sort of life other people had.

  “I wish I could go back in time,” my mother said.

  I imagined she wanted to break the curse. “To two hundred years ago?”

  She laughed. “No. Not that far back. I can’t see myself living in the days when there were witches and curses. I’d just like to go back to when we lived in New York City.”

  That was the time when we tried our best to be ordinary people, when the future seemed as if it might be happy. When my father was there.

  “Let’s count fireflies,” my mother said.

  It was an old game with us and we reached two thousand before we gave up. There was so much light in the world we knew we would never be able to count it all.

  The next day I helped with the baking out in the summer kitchen. I felt closer to my mother now that we’d talked. We both wanted the same thing: for James to be safe. My mother took the time to teach me how to make piecrust, which is harder than you’d guess. The best kind is made with ice water and very pure flour. Then she told me the secret of Pink apple pie. She whispered that the ingredient that made it so sweet was jam made from our own strawberries and raspberries, but she made me promise never to tell anyone other than my own daughter one day.

  I left the summer kitchen while my mother was waiting for the last of the pies to finish baking. It was such a perfect July afternoon I couldn’t imagine living anywhere other than Sidwell. I loved the orchard that was filled with green shadows, and the gold light filtering through the woods. I didn’t remember too much about New York, although my brother had often described the great avenues and the silver buildings and our tiny apartment that overlooked the river.

  I was thinking about New York City, how I’d like to visit there someday, just to experience it, and go to a theater and see a real play, not just one about the Witch of Sidwell, when I noticed something beside the porch. It was bundled up in burlap. I couldn’t quite make out what it was, but I could pick up the scent from a distance: the lemon-drop fragrance of the special roses from the garden center.

  Mr. Rose had been to our house. I didn’t say anything about the gift he h
ad left for my mother, but it made me like him even more. Other women would have preferred a box full of long-stemmed roses, but my mother liked more old-fashioned things, teacup-sized blooms she could grow for years to come. Mr. Rose seemed to know that about her.

  In the morning I was surprised when I found the rosebush beside the trash barrel. Maybe Mr. Rose should have knocked on the door and given his gift directly to my mother, but I understood what it was like to be shy. I decided to take the rosebush with me to Julia’s, though I had to struggle to carry it. When we planted it in the witch’s garden the scent of the flowers was like lemons and cherry tarts and Pink apple pie all mixed together in one delicious breath.

  “They’re perfect,” Julia said. And they were.

  Summer was moving too quickly. It was already the end of July, time for me to have my cast taken off at the hospital. I was nervous, but it didn’t hurt. My cast arm was much paler and it was a bit stiff, but every day it felt a little stronger. It was so wonderful to have both of my arms again that I danced in the grass and climbed a tree, more carefully this time; then Julia and I celebrated by swimming in Last Lake. Swimming had never been as wonderful or as cold and refreshing. So far it had been an exceptionally good summer. I had a best friend and we had finished planting the herb garden and I had learned to make a piecrust and I knew the secret of Pink apple pies. But I still couldn’t sleep at night, not until I heard James come home. Sometimes he sat out on the roof. I wondered if anyone had ever felt as alone as he did. Flash, the little owl, had healed and had relearned how to fly. Now he went with my brother on his journeys into the woods. The little owl could have remained there, but he always returned when my brother did, at the hour when all the other birds were waking. Many of those James had saved came back to perch in the branches of the trees. It was heartwarming to see the trust they had in him.

  James stayed out on the roof in the first rays of daylight. He was gazing north, into the treetops, toward the mountains, where he could be free. He didn’t have to tell me what he was planning. Sooner or later there would come a morning when he didn’t come back.

  I knew how he felt about the peace that could be found in the woods. When I went there alone I always felt comforted by the sound of birdsongs and the deep greenery. I wanted to find the place where the saw-whet owls nested, but it was so deep in the woods and so hidden, I never could find that place my brother had taken me to. And then one day I saw blue letters spray-painted on a rock.

  FOLLOW.

  My heart thudded against my ribs.

  I continued walking; then I realized I had entered the owl nesting area. I kept on and saw paint on another rock. This one said LOOK UP.

  There in the tree above me was a rustic tree house, a simple shelter made of a wooden platform covered by a shingled roof. Sitting there was Miss Larch’s friend. No wonder Dr. Shelton smelled mossy; he was living in a tree.

  “Hello,” I called up.

  He was startled and grabbed a broom, I suppose to protect himself. Then he said, “Twig.” He nodded as if he had been expecting me, and I felt a little flattered that he remembered me at all.

  “Don’t stumble around,” he said. “Come up.”

  He tossed down a rope ladder. For about half a second I hesitated. Then I climbed up. He had a bedroll and a desk and a bookcase made of branches.

  “You’re a good climber,” he said.

  I took it as a serious compliment. “That’s why I’m called Twig.”

  Dr. Shelton had a collection of binoculars and notebooks. The desk was covered with feathers. I thought I recognized his quilt as one my mother had hung up on our laundry line to dry in the sun.

  “Someone left me a message for me to find you,” I said.

  I more than suspected that he was the thief the Gossip Group talked about.

  “Do you mind if I ask what you’re doing up here?” I asked.

  Miss Larch’s friend reached into his jacket pocket for his card. He was a Professor of Ornithology, Retired, PhD Cornell University. Under his name was written The Owl Man. “My specialty.”

  “The black saw-whet owls.” Exactly as my brother had told me.

  He nodded. “If I can prove they are specific to this area and that they will face extinction if construction begins, then I may be able to stop the ruination of these woods.”

  “Are you writing the graffiti?”

  “No. But I can’t say I’m against it. The writer is on the side of these woods.”

  “Is it the same person who brought you the quilt?”

  “If he did, then he’s generous,” Dr. Shelton said. “If I told you any more I would be an ungrateful wretch.”

  “He’s generous with other people’s belongings.” The fact was, the quilt was an old one and we didn’t miss it very much, and I really didn’t mind Dr. Shelton using it, since he needed it more than we did.

  “If I’m correct in my thinking, then I would say he’s even more generous with his own. What belongs to him, he wants to give to all of Sidwell.”

  As I walked home I thought it was best not to judge what I didn’t understand. But that didn’t mean I would stop trying to get to the bottom of the secrets of Sidwell.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The Message and the Messenger

  JULIA FOUND THE DIARY WHEN SHE WASN’T expecting to stumble upon it. This seemed to be the way enchantments worked, appearing when you least expected them to. All the best things happen that way, on an ordinary day that’s like any other until everything suddenly changes. Julia was in the library, which was the oldest part of Mourning Dove Cottage, where the bookshelves were filled with dusty, timeworn volumes about things like cheese making and table manners. There was a small mahogany writing desk in the corner. It wasn’t the nicest piece of furniture; in fact, it was ugly, with shaky bowed legs and drawers that stuck shut and refused to open in damp weather. The desk seemed as if it might fall apart if you breathed on it too hard. Mrs. Hall had been thinking about bringing it down to Blue Door Antiques on Main Street to see if they might like to try to sell it.

  Julia wanted to send a postcard with a photograph of Sidwell to her cousin in England. She opened a drawer to look for a pen. When she reached inside she felt a latch at the back. She slipped it up, to find a hidden space. Inside was a small leather-bound book. Agnes Early’s diary.

  It seemed only fitting that if we wanted to undo the curse we should read the diary in the herb garden. Julia phoned me and I ran all the way. She waited to turn the first page until we were sitting in the shade of a tangle of roses that were now in full bloom. Bees were humming all around us. We were ready to step back in time, my mother’s wish and my wish now, too.

  What begins one way must end the same way.

  I read the first line aloud.

  This is a place where I can write my heart.

  And so she did. She wrote about my four-times-great-grandfather and his green eyes, and how she thought about him while she worked in her garden planting the same herbs that we now grew: tansy, lavender, mint. She planned the life they would have together, forever after. She and Lowell Fowler had grown up together and everyone in Sidwell knew they were fated to marry someday.

  But Agnes’s parents thought she was too young, and besides, war was breaking out, the American Revolution. The year was 1775. The Early family was from England, and they sided with the king. The Fowlers, on the other hand, were American through and through and had joined with George Washington’s rebels to fight the king and his army of Red Coats. Families who had been friends and neighbors became enemies overnight. Aggie and Lowell were no longer allowed to see each other.

  And so a secret plan was made.

  We will meet by the lake on the last day of July and run away to Boston, where our families cannot find us, so that we can be married.

  When Julia read that line out loud Beau began to bark. I had goose bumps up and down my arms. Crickets were calling in the tall grass. It was almost August. I knew Julia and I were
both thinking the same thing: Agnes Early was probably sitting in the exact same place where we were now when she wrote down these words.

  He did not come.

  Agnes had waited with her packed bag. The wedding dress she’d stitched by hand, always sewn in secret when her parents were asleep, was carefully folded inside. The meeting place was the field beyond Last Lake, which was called Early Lake then, for the other lakes hadn’t yet dried up. Perhaps that was part of the curse as well.

  She waited all night long. But Lowell Fowler had disappeared without a sign. Agnes went to his parents, who knew nothing and were beside themselves with worry. His neighbors searched the woods and found no clues. It was as if he had never existed. His horse waited in the barn; his dog paced the meadow.

  Agnes Early waited a day, a week, a month, a year.

  And then, she disappeared as well. Before she left Sidwell, she made one last entry in her diary. She wrote that she had combined the herbs in the garden with two petals from the rosebush Lowell had given her as a gift, a tiny specimen that had come all the way from England by ship and had bloomed on the day he disappeared. On the night of the first full moon in August, Agnes created the spell that forever after cursed the men of our family.

  Let him fly even faster from me if that’s what he desires! Let him have wings!

  She never wrote again.

  I wandered through the woods to think things through, trying to figure out what could have made Lowell leave Agnes Early without a word. Could it be that he hadn’t meant to hurt her? People often hurt the ones they love most, don’t they? Without ever meaning to, they lash out, walk away, never see one another again. Or maybe it had all been beyond Lowell’s control, like lightning striking him when he least expected it.

  That was when I saw someone skulking about in the woods. A boy with a black backpack.

  He was tall, with fair hair. He clearly knew these woods, but so did I. I started following him. I managed to stay quiet until there was a crunching sound when I stepped on a pinecone. I quickly ducked behind some bramble bushes. When he turned to glance over his shoulder, I got a good look at his face. My heart hit against my chest. He seemed familiar somehow. I should have gone back, but I guess I wasn’t thinking straight. I followed him through the woods, but all of a sudden, he disappeared. I had the feeling I’d imagined him, and that I’d been tracking a shadow or some fog; then I realized he’d slipped through a black wrought-iron gate.