Nightbird (16 page)

Dr. and Mrs. Hall clutched on to each other, in shock to see their daughter in the rickety bell tower. Agate stood still, her hair shining, like a star in the sky. There were flames above her and below her. I overheard the firemen say there was no ladder that would reach high enough. I couldn’t believe their words. Smoke was billowing into the sky, so thick it seemed we lived in the clouds.

That was when I saw him.

James came from the north, from the mountains. Later he told me he’d spent the past nights in a tree, along with a nest of owls. He’d seen sparks in the air above Sidwell, and he’d followed the foul trail of smoke, worried for the town, and for us, and now, most of all, for Agate. Lightning split the sky again as my brother’s shadow fell over Main Street. Some people gasped and others just blinked. At last they were seeing the Sidwell Monster, but unlike the beastly creature they had always imagined, he was only a boy.

“That’s your brother?” Collie said.

I nodded. “James.”

He flew directly to the bell tower and lifted Agate off her unstable perch. His wings shimmered blue and black
and feathers fell as he flew her away from the flames. By now everyone in the street was in shock. The thunder had stopped and there was a hush.

And then there wasn’t.

Out of the silence there came the sound of someone clapping. I looked over and saw Mr. Rose, clapping and whooping out with joy. Before long everyone joined in. The whole town went wild with gratitude, the applause like a wave that was louder than thunder.

My brother could have escaped into the woods, where no one would have found him, but instead he landed on Main Street, depositing Agate safely on the pavement. When he set her down, she threw her arms around him.

Flash had followed my brother and now perched in the tree directly above us. The fire was still burning out of control. My brother stared intently at the crowd, uncertain as to how they would react to him. When no one came after him, James must have decided it was safe to finish the job. He grabbed the nearest fire hose and took off into the sky once more. As we watched he put out the fire that most certainly would have destroyed most of Sidwell, as fire had done once before. Now the only thing that had been destroyed was the wooden bell tower.

When James came back to earth, there was silence. And then one of the men from the Gossip Group started to applaud. It may have been Mr. Stern, or one of the others, but soon enough they all joined in. The rest of the town gave a great cheer, and then the residents of Sidwell rushed to my brother, not to arrest him but to celebrate him. They lifted him into the air and paraded him down Main Street. The band that was to perform the music between the acts of
The Witch of Sidwell
instead played “Amazing Grace” and “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow.” The little witch who was Mr. Hopper’s granddaughter threw out handfuls of fairy dust, which was really a mixture of baking flour and red chalk.

Dr. and Mrs. Hall ran to hug Agate, and when James was let down after being carried along Main Street, they hugged him as well. I saw my mother on a corner, crying, her eyes filled with pride, and Mr. Rose had his arm around her. Collie and Julia stood on either side of me, my two best friends.

I could not believe how perfect this terrible night had become.

The bell tower of Town Hall had to be replaced, but the bell itself was as good as new. If anything it rang more
clearly. People said that on Sundays you could hear it all the way in Boston. There was an article in the
Sidwell Herald
the next day about the fire, but there was no mention of a boy with wings, only that James Fowler, a resident of Old Mountain Road, had been the hero of the evening, rescuing Miss Agate Early Hall and saving a Sidwell treasure—the bell that, as it turned out, Miss Larch had discovered had been commissioned by our ancestor Lowell Fowler after the Revolutionary War to ring every evening at the hour when he was to have met his beloved beside Last Lake.

I didn’t attend the town meeting where the fate of the woods was decided, but I learned about what had happened in the
Sidwell Herald.
Collie and I sat on my porch steps and read about it together before he had to go back to Boston. There was a photograph of all the citizens of Sidwell who had worked to stop the destruction of the woods, along with Dr. Shelton, whose report had convinced the town council that the breeding ground of the black saw-whet owls must be preserved at all costs. Instead of pitching a fit and bringing in his lawyers, Hugh Montgomery agreed to donate the Montgomery Woods to the town to forever be open land. He would keep only
his house, for he planned to spend summers here from now on. It was his son’s favorite place in the world, the place where they could be a family.

Julia came over with Beau.

“Collie,” she said, “meet Collie.”

Beau offered his paw.

“Perfect dog,” Collie said.

Julia and I laughed, but we kept the joke to ourselves. Some things you just don’t share.

We had the first apple pie of the season, made with tart green apples with honey added, to make sure it was sweet enough. We sat around the kitchen table, three friends who wouldn’t see each other until Julia and I convinced our mothers to take us to Boston for a weekend in the fall. We had it all planned out: We’d go to the aquarium, and walk along the Charles River, and visit Concord, where Lowell Fowler had fought in battle, and we’d most definitely have tea in Collie’s house on Beacon Hill, black orchid tea, which was still my favorite.

Collie said it was his favorite, too. When we finished our tea, and Julia had gone home, I brought him to Miss Larch’s. That was something just the two of us did together on his last day in Sidwell. On the way over he asked if I’d ever gotten the envelope he sent me. I
admitted I was saving it, to open after he’d gone back to Boston so I could feel like he was still in Sidwell. “Oh, I’ll be back,” he told me. “My father and I will be here at Thanksgiving.” It was the perfect time of year to get together, the season when we made not only apple pies, but also the once-a-year Pink pumpkin pie that was a great favorite in town.

We met with Miss Larch and Dr. Shelton so that the ornithologist could thank Collie on behalf of the Sidwell owls. He gave Collie a book he’d written about owls. Miss Larch surprised me by giving me a gift as well, her own copy of Emily Dickinson’s poems. Whenever I read them I would remember that day, when we drank black orchid tea. In all my years in Sidwell, I think it was the least lonely I’d ever felt.

Not long afterward the mayor came to our door. He was accompanied by Miss Larch, because she was the official town historian and was always interested in matters concerning Sidwell. Mr. Rose came as well. He had a broad grin on his face and I could tell he was there not as a journalist, but because of his interest in our family. James was there, too, and that was very exciting. He had
moved out of the attic, and now had the bedroom next to mine.

“No more hiding,” my mother had said. “We are who we are.”

As it turned out, everyone in Sidwell agreed. A second vote had been taken at the town meeting after the Montgomery land development had been defeated, and once again the results were unanimous. It was decided that what had happened in Sidwell would remain in the Sidwell archives. What really transpired on the night of the fire would be kept secret, a story Sidwell residents would cherish and tell only to their daughters and sons. All of the T-shirts with images of the Sidwell Monster had been burned in a bonfire. The mayor had Miss Larch take a photograph of him shaking James’s hand for the files in the history room.

Mr. Rose stayed on when the mayor left to drive Miss Larch home. We all had glasses of cold Pink apple lemonade. “I could not be more proud of you, James,” Mr. Rose said. He then grinned at me. “Or you, Twig.” He looked at my mother with a strong expression. “It’s about time I met my son and daughter properly.”

I think I’d known the truth for some time. He had the same gray-green eyes as James, and the same tall
awkwardness that I had. I hadn’t shut the door on him the first time he came to our house. I’d wanted to know him.

I wanted to know him now.

When he hugged me I understood what I’d been missing for so long because I wasn’t missing it anymore.

We sat on the porch steps and my mother explained why we had left our father behind when we left New York. She hadn’t thought it was right to subject him to the sort of future we would have because of James’s wings, the secrets that would surround our lives. Just because he’d married into the Fowler family, he didn’t have to share our burden and keep secrets. Our father was such an honest man, after all, she didn’t want to put him in the position of having to lie every day. She also feared his honesty would make him slip and she just couldn’t risk James being found out. She convinced him in her letter that he would endanger James, and that was the last thing he wanted to do.

Our father had respected her wishes, even though he’d been missing us all that time. Miss Larch had sent him photos of me that she’d taken at school events. She announced that she was our great-aunt, and that made sense. Thinking back on it, I remembered her at every concert and science fair. She’d always said, “Well, hello, Twig!” as if she were surprised to see me, but now I realized
she’d been looking for me in order to keep my father posted, which she always did.

Then Miss Larch had called him in the spring, worried, after hearing about the proposed monster hunt. She thought he should know what his family was up against when it dawned on her that perhaps our mother needed him more than she’d ever admit. That’s when he knew he couldn’t stay away any longer. That same day he applied for the job at the newspaper.

“Now that we’re back together,” Mr. Rose said, “my suggestion is that we stay that way.”

James grinned and shook our father’s hand. I think I might have cried, but only for a moment. I had realized that my name would now be Teresa Jane Rose, and frankly I couldn’t have been happier.

CHAPTER NINE

A
LL FOUR OF US CLIMBED OUT OUR WINDOWS at exactly the same time. It was the one night when the curse could be broken. If we failed, we would have to wait until the following year. By then the curse might be too strong and we’d never get rid of it. There wasn’t a single cloud, only handfuls of stars strewn across the darkness and, rising high above us, a huge full moon that seemed red as a rose.

We sat at the corners where the four paths met, right in the middle of the garden we had worked so hard to create all summer long. The air was misty around us
and the color and scent of living things surrounded us, black-green mint, tall, plumy grass, wild purple asters. Julia had kept the dried herbs in a leather pouch, and now she placed them into the mixing bowl Mrs. Hall had found in the tangled web of the old garden, back when it was nothing but weeds. We thought the bowl had once belonged to Agnes Early; at least, we hoped it had. When we used it, it seemed that Aggie was with us in some way, and was also on our side. Maybe any powers that she’d once had would help us somehow.

It was a good thing we’d already picked the herbs. It was late in the season and the leaves were wilted from the heat and sunlight. Some of the plants were no longer flowering, including the roses, which had already bloomed and faded. But we were here, and the garden was here, and we had the best intentions, which always matters in magic. We wanted to make things right, the way they had been two hundred years ago before Lowell Fowler disappeared.

It was time to end the curse the way it had begun.

Agate’s hair had been singed in the fire and she’d cut it short, using a pair of nail scissors she borrowed from me. If anything she was even more lovely because now you could see her features more clearly. On this night she wore a white dress trimmed with blue ribbon, which she had sewn herself. She was gazing at James, who had a serious, thoughtful expression. He seemed wary and didn’t say much. He was with us, but he also seemed alone. I would have guessed he’d be overjoyed that the time to reverse the spell had come. If everything worked as it should, he would soon be free of his wings. I wondered if they would drop off feather by feather, or all at once. Would the process be painful, or would he feel much freer and lighter without the burden of his wings?

We built a small fire out of twigs in the center of the circle. It burned orange and a bright blue and let off little crackling sounds. Just as Julia was about to place the mixing bowl atop the flames, she checked to make certain all of the ingredients had been added. Tansy, mint, lavender, feverfew. She checked once, and then twice, and then she turned pale. One ingredient was missing. No rose petals had been added and now there were none to be had. We didn’t realize that the blooms had faded, then had blown away in the storm. I felt as if we’d lost everything, all at once.

“It’s my fault,” Julia said. “I should have checked.”

“Maybe it wasn’t meant to happen,” James said. “The truth is, I’d miss flying. With wings or without, I lose either way. It’s selfish, I know; I just wish I could have it all.”