Waiting for Unicorns (19 page)

WHEN THE BIRDMAN WAS FINALLY
released from the hospital, he and Simon moved back into the house they'd rented for the summer. The Birdman would spend the final weeks of his summer in Churchill just resting on his front porch. For a little while at least, he'd have to let the birds come to him.

He hadn't said very much about the bear attack—I think he knew it made me nervous, and when he did talk about it, he tried to make light of what had happened.

“Darn bear tried to give me a haircut and got carried away,” I'd overheard him joke to my dad.

But he never really fooled any of us. We knew the attack could have been much worse, and had it not been for that team of road workers, the Birdman's bird list might have been permanently unfinished.

One afternoon while Simon was out running errands, I sat alone with the Birdman on his porch. It was the first time we'd really had a chance to talk since he was released from the hospital.

I made lemonade for us, and as I settled down into a chair beside the Birdman, I handed him a glass. He smiled, sipping appreciatively.

Curling up in my chair, my legs tucked under me, I leaned back and gazed out at the blue water of Hudson Bay, trying to take it all in. Dad and I would be leaving soon, and I didn't want to forget any of this.

“So tell me, Talia,” the Birdman said, turning to me. “Have you found what you've been looking for, since coming to Churchill?”

His question caught me off guard because until that point I hadn't really thought of myself as searching for anything, just waiting. I didn't say anything at first—I just thought about his question. Then suddenly, I needed to ask one of my own.

“Do you believe in making wishes?”

The Birdman stared out at the bay before answering.

“I believe in hope,” he said at last.

That wasn't exactly what I wanted to hear. Hope wasn't a very dependable thing. It had disappointed me on more than one occasion. Wishes were nicer because I could wrap my hands around them. I could write them on tiny slips of paper and keep them in a jar. I could
control
wishes.

The Birdman knew nothing about my jar, of course. No one did. And it didn't matter that he didn't believe in wishes. Out of habit, I wrote a wish across a slip of paper in my mind, not caring that I was breaking rule number two again.

I wish the Birdman a fast recovery.

My jar of wishes was still lying in the bottom of my duffel bag at the back of my closet, but maybe I would pull it out when I got back to the blue house and drop this new wish inside.

As I sat there, I glanced at the stitches that ran over the Birdman's ear before they disappeared into his hair. They were healing, though that scar would never go away completely. He followed my gaze and gently ran his hand over the stitched-up place.

“We all carry scars,” he said. “Some of them are just a bit more visible than others.”

I fidgeted in my chair, running my finger around the lip of my lemonade glass.

“But, Tal,” the Birdman continued, “it doesn't matter how much time passes, or how many wishes I make. I'm not going to be able to change the fact that a polar bear tried to eat me for breakfast.” He was trying to soften his words, trying to be funny, but I knew exactly what he was getting at. He leaned back in his chair, gazing out at the bay again.

After a while he said, “I like to believe that hope, and grace, too, are granting wishes on our behalf all the time. They might not always be the wishes we want, and they might not even be the wishes we've consciously made. Sometimes, we get so busy wishing for something big, we miss all the hundreds and millions of smaller but still-important wishes coming true right under our noses.”

I thought about this as I stared out at the bay and spotted a tern hanging suspended over the water. And then it tucked its wings, plummeting toward the dark blue water, pulling up at the very last minute with a tiny fish in its beak.

“See that?” The Birdman pointed.

I nodded and watched in amazement as the little white bird suddenly sprang back into the air and hovered over the water as before.

“Do you think the first time he did that, he knew he'd be able to come back up again?” I asked. “That he wouldn't dive straight in the water and never come out?”

We watched the little white bird as he hovered over Hudson Bay, beating the air with his wings and never seeming to tire.

“I guarantee you he did not,” the Birdman said, and he turned to look at me. “But he did it anyway, and quickly discovered he was made to plunge and rise.”

“That must have been such a relief,” I said, feeling tears begin to sting just behind my eyes.

“I'm sure it was,” he said gently. “And do you know what else?”

I shook my head.

“It's only because of his endless plunging and rising that he can fly as far as he does. Without that, he would never be able to make the journey.”

Later that evening I left the Birdman sitting on his porch, but what he'd said kept echoing in my brain.

Sometimes I forget that almost everything takes practice. That I wasn't just born knowing how to do stuff, like read, or play the recorder, or go on living, and breathing, and loving stuff without my mom around. Sometimes you have to do things over and over again before you can do them well.

I thought of that fearless bird and the tern feather Sura had given me. If it's true that everyone knows how to fly, and we just forget how it's done, was I strong enough to be like that bird? To plunge and rise again?

AUGUST SAILED INTO CHURCHILL with
warm sunshine and cool evenings. We often bundled up in sweatshirts and blankets, building bonfires on the shore and roasting marshmallows late into the night. I loved sitting out there beside the water, the faces of my friends bright in the light of the fire.

As the Birdman recovered, Simon began playing his guitar again, and he was even teaching me to play. His fingers were so strong and found their places easily, while mine felt clumsy and disconnected every time I tried to press them against the thin strings. I wasn't very good, but Simon was patient.

“It takes practice,” he told me, laughing when I got frustrated.

Dad joined us on occasion when he wasn't at the CNSC or with his research team, compiling data. He didn't go out on the water again, but he was still distracted and focused on his work. I knew he wanted things to be different—better—between us, but they weren't. Not really. Not yet.

I wanted to talk, to try to close up that space between us some more—like we'd started to when we were out on the boat together. But Dad was too preoccupied with his reports and looking for his lost pocket calendar.

Since he didn't have time for much else besides work, I thought that if Dad and I could at least talk about the whales, maybe that would help.

One evening, we unrolled maps on Sura's kitchen table and leaned over them, our fingers tracing the whales' routes from previous years as we tried to guess where they'd gone.

“What if there are secret caves underneath the islands?” I asked, resting my chin in my hands. Dad sat beside me, pondering a map of the Baffin Island inlets.

“Hmmm. That's an interesting theory, Tal.” He cocked an eyebrow at me and smirked.

“Or, maybe they really are magic,” I said, tiptoeing around the edges of my own secret hope. “Isn't that what you said before? Maybe the whales just disappeared into the mist.”

Dad looked at me from over the rim of his coffee cup.

“I think I said that
Churchill
was magic,” he said, laughing, “and I meant that in a purely figurative sense.”

Sura came into the kitchen then, refilling the plate of cookies that sat on the table as she examined our map.

“Churchill
is
magic,” she said. She tapped her finger on the tiny dot that placed Churchill fifty-eight degrees, forty-six minutes, and nine seconds north of the equator. “And not just figuratively.”

I hoped she was right.

All this time, my jar of wishes still sat heavy and full, untouched and tucked away. I felt them dragging at me, pulling at my heart in a way that wouldn't let me breathe sometimes.

And finally, I knew it was time to take my jar out of the closet.

I sat on the floor in my room for a while, staring at it. I couldn't make any more wishes. The jar already felt too full. The deepest, and some of the most broken, parts of me were written across dozens and dozens of little paper slips. Most of them big wishes. But if what the Birdman said was true—that lots of small wishes were coming true all the time, including wishes we didn't even know we were making—then what was the point of keeping my jar a secret?

Why was I so sure that only secret wishes came true? Was it just easier to believe that because I was afraid of what people might think if they knew about all the things I wanted most?

So I chose to be brave. To take a leap of faith. I'd made that same choice when I fought to find the narwhals, and again when I told Simon about Mom. Being brave takes practice, I guess, like flying. So I took a leap again and set my jar on the nightstand beside my bed. Out in the open. Right where people could see.

Like telling Simon my birthday wish, maybe these wishes needed to breathe, too. So I took another leap, and unscrewed the lid, just a little. At this point, I was pretty much willing to do whatever it took. Because each wish in my jar was waiting for a whale I couldn't seem to find.