Violet sat on the top rail of the horse paddock looking out across the snow toward where the men were working on laying the train track. They had the railbed laid to the outskirts of the village now—a tumble of sharp limestone on the black earth and then smaller cobble filling in the gaps. They were laying the “ties” now—the logs they had driven out to the lumber mill in St. Vries and had shaved into square posts and cut down to even six-foot lengths. It was Bertie who had told her all of this, who was glad to take a salary to help lay the ties during the months when there wasn’t much to do with the sheep.
Violet kicked her feet on the rail and squinted farther off into the distance where the train track disappeared into the horizon like a quilt seam over the edge of a bed. But in her mind she saw it running all the way to the veterinary college in Beringford. Before the train, when she had tried to talk to her parents about becoming a vet, first it had been, “But you’re a girl, love. And they don’t let girls be vets.” But they did now, Violet found out by writing to them. And they had scholarships. So then it had been, “But we can’t afford room and board there, and there’s no way you could make the trip to Beringford from here for your classes every day! We couldn’t spare a horse, or your brother to drive you.”
But then, the train came. And with it the word that the fare to Beringford would be five pence round trip and the ride there a mere hour. Imagine that! Violet shook her head. An hour to run the distance that used to take a half day by horse on the squirrelly network of ancient roads that connected the village to its county seat. She glanced sideways the sun, low on the horizon now and bashful behind its cold wintry veil of cloud, and did the math. With her classes three days a week, that was fifteen pence, and she could make that easily if she kept taking in mending the way she was now. She was a dab hand with a needle; had to be if she wanted to be a vet.
And she did. She thought about the little squirrel she had saved from Codger and then set free in the north wood. Her mother had shook her head as she had felt the little legs and spine over for any breaks. “You’re blessed by the saints, you are, Violet. There’s no reason a wild animal should be lying there taking that without spitting and biting and climbing you like a tree. But there it is, and there you are.” And it was true, when Violet thought about it. But for her it had always been as easy to understand what an animal wanted and didn’t want as if it spoke English, and to ask it what she wanted to know with her eyes and hands as if she spoke squirrel or horse or what have you.
It was getting cold on the fence now as the sun started to catch its skirts in the jagged black line of the west wood. The men would be knocking off work soon and coming home; Violet should go in and see if her mother needed help for dinner. She jumped down from the fence. A flock of blackbirds suddenly startled up from the near edge of the west wood and flew toward her, passing so close she could hear the whistle of their wings. She looked where they had come from and saw an enormous barn owl, pale in its winter plumage, sitting on a low branch. She swore the owl was staring straight at her. Instinctively, she lifted a hand, smiled, waved. Then she turned back toward the village where the lanterns were being lit for the evening.
The Rookery 