Violet couldn’t sleep that night; she tossed and turned under her quilt, and whenever she heard the hoot of an owl or the cry of a fox out in the still night somewhere, she shoved her head under her pillow to block it out. In the morning her mother scolded her for burning the potato scones, and her teacher rapped her knuckles twice for falling asleep during maths.
As she trudged home in the afternoon, she almost got run over in the road by a man driving a small wagon. “Hi, Violet, watch out!” the driver yelled over his shoulder. “Your mother would kill me if I killed you a week before Christmas.”
“Sorry, Mr. Peabody,” she mumbled blearily. Mr. Peabody. She shot up straight as if she had shocked herself on a doorknob and ran after the mail cart trotting away from her. “Mr. Peabody! Do you have any letters for me?”
The mailman reined in his pony and cocked his head at her as she ran up breathless next to his cart. “Well, aren’t you running hot and cold today,” he clucked. “I think there was something–left it with your brother at home.”
Violet ran all the way back to their cottage and tore open the door. Bertie was warming himself at the fire after having come in from the folds. “Where is it?” she panted. He frowned at her blankly.
“I don’t know what you mean, Violet.”
“Bertie!” His dark eyes twinkled, and he pulled an envelope from his vest pocket. “Oh, you mean this?”
She lunged at him and he stood and lifted it well out of her reach overhead. He squinted up at it as if he were trying to read it in the light. “Beringford Veterans’ Home…no…Veterinary College. What on earth could they want with my bratty little sister, hmm? Awfully thin envelope anyway.” He felt it with both hands, twisting to escape another attack.
“Bertie!” she screamed, tears starting in her eyes, and the mischief melted out of his immediately.
“Aw, Violet, I was only playing. Don’t get vexed. Here, open it. Tell me what it says….”
Violet snatched it out of his hands and grabbed a butterknife from the jar on the table. Her hands were trembling so she could barely slide the blade under the flap. Bertie was right; it was just one sheet. Her heart sinking, she opened it and read it twice, three times before it sank in.
“I got in,” she said, and then as if she had just heard herself say it: “What? I got in? I got in!”
“That’s my girl!” Bertie cried, and he picked her up and swung her around the kitchen. And that was right when their mother walked in carrying a basket of wash stiff from the line.
“What in St. Nicholas’s name is going on in this house?” Nella Stoddard demanded. Bertie dumped Violet back on her feet, and she flew to her mother and hugged and kissed her before pushing the letter into her hands.
“Mama, I got in! To the vet school! They accepted my application starting in the fall. In the spring I’ll go to Beringford and fill out all the paperwork….”
Nella Stoddard frowned at the letter. “Violet, I’d love to cheer for you, I would. But you know we can’t afford this.”
“Look there,” Violet took the letter back from her mother and stabbed a finger at the second paragraph. “Lady Beringford started a scholarship for women in the veterinary sciences, and I won one with my school grades and the essay I wrote about the importance of veterinary care in the rural economy.”
“That’s my girl,” Bertie said again and ruffled the top of her head. “The redheads are always the smart ones.”
“But scholarship doesn’t cover room and board, love.”
“I won’t need to board now that the train’s coming. I’ll stay here and take in mending to pay the train fare.” But the moment the word “train” left her lips, it was like someone punched her in the stomach. The falcon’s eyes burned in her mind. She sank into a chair at the kitchen table.
“See, told you, smart!” Bertie said before plopping down in his chair by the fire, taking up his beer. Nella Stoddard ran a hand through her dark hair, and Violet could suddenly see the gray in it. All her happiness suddenly tasted like fire ash in her mouth. Things had been so hard for her mother after her father had passed away unexpectedly last winter of a heart attack. Bertie was a good son and worked hard, two jobs, but there was only so much he could do. With Violet at school, that would be another burden on her mother and brother. Not to mention every day she went to school, she would have to ride through the scar in the west wood. What good was it going to school to learn to save animals if she couldn’t save the ones at her own home, the ones who made the soil rich and put food on their tables and music in the forests and wings in the sky?
Violet’s shoulders shook. A tear dropped hot on the back of the hand holding the letter crumpled in her lap. “Aw, come on now, Vi,” Bertie reached over and shook her by the back of the neck gently, like a mother cat with a kitten. Though her eyes were too blurry to see, Violet felt her mother’s hand warm over hers.
“Don’t you worry, love. We’ll figure something out.”
The falcon’s eyes were still burning in Violet’s head. I’m not sure we can, was all she could think. Not something this big.
The Rookery 