When Armand and Abigail woke up the following evening, Elsie poked her head out of the nest above them and chirped, “Finally, sleepyheads! I’ve been waiting for hours for you to wake up.”
“What is it, Elsie?” Abigail yawned, and Armand admired the way the sharp curve of her beak flashed in the last of the sunlight.
“The girl was in the wood again today.”
“Was she?” Armand’s ear feathers pricked up. “What was she doing?”
“She went to the how with the standing stone, and then I think she was looking for this tree, but she got turned around. A robin found her and led her back to the how. They talked for quite a bit, and then something it said made her hurry back to the village.”
“Wait, what?” Abigail turned her head around the way owls do to look up at Elsie. “A robin, you said?” She turned her head back to look at Armand, but he was already nodding.
“There are no robins this time of year. Not till spring do they come back.”
“Oh, this was a robin all right!” Elsie chortled. “Big robin with the biggest red breast you’ve ever seen. Perched on a big old sprig of mistletoe. Chirped its head off at the girl, and she seemed to understand it fair enough.”
“What was it saying?”
“The girl? Heavens know I don’t speak their tongue!” Elsie groomed an ear tassel dismissively.
“Of course not,” Abigail’s beak clicked. “I meant the robin, of course.”
“Well, and there’s the odd thing about it,” Elsie said. “It didn’t seem to be speaking any proper tongue either. At least, it wasn’t speaking common. But I don’t think it was speaking robin either–I’ve heard that tongue often enough. This was something else altogether. A very strange robin. If I had to say anything about it, I’d say…” she paused.
“A spirit?” Armand asked. Elsie nodded.
“Yes, or a spirit speaking through the robin. It warn’t right.”
“But whatever it said, the girl understood it.”
Elsie flicked a nod. “They went back and forth for quite a bit, as if they were having a right regular conversation, like we’re having now.”
Abigail reached up and scratched an ear with one foot. She looked at Armand out of her beautiful, luminous eyes. “What do you think?”
“Well, robins can’t fly at night, so we’re unlikely to be able to find it and speak to it ourselves. But I can ask around the village and see if the girl told any of the animals there what the robin said.”
“You might have bigger problems to solve than that,” Elsie warned. “The men were out about the edge of the wood as well today, looking at the trees. I think they’re aiming to cut more down for the train. They were eyeing the area around the fox-badger burrow. If they put Martin and Melinda out of home again, at Christmas no less, I fear for them, I do. And for all of us.” Elsie yawned, showing her sharp little teeth. “Well, that’s enough of a to-do for this little squirrel for one day. I’m off to sleep. Toodaloo, you two.” And she tucked her head back into her borrowed nest and left the evening to the owls.
The Rookery 