“Codger!” The lurcher was at it again. This time, he was chasing a hare across the field. It zigged and zagged and then headed hard toward the north wood. Violet left the linens she was hanging on the line–it was a sunny day, and warm for the season. “Codger!” She shouted again against the wind, but the dog didn’t even slacken its stride. Both dog and hare disappeared at the fringe of the wood. “Oh, please,” Violet begged under her breath as she trudged after them, not even sure to whom. She felt stupid even praying. Wasn’t she the one who owned the dog? Hadn’t she herself eaten hare stew dozens of times, and savored it? And wasn’t she the one who was too scared to say anything to Bertie and the men about the destruction the train was doing in the west wood, because it was her only chance of taking the place she had been given at Beringford Veterinary College?
Violet kept working her way across the field toward the north wood. She could see nothing moving, and she could hear nothing–no barking, none of the screaming hares did when they had to. The only sound was the breeze in the spruces and firs and bare oaks. Flakes of leftover snow and frost filtered down from the branches, sparkling in the light. When she reached the forest verge, Violet just stood for a moment, wash-chilled hands dangling at her sides. She didn’t understand the sense of calm she felt; she certainly didn’t deserve it.
A flash of red: she focused on it and made out a robin. It was so large and so intelligent looking she thought it had to be the one who had met her at the old fae how and warned her about the men surveying the trees at the edge of the wood. Now, it eyed her and turned and hopped away, toward the west edge of the wood, the opposite direction. She followed.
First, she met with Codger, who, having obviously lost his prey, was finally obeying his mistress’s summons. She just shook her head at him and kept her eye on the robin, who, unperturbed by the dog’s lumbering arrival on the scene was still hopping resolutely westward. After a few minutes of this, Violet pulled up short and put a chapped hand over her mouth. For on the huge flank of the ancient spruce on the western verge of the wood, where the barn owls lived, where the squirrel lived, was chalked an X, the mark the men made when they were surveying to cut timber. Here, in this ancient part of the wood that had never been touched? Why? How would they even take this tree down, much less haul it to the mill? And why this one when there were so many smaller oaks to cut–wouldn’t they be the perfect girth and hardness for the railroad ties?
Codger nosed her hand, and she was so distraught that she bent down and wrapped her arms around the dog’s long, lean neck and buried her face in his scant ruff, smelling of fire smoke and the yew he had just gone crashing through. “What do I do, boy?”
And Codger, because it was all he could do, licked her salty cheek once, as if to say, I don’t know, but I love you, and it’s going to be okay. And then he gently drew her, with her little hand around his stout collar, back toward the village, as it was getting to be time for everyone, all living things, to be where they belonged before night fell.
The Rookery 