CHAPTER THREE

 

A

irily lay in her nest-shaped bed staring at the ceiling’s gouged wood grain. The events of the day tumbled through her mind like leaves caught in an autumn wind. Burn’s gleeful bad news of the dead bird—Poppa’s
orders not to go downstairs. And the nerve of that boy,
asking if it could be his room. They were only temporary
tenants. Her family was the true owner, having lived there for four generations. The more Airily thought, the angrier she got. This wasn’t the human’s House.

A ton of groceries waited downstairs. Bags of fresh food—not stale seed from a bird feeder or leftovers pulled from a trash can. She was mad at Poppa for not trusting her to go collecting it.

All night she listened to the new sounds of occupancy: heavy footfalls, lots of shuffling, and voices raised as the
people called to each other from room to room in the hollow, echoing spaces of the House.

The sounds drifting from downstairs faded away as night took hold. The family fell silent while Airily lay in bed,
unable to sleep. Sometimes she thought she heard
movement, but it was only the groans and creaks from the House, its floorboards accommodating the unfamiliar weight of furniture and boxes.

Poppa, Fluppence, and Witter were all asleep. She couldn’t stand it anymore and jumped out of bed. Airily quickly changed from her pajamas to the dull brown vest and bloomers she wore every day. She left her collecting sack
behind and crept out of the room.

Airily went straight for one of the secret entrances to the House. The passage led to the empty space between the House’s inner and outer walls. A ladder of bent nails
descended to the first floor and Airily headed straight down.

The space between the walls was cramped, too tight to fly in. Sometimes, she fluttered down several rungs at a time for speed but had to be careful not to bruise her wings.

At the bottom, Airily stepped onto the landing built inside the gap. There were secret entrances built into almost every room in the House. The House’s kitchen entrance should be to her right, toward the chimney. She wiped sweat and dust off her face.

Long before Airily was born, the old brick oven in the human's kitchen had been replaced by cast iron, then by a gas range, and finally, an electric stove. Once, wood and coal smoke drifted up the chimney, but now there was an exhaust fan that sucked cooking fumes up and out of the kitchen. Where brick met wall, a little round hatch opened underneath a cabinet next to the stove.

Airily hopped to the hatch in the wall. A simple latch and clasp kept the entrance shut, with a nail on a chain. She closed her eyes and pulled in a long, steadying breath that smelled of warmed wood. Even this late at night, the outer walls
radiated heat into the narrow spaces. Poppa’s warnings haunted her. Airily shook off his words and opened her eyes. She pulled the nail from the hasp and pushed open the door.

Her heartbeat quickened. She was breaking so many rules.

Beyond the door was blackness—a perfect crawl space for the bird fairies underneath the cabinets. Across that
shadowed emptiness, a second door led into the kitchen through the baseboard. She squared her shoulders, smoothed her feathers, and pushed into the darkness.

The under-cupboard was thick with grime and Airily gagged as her feet crunched over the dried exoskeletons of dead bugs. She tried not to picture what she was stepping on or scream at every cobweb that brushed her cheek. She was so intent on keeping her fear in check that she smacked into the back of the baseboard.

Airily stopped, aware humans might hear even that tiny noise. Her ears strained to listen through the wooden
skirting, every muscle tight and ready to flee. Yet, only the mechanical whir of the fridge greeted her, and a relieved
Airily rubbed her aching nose.

Feeling along the wall in front of her, Airily searched for the door. She felt for the dry wooden handle and lifted. The door sprung open soundlessly. Poppa had been through the week before, lugging a small can of machine oil. He’d treated the springs and hinges of every door in the House.

She listened again, slowly counting to one hundred just like Poppa had taught her, before emerging into the kitchen. Again, nothing but the grind of the fridge motor met her ears. Safe, Airily pushed open the door and stepped into the faint twilight of the kitchen at night.

It was a world transformed; a maze of square, squat shapes cast geometric shadows. The room, once empty enough to echo, was now piled with half-unpacked boxes—mounded wads of balled paper pushed against the cabinets like snow drifts. Open cardboard containers were stacked on the floor and the counters.

In the hall, a weak bulb burned. Airily’s night vision was sharper than any daytime dwelling bird or human, but the sudden change in the terrain made everything unfamiliar. She was glad for the extra light.

Airily launched herself into the dark silence. She flew around the room twice, getting her bearings and looking for anything good to collect.

The doors of the upper cabinets had been removed. A stack of them leaned against the wall next to the mudroom door. If the humans got rid of the cabinet doors, collecting would be that much easier. The contents of the shelves were on display as if just for her: boxes of dry cereal, spices, pasta, crackers, cans of soup and all the dry goods she could hope for.

Giddy at the thought of a world without cabinet doors, she couldn’t wait to tell Poppa. Except, she couldn’t tell, and her excitement dimmed. Poppa would be too furious. She’d proven to herself that she wasn’t afraid of the humans and had a look around the kitchen; maybe she should just go back upstairs.

Then Airily spotted something that changed her mind. She banked sharply and hovered, wings beating hard over the kitchen island. There was an open pizza box on the counter and inside were half a dozen uneaten crusts.

With her mouth watering, Airily landed beside the box. She listened again for humans, but the garlicky, cheesy smell of pizza crust was too distracting. Never mind being careful! The House was silent, and the pizza crusts were all hers. Airily hopped over the cardboard edge of the box and ran, claws clicking, to the first greasy crust.

She bit into the salty baked bread, starting from the back to avoid the edge the person had eaten. It tasted as good as it smelled—crisp on the outside with a soft and chewy inside.

Airily dug her hand into the spongy interior of the crust and tore out a fluffy mouthful. She hadn’t had pizza crusts in years. The only ones she’d come across in the local garbage bins had been tossed in with coffee grounds and rotting fruit—never fit for consumption.

She ripped off a big, crisp chunk of the outer crust which was laden with parmesan and herbs. Just as she took a delicious, salty bite, there was a whoosh, and a narrow wedge of light fell across her.

Airily froze, a hunk of crust hanging from her mouth. Her heart felt too big and too fast for her ribs to contain.

A bright band cut through the kitchen from the refrigerator's open door.

Standing with a carton of milk halfway to his mouth was the boy, Josh. The fridge highlighted his features, especially the whites of his eyes. He looked as scared and shocked as she felt.

With a slow and painful horror, Airily realized he could see her. She was maybe five feet away, too close for her
‘camouflage’ to work.

The last remnants of the sparrows’ magic cloaked them in glamour. From far enough away, people saw only grey-brown sparrows. Birds so plain and common in cities and suburbs, humans didn’t give them a first, let alone a second, glance. But the magic was weak, and they couldn’t control when it dissolved. Which meant the boy saw her and she could do nothing to make him un-see her.

A wave of cold prickles broke over Airily’s skin, and she burst into the air, spurred on by pure terror. She flew high into the shadowed corner of the room. The boy’s head
swiveled, trying to follow her. Once out of the light, Airily darted from the kitchen.

She’d forgotten about the kitchen hatch, which was
probably for the best. She couldn’t lead Josh straight to one of their secret passages. But where could she go? She had to get back into the walls.

Airily shot through the dining room to the too-bright foyer with its lone bulb burning in a wall sconce.

The living room. On the other side of the foyer, the living room fireplace had a secret door leading to the chimney.
Airily went straight through a wide, dim archway.

The living room was as altered as the kitchen. Furniture and boxes were everywhere, but the fireplace never moved.

Airily landed behind a newly placed mantle clock and peeked out. Had Josh followed her? Poppa was right; she’d been stupid. Everything she tried to do on her own ended wrong. In her mind, Black Burn’s cackling laugh mocked her as it had so many times after getting into trouble with Poppa.

She waited and watched, trying to calm her panic. There was movement in the foyer. Airily’s fists curled. Josh stood in the pool of light, searching the ceiling. He took off his glasses and wiped them on the hem of his t-shirt. If he’d been groggy enough, maybe he’d think she was a figment of his imagination. Her fingernails dug into her palms.

Josh, eyes still on the ceiling, stepped into the living room. Airily shrank behind the clock.

“Joshua? You better not be drinking from the carton again,” his mother’s voice called from the second floor,
startling Airily.

Josh jumped too. Airily let a mean smile curl the corner of her lip. She was glad Josh had gotten caught at something.

“I’m not, Mom,” Josh said. He stepped back into the foyer.

“Then what are you doing out of bed?”

“Um, I was…” Josh’s excuse faltered.

“Uh-huh. Go back to bed. And for the love of God, use a glass. It’s not that hard.”

“Sorry, mom,” Josh said automatically.

His mother’s footsteps thumped back down the hall. Josh checked the darkened living room again before finally leaving.

Airily didn’t move, expecting the boy to sneak back downstairs just to see if he could catch her. He must be
wondering if what he saw was real. A tiny person made from a mishmash of human and bird parts, dressed in tiny clothes. What else could Josh think but that she must be something from a dream?

An icy chill numbed Airily as she remembered Poppa's warnings about human curiosity. What if Josh would be watching, waiting, searching for her, long after the shock wore off?

Airily must never go into the human parts of the House again, but she had to find the way out first.

Decorative medallions were carved into the length of the mantle’s edge. The third one from the left led into the walls.

Airily quickly hopped the length of the mantle, cringing as her toenails clicked on the polished wood. She felt around the carved edge of the medallion, searching for the paper-thin notch in the wood that would give her tiny hands just enough leverage to open the door. Airily’s fingers slid home, and she pulled on the groove. A round door slid out on its hidden hinges. Airily slipped through, finally out of sight.

Unlike the kitchen tunnel, there was no light. Her night vision couldn't penetrate this darkness. A sudden thought, that she’d be lost behind the walls forever, took hold of her. She pushed the fear aside. There was a ladder, and all she had to do was find it.

Feeling along the wall, Airily's fingers grazed rough brick, then the first metal nail of the ladder. She grinned. She was on her way up and out.

She climbed blind, relying on her hands and feet to feel the way. If she lost her grip, she’d plummet to the bottom of the shaft. She could break a wing—or worse, her neck—trying to fly in such close quarters.

Up, and up, and up, she climbed. Time felt like it was unspooling forever. With each rung, Airily repeated to herself, One step closer, and kept going. Soon, it was her only thought. The nail ladder ran all the way up the chimney, cutting through beams and floorboards, to the roof, where a loose shingle would let her out into the night.

When Airily hit her head on a solid wood surface, she yelped and climbed down a rung. Airily threw open the trap door. Her limbs ached as she lifted herself out of the shaft. She shut the door and sat down on the roof to rest.

Stars twinkled against the black velvet sky. The summer air was warm, but compared to the stifling heat between the walls, it was deliciously cool. She looked out over the backyard and the ragged silhouette of the woods beyond. Her eyes traced the outline of the trees against the sky several times more than she needed to. Something didn’t seem quite right. She cocked her head. Was she being paranoid?

Tree branches moved—first one, then another—as though something large leaped from branch to branch. She followed the movement until it disappeared a second later. Could it be a feral cat? She didn’t think it was an owl. To shake a whole tree, it had to be something much larger. Maybe it was just a deer, except the swaying branches had been far off the ground. Goosebumps broke out over her skin. She shivered as she recalled Black Burn’s news of the shredded bird in the woods.

Airily shook herself. It was nerves, that was all. She’d been seen. She’d climbed two stories in pitch darkness. She was tired, shaky, and wired all at the same time.

With a groan, she realized the night wasn’t over. She still had to close the baseboard door in the kitchen to cover her tracks, all the while clinging to hopes that her own family, especially Poppa, hadn’t noticed she’d been gone.