by Kaela Noel
Just as suddenly there was light. A shocking yellow glow emanated from a black bar Tully gripped in her left mitten. The wild zigzagging light had been coming from Tully’s hand. Sunlight on a stick!
“Holy moly!” said Tully. “You’re wearing nothing but plastic bags and my old hat and scarf. Take my coat. Quickly!”
Tully pulled off the black thing she wore and wrapped it around Coo. It was heavy, and so long it dragged on the floor, but it was also warm and soft. Coo’s deep shivering slowed.
“Maybe I should call an ambulance. Can you walk? Try.”
Coo followed as Tully began clunking her way down a dark and musty iron staircase. Coo’s snowy plastic-bag shoes slipped and slid, and Tully gripped her hand tight.
Inside the building! Under the roof! Despite the hunger and cold, Coo craned her neck to look around. It was spooky. Tully’s flashlight illuminated a dusty, paint-peeling, abandoned world, a place full of shadows. Coo did not like the inside of the building, she decided.
Tully led her all the way down the stairs and through the now-open doorway into the snowy corridor between the factory and the fence. Coo was relieved to be outside again, even in the howling wind and snow. Tully helped Coo sit on the snowy step while she stomped around looking for the fence rip. When she found it, she pushed Coo through and then wiggled out after her.
“It’s just as well you’re wearing my coat; I barely fit!” Tully huffed, pulling her legs through and standing up again. “Now, I think I can carry you, at least until we reach the plowed street.”
Coo was alarmed, but too weak to protest, when Tully swooped her off her feet and began trudging up the alley. For the first time, Coo went beyond the bend. The alley led to a loosely chained gate made from the same material as the fence. Still holding Coo, Tully wiggled through the gap, then put Coo down.
A rumble like the loudest train Coo had ever heard rolled past them, and snow was flung in all directions. “Snowplow!” Tully shouted. “Don’t be scared! Can you walk now?”
Coo clung to Tully’s sweater sleeve as they stumbled over the drifts and onto the plowed street. Maybe Tully was taking her to the same place she took sick birds, like Hoop said she would. Maybe she healed humans, too.
“I told the police I’d bring you straight to the precinct if I found you, but I just can’t do it. Not tonight.” Tully shook her head. “I don’t know what they’ll do with you or where they’ll send you. Even though it sure would be satisfying to see the look on their faces when they have to admit I wasn’t seeing things.”
Coo focused entirely on walking, not bothering to try to decipher what Tully was saying. The street was clear of snow, but very slippery with slush and ice. Coo looked up. The buildings had dropped away, and they were passing a wide, flat field of nothing but snow.
“Even Food Bazaar closed for this blizzard,” Tully said when she saw Coo looking at it. “I’ve never seen their parking lot so empty.”
Tully coaxed her along, babbling brightly.
“We’re almost there now, Coo. We just crossed the big road, and soon we’ll be on my block. Just another few steps. Then we’ll go inside and get you warmed up.” Tully’s voice was soothing. “I’ll call the police in the morning, when I’ve figured out exactly what to say. Back when Ben had his accident, they—well, we won’t get into that. It’s just hard for me to trust them. Especially during a blizzard like this.”
They reached a quiet street of scrunched-together buildings. Cars piled up with snow sat still and dark along the edges of the road like frosted buns. The snow was everywhere, swirling in the yellow lights that sat on tall poles. Coo looked around. She was almost delirious with hunger and cold, but still curious.
Food, Coo thought. Maybe there would be food. It was the only way to keep herself upright.
“This is my building,” Tully said, lifting Coo up a snow-covered slope of steps and through a heavy brown door.
The howling of the wind quieted. They walked along a short hallway to a pale blue door with a faded flower-print mat in front of it.
“Welcome to my apartment, Coo.”
Coo stepped inside. Her thoughts of food vanished. She gasped.
Chapter Seven
Tully’s Home
“Burr!” Coo rushed to the cube of thin twigs that sat on a table in the corner. “Healed, you?” She pressed her face against the cage and inhaled Burr’s familiar scent. “Trapped, you!”
“Not trapped, me,” said Burr. “Cage opens. Can’t fly, me.” He lifted his limp left wing, and with horror Coo saw it hung askew from the side of his body. A tiny pink and green length of knitting, like a miniature scarf, wound around it up to Burr’s neck and kept the wing from brushing the ground. Coo had never seen such a thing.
Pigeons who couldn’t fly died fast.
“No,” Coo whispered. “Not still broken, you. No.”
“Yes, broken. Always broken now. Don’t worry, you. Safe here, me. Helps me, Tully’s string,” he said, and pecked the little scarf.
“But can’t fly, you!” Coo was on the verge of tears. “Hawks! Cats!”
“No hawks here. No cats.”
“Are you—are you two communicating?” Tully’s eyes were large as donuts. “You were living alone with those pigeons in that old pigeon coop.”
Coo stared at her, cautious. She had never seen a face that looked so shocked. What if the strangers covered in metal were on their way? She sized up Burr’s cage, and Tully’s doorway. But then her stomach rumbled. Her knees felt flimsier than newspaper. And it was snowing. There was no place to run. She knew she couldn’t make it to the alley, much less climb the fire escape.
At least she and Burr were together. And he was alive.
“I’ve heard stories about kids raised by animals,” Tully continued, blinking rapidly. “Mostly bears, or maybe tigers? I remember in school learning about the legend of the twin boys raised by wolves in ancient Italy. One of them ended up founding the city of Rome. But they were myths. And none were about pigeons. Pigeons! It’s just not possible.”
Tully looked alarmed. She rubbed her temples. “But who left you with them? Where are your parents? Oh, the neglect!”
“So loud, her,” Coo whispered to Burr.
“Loud, humans are,” Burr replied. “Loud, too, you.”
Coo rattled the bars of Burr’s cage.
“Free!” she shouted at Tully in pigeon. “Free him, you!”
“Here I am muttering to myself about all this when you want to see your friend. I’m sorry, Coo. Here you go.” Tully lumbered to her feet. She fiddled with some wires on Burr’s cage and a door opened among the bars.
“Go on,” she said to Coo. “He’s out of danger now. I knit him a little sling, which seems to help his wing stay comfortable.”
Coo shimmied out of Tully’s big coat and reached into the wire box. At once she and Burr were together again. He nestled against her chilly arms, his feathers soft and warm against her cold skin.
“Happy,” said Coo, trembling. “I’m so happy.”
“Me too,” said Burr.
“You really are speaking to him. Oh, what on earth am I going to do with you? I can’t hand you over to strangers now. What will your life be like if it’s discovered how you were surviving?” Tully put her head in her hands. “I wish my dear Ben was here to help.”
Tully stood up and began opening and shutting doors and disappearing into other rooms. Coo looked up from the sheer joy of cuddling Burr to study her. What was she doing?
“At the very least I can help you clean up and get into some soft, normal clothes,” Tully said when she returned holding a pile of cloth. “Not those disgusting plastic bags! Come, let’s go to the bathroom.”
When Tully reached for her, motioning for her to hand Burr over, Coo recoiled.
“No, you!” Coo shouted in pigeon. She tucked Burr against her chest and dashed behind a chair.
“Hide, why? Safe here, you,” said Burr. “Kind, she is.”
> Coo was too exhausted and confused to argue with him.
“I see I’m going to have to win your trust.” Tully sighed. “You must be hungry.”
A few minutes later, Tully crouched down in front of the chair holding a small apple.
“Apple? Do you know apples?” Tully mimed taking a big bite.
A whole apple. Round as a doorknob and green as a new leaf. Coo looked at it in wonder. She had only ever had them half-bitten, smashed, or chewed down to the core.
“You eat it,” Tully said, handing it to her. “We’ll do a bath and new clothes tomorrow. I’ll go back to the kitchen to figure out more food for you now.”
That night, after eating the perfect green apple, six strawberries, and a pile of flaky, sticky squares Tully called peanut butter crackers, and drinking water that tasted cleaner than fresh rain, Coo felt safe enough to crawl out from behind the chair. Tully led her to a small, dark room and helped her curl up on a narrow plank that sat against one wall. Burr napped beside her with his head tucked under his crooked wing.
Tully slumbered in the main room, on the wide, soft, pink-and-white chair she said was called a loveseat.
The blizzard and the wild trek through the snow had tired her to the bone, but Coo lay wide-awake for a long time. Her stomach was full for the first time in ages, but the spongy plank under her was peculiar. She worried she would sink through it, right to the floor. The warm things Tully called blankets smelled good, but some shredded newspaper and plastic bags would have made her more comfortable. By themselves the blankets were so flat and clean it made her nervous.
Coo could see snow swirling and wind-battered trees through a window covered in a solid puddle of clear ice—the kind of window Roohoo complained about. It was very cold to the touch. Yet it didn’t crack, no matter how hard she tapped it.
“Odd, here,” Coo murmured. She lifted Burr’s wing, careful not to undo his sling, to peer into his sleepy face.
“Safe, you,” cooed Burr. “Happy, me. Sleep now, you.”
Coo smiled at him. Burr was very different from her, but he was still the most important person in the world. She nestled down into the blankets next to him, forgetting how distant she was now from the flock.
The next morning Coo blinked awake. It was winter, but she wasn’t cold. She was inside, but it was bright, not dim. It wasn’t a dovecote. It was a room in the place where Tully lived, the place where sick pigeons went to heal. She shut her eyes and the previous day spun around her like the heavy snow.
“Here, me!” Burr cooed.
He was right beside her, cocking his head back and forth.
“Sleep long, you,” he said. “Wait, me.”
“Up now, me.” Swiftly Coo scooped him into her arms for a cuddle. Out of all the shocking events since the blizzard began, finding Burr alive was the most stunning. She remembered how Old Tiktik and some of the others had thought she shouldn’t even try to bring him to Tully. What if she had listened to them? She shuddered deep inside.
“Find Tully, you,” said Burr. “Food here! Every morning.”
Coo stood up and plopped Burr on her shoulder. Then she crept to the open doorway. Food, indeed. It smelled a bit like donuts. Rich and sweet.
Tully hovered over a squat green thing in the corner of the big room.
“Come eat,” said Tully. “The stove’s doing a good job warming up the place today.”
Coo sat down on a chair at the round flat circle that Tully gestured to. The table, Tully called it. It was covered in a flowery cloth. She was surprised that things besides humans wore clothing. The night before she’d been too overwhelmed to really look at Tully’s home. Now she peered around curiously.
There was the small table where Coo sat. There were two more big clear windows filled with snow. In front of one, on a ledge, was a round little brown pot with a green plant growing in it. Near the windows were a big blue chair all piled up with things like Coo’s hat and scarf, and a smaller green chair that was empty. Coo was startled to find that chairs came in colors and materials other than the faded red plastic of the one she’d grown up with on the roof.
Above Burr’s table and cage was a set of shelves—just like dovecote shelves—stacked with a dozen flat, bright slabs. Tiny black marks covered them, just like on newsprint. Interesting.
Coo hopped up from the chair by the food and scrambled over to the table beneath the shelves. She hopped up on that, reaching for the shelf and—
“No!” Tully barked sharp as a seagull.
Hands grabbed Coo under her armpits and dragged her back down.
“Dangerous!” Tully’s mouth was a deep frown. “Climbing,” she said slowly. “Fall. Hurt. Ouch. Understand?”
Coo stared back. Tully’s words were beginning to make some kind of sense. Somehow she knew Tully meant she wasn’t supposed to stand on the table. But it wasn’t just her words. It was also the way her eyebrows shifted, and her mouth moved, and even how her shoulders tensed and relaxed. Pigeons communicated some things in the way they puffed their feathers or bent their heads, but it was nowhere near as complex as what humans did with their faces and bodies.
“Sit down at the table again,” Tully said, pointing. “Before the pancakes get cold.”
Pancakes. Tully nudged a spiky metal rod in Coo’s direction, but Coo brushed it aside to quickly pick up the whole buttery, sticky stack of flat bread in both hands and take a giant bite. Sweetness. And a shock. The pancakes were hot! Like the rooftop on a summer day.
“I see you need to learn how to use forks and spoons.” The corners of Tully’s mouth twitched. She turned and flipped another pancake on the stove. “Most people don’t eat pancakes with their hands.”
“Food, good,” Coo said in pigeon, her mouth so full of warm pancake it was hard to speak. Burr hopped down from her shoulder to peck up the soft crumbs falling all around her plate. Then he hobbled over to the edge of the table so Tully, smiling, could pop more little pancake scraps into his beak.
“I wonder how long I can wait to call the police about you, Coo, without them considering it kidnapping,” Tully said. She had finished cooking and sat down at the table to eat her own pancakes. Her face had become dense with lines and a deep frown. “Considering how long they took to do anything after Ben’s accident, I don’t imagine they’d look too carefully into it.”
Coo inhaled the last bit of pancake on her plate.
“But first—bath time. You shouldn’t have to spend another moment in your own filth. Or those plastic bags!”
Still not understanding nearly everything Tully said, Coo suspected nothing when Tully ushered her and Burr into a tiny white room near the front door.
“Here’s the bathroom. You’re going to take a shower. Water. Soap. Clean!”
Coo wasn’t listening. She was staring in utter shock at a strange slab stuck like a strange window on the wall. It was the clearest puddle she’d ever seen, more vivid than the cleanest, freshest ice. In it she saw Tully, who was holding Burr, and then a face she knew—almost—from the puddles on the roof. But it wasn’t greenish brown and vague with leaves and sticks and grit. She reached her hand up and touched her nose. The figure in the wall touched its nose.
“Me!” Coo pressed her hands against her reflection. “Me! Coo!”
On her head, brown hair, browner than autumn leaves. It was matted thick, like the tumbleweed tangles in the roof corners, and trailed down her back. Her skin was tan and pink and streaked with brown and gray patches. Her eyes were what startled her the most. They were just like Tully’s. Spring-sky blue.
“Me!” she said out loud again.
“Yes, a mirror,” said Tully. “We might as well get the washing up part over with. Come, stand in the tub.” She helped Coo out of her dirty plastic bags and then lifted her into a little room-within-the-room she called the bathtub. Then she turned some silvery knobs in the walls.
What happened next was the warmest, most terrible rainstorm Coo had ever been through. Hot
water poured through the ceiling while Coo covered her eyes, too frightened to scream. She waited for the booming thunder and flashing lightning that nearly always accompanied such downpours, but astonishingly, they didn’t come.
Worse than the fear of thunder and lightning, though, was the bitter-tasting white goop Tully rubbed all over her head and skin. It smelled almost, but not quite, like fresh flowers. Soap, Tully called it. Coo howled and pushed it away.
“Hush!” said Tully. “At the rate you’re going, I won’t need to call the cops; the neighbors will do it for me.”
Coo kept her eyes shut tight and wished for the rain to end.
“No soap is enough to save this hair,” Tully sighed. She turned the shiny knob in the wall again and the rain stopped. Then she wrapped Coo in a big soft cloth and helped her over to the mirror. “Come over here and hold very still.”
Tully got out a sharp piece of metal and started snipping at Coo’s head. Coo watched in horror as clumps of her matted hair fell to the floor. At the same time, she felt suddenly lighter.
“And we’re done. See? Look in the mirror.”
Coo looked up. The face that stared back at her had changed again. Now it was scrubbed red. Clean. No more dirt marks. Her eyes looked less blue, but she looked past them, up to her head. She touched it. Gone was the rough, weedy tangle she’d always known. In its place was a short, almost feathery wave of brownish-yellow hair, still slightly damp to the touch.
Tully helped Coo get into something new and clean that Tully called clothes: soft stretchy leaf-green tubes that sagged over her legs and a large white flap of softness that went over her head and arms.
“Leggings and a sweatshirt. They’re awfully large on you because they’re mine,” said Tully. “We’ll get you proper clothes at Goodwill soon.”
Coo looked in the mirror again. A dizzy feeling came over her, like she got from spinning in circles, or from the too-hot sun with no water on a late summer day.