Coo

by Kaela Noel

  Coo nodded, her eyes filling with tears. She hoped he was right.

  Chapter Twenty

  The Flock in Peril

  Tully and Coo were coming back from Food Bazaar on Sunday evening, the day after Lucia’s visit, when they heard a commotion in the street ahead.

  It was just beginning to get dark, but in the hazy glow from the streetlamps Coo saw several people standing outside Tully’s apartment building. Others were dashing back and forth on the sidewalk as if they were trying to catch something.

  “I’ve never seen a pigeon act so crazy!” one of the observers said.

  “Can pigeons have rabies?”

  “Someone should call animal control. Or the cops or something.”

  “It’s trying to break in!”

  A plump purple pigeon was dashing from window to window, pecking hard on the glass, and trying to stay out of reach of the many lunging hands.

  Coo recognized him instantly.

  “Roohoo!”

  At the sound of her voice, he sailed over and landed on her shoulder.

  “Flock, sick,” he panted. “Need help. Hurry!”

  “What? Find me how, you?”

  A man tried to grab Roohoo off Coo’s shoulder. “That pigeon is seriously messed up,” he said. “Girl, get it off you!”

  Coo dodged him and turned to Tully. “The flock needs help! Something’s wrong!”

  “Let’s go inside.” Tully’s eyes darted over the crowd nervously. Most were strangers, but a few were neighbors. Tully steered Coo and Roohoo toward the stoop.

  “Wait a second, lady,” said a man Coo vaguely recognized. “You can’t bring a pigeon inside.”

  “It’s a pet,” snapped Tully. “Mind your own business.”

  Lips pursed tight, Tully shoved Coo through the building’s doorway and then into the apartment.

  “Whew,” she said, leaning against the apartment door when it was shut and locked. “Coo, what is going on? Who is this pigeon? What is it doing here?”

  Coo was trying to find out, but Roohoo was so rattled he was struggling to speak. It was the first time Coo had ever seen Roohoo scared. Burr hopped over from his perch to listen.

  “Strange humans came, scattered seed,” Roohoo panted. “Didn’t trust it, me. Flock ate it. Sick now, them. Can’t fly. Okay, me. Followed you back from roof earlier, me. Remembered way again, me. Need help. Fast!”

  Trembling, Coo turned to Tully.

  “We have to go to the roof right now,” she said. “My flock is sick!”

  The first thing Coo noticed was that the chain was off the gate to the alley. Tully pushed and it swung wide open. They rushed through.

  Everything else appeared normal at first: gray gravel, brown weeds, faded litter. The snow had vanished. They could hear the distant chug of the trains and a honk or two from cars on the busy streets nearby. Roohoo circled around Coo and Tully, urging them to go faster.

  When she reached the hut, scampering ahead of Tully, Coo had trouble understanding what she was seeing in the dim evening light.

  Pigeons were all over the ground. Huddled in groups and sprawled on their sides. Barely moving.

  Coo skidded to a halt. She swallowed, and turned, looking wildly around. New Tiktik—Ka—Hoop. Where were they? The closest pigeon was Hem. He leaned against the weedy chain-link fence, trembling.

  Coo knelt, her own hands shaking, and scooped him into her lap.

  “Sick, you?”

  Hem blinked—his eyes were cloudy, distant—and took a ragged breath. He was about to speak when Tully arrived.

  “This is horrible!” Tully wrung her hands and paced from bird to bird. She pulled out her phone.

  “I’m calling Nicolas,” she muttered to herself. “Oh, goodness help us.”

  Heart pounding, Coo turned to Hem.

  “Seed,” gasped Hem. “Bad . . . new . . . seed. From . . . new humans.”

  Scattered all around in the gravel were tiny golden kernels, different from anything Coo had seen before.

  Coo reached to pick one up, but before she could, Roohoo landed hard on her hand.

  “Don’t, you,” he growled. “Poison.”

  Coo quickly drew back her hand.

  “Suspicious humans,” he grumbled. “Told others, me. Don’t eat seed, you. Listen? No! Never listen to me, them. Now sick, them.” He swept a shaky wing toward the alley, which was littered with staggering birds.

  “Nicolas!” Tully shouted into her flip phone. “It’s Bettina Tully. Listen, there’s an emergency. The flock I feed up here has been poisoned. They’re hanging on but just barely. Can you help me?”

  Nicolas was a veterinarian, Tully explained in a shaky voice, while she and Coo cradled sick pigeons and moved them closer together to stay warm. He’d gone to veterinary school in the country he was born in, but here in the city he drove a taxi. He still cared for animals when he could, particularly birds, which he loved, and especially pigeons, which he loved most of all. Tully had taken sick birds to him in the past. He said on the phone he would come straight away.

  “I wish Aggie was here,” Coo murmured as they waited.

  “Friends make life’s hard moments easier, don’t they?” said Tully.

  Coo nodded. She was glad Burr was at home, though. She didn’t want him to see what was happening to their flock.

  Tully’s phone buzzed. “It’s Nicolas!” said Tully, picking it up. “Hello? You’re almost here! Turn left at Northern Boulevard, then right . . .”

  At last a yellow car came inching down the alley, headlights illuminating the pigeons on the ground. Nicolas hopped out, swinging a flashlight and a duffel bag, and began barking directions to Coo and Tully.

  Coo froze. Everywhere she turned, a bird she knew and loved was lying still on the gravel and barely breathing. Hoop. Ka. Old Tiktik. How could she choose who to help first?

  “Coo.” A faint voice floated up from her feet. “Help me, you.”

  New Tiktik. Coo scooped New Tiktik into her hands and nuzzled her fresh, rain-clean feathers. The little bird was breathing fast and shallow.

  “Missed you, us,” New Tiktik gasped. “Need you, us. Can’t fly, me.”

  Tears burned Coo’s eyelids, but there was no time to cry. Nicolas was shouting about boxes and medicine. Tully was dashing around the alley, carefully shuffling sick pigeons into her hands.

  Gingerly, Coo hugged New Tiktik to her chest and brought her to Nicolas.

  “Help my friend, please.”

  Nicolas looked up from the pile of small cages, bags of liquids, and blankets strewn across the hood of the cab. He was a tall man with a rumpled mop of black hair and friendly, worried eyes.

  “Put it in here, angel,” he said, motioning to an empty plastic cage.

  A wild look of fear flashed in New Tiktik’s eyes as Coo bundled her into the cage. Of course she was scared. Since hatching from her egg, she had never once been confined.

  “Safe, you,” Coo said. “Promise you, me.”

  “Scared, me,” New Tiktik whimpered.

  “Heals you, this human. Like Tully.”

  Coo looked up to find Nicolas staring at her curiously. But before he could say anything, Tully arrived with Hoop and Ka, who were both very sick, too.

  Soon nearly all the pigeons were in Nicolas’s taxi, ready to go. Tully and Nicolas stood by the car’s hood, fussing over Pook, who was particularly weak. Scrambling between the boxes, Coo counted the birds, and then counted again. At least it was winter, and a particularly hungry one at that, so Coo guessed there were no pigeons sitting on eggs in the dovecote, and no new squabs. Only one bird was missing.

  Roohoo!

  He wasn’t sick, but he couldn’t stay in the alley or on the roof by himself. Pigeons never stayed anywhere alone. It was too dangerous. Hawks . . . cats . . . Coo shuddered.

  “Roohoo?” she called out in the dark. “Come here, you!”

  But no one replied.

  Tully and Nicolas were disagreeing about som
ething to do with Pook’s treatment. Coo hesitated, then slipped through the old rip in the fence and began shimmying up the fire escape. Just before hoisting herself over the ledge onto the roof, she turned to look at the rail yard. Beyond it was the skyline of crooked, twinkling rectangles she’d always watched at night. Now she knew those tall buildings had many people inside them.

  The roof was full of familiar shadows. Never before had they seemed so menacing. The place seemed dingier and grayer than she remembered, too. Looking around in the dim light, Coo paused to wonder how she’d spent so many years in such a wild and rough place. Now that she was here, she didn’t miss it at all. She hurried to the dovecote.

  “Hello?” It was too dark to see much, but as her eyes adjusted, one lone pigeon came into view. “Roohoo?”

  “Hrmph.”

  “Here, you? Alone? Why?”

  “Not human, me.”

  “Take care of you, me. Come.”

  “Staying here, me.”

  “Alone! Not alone, pigeons. Ever. Roohoo, no. Come with me, you.”

  “Humans, all bad. Always knew it.”

  “Me? Tully? Bad?”

  Roohoo preened his feathers instead of replying. Coo reached out to grab him, but he scurried one way, then another, and she gave up.

  “Fine, you. Stay here.”

  Coo heard Tully down in the alley, calling her name over and over.

  She turned around and left Roohoo in the dovecote.

  Coo had begged to go with the pigeons in Nicolas’s taxi to wherever he was taking them, but Tully and Nicolas both said no. There was no room in the car, and it was very late.

  Standing by the taxi, its heat blasting to keep the sick birds warm, Nicolas put his hands on Coo’s shoulders and looked her in the eye. “I promise to do everything I possibly can to help the birds,” he said. “We’ll know in the morning if that is enough.”

  That night, back at the apartment, neither Coo nor Tully could sleep. Coo read picture books from the library but stopped when she realized she was staring at the same sentences over and over. She and Tully tried to bake cookies, but they forgot to add baking powder and the cookies came out of the oven flat and hard as the sidewalk. Even Burr wouldn’t eat one. Coo propped Queenie up at the kitchen table and pretended to feed them to her.

  Finally Coo and Tully sat in silence with a pot of strong mint tea. It was almost midnight. Coo had never stayed up so late before, not even on New Year’s Eve, but she couldn’t sleep.

  “I wish Aggie were here,” Coo said for the hundredth time.

  “Her parents would find it very strange if we rang the bell at this hour,” said Tully. “It’s also a school night.”

  Horrible thoughts bounced around in Coo’s mind, troubling her.

  “Tully, why do things . . . die?”

  Her question hung in the air and thickened the silence.

  “That’s something people have been trying to answer for as long as there have been people, Coo.”

  “Where do pigeons go when they die?” Coo asked. “I mean, their spirits.” Over the past few months, Tully had told her a little bit here and there about spirits, gods, and the universe.

  “Some people think souls are always returning to the earth in new bodies, over and over again. Other people think there’s a lovely place called Heaven you can go, which lasts for all eternity. And another place called hell, that’s bad. Some people think nothing happens. That we are only bodies, which decay.”

  “What about people?” She thought of Aggie’s grandmother. “Where do they go?”

  “The same place as pigeons, I would think, wherever that is.”

  “What about Ben? Where is he?”

  Tully flinched, and so did Coo.

  “No, Coo. It’s okay to ask these things.” Tully looked down into her teacup. “I wish I knew where Ben was. Wherever he is, I would love to meet him again someday.”

  “How did he die, Tully?”

  “He was riding a bicycle and a car hit him.”

  Coo was stricken. Cars killed people, just like they killed pigeons.

  “I hate cars,” Coo blurted out.

  “Me, too, Coo,” Tully said quietly. “Me, too.”

  “I hate that people poison pigeons. Why, Tully? Make them stop, us! How?”

  “Maybe you’ll be the one to figure that out someday, Coo.”

  “Someday is when?”

  “Not today,” Tully said, sighing. “Or at least not tonight. But hopefully soon.”

  Coo fell silent. She had to save her flock and all the other pigeons at risk—but how?

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The Pigeon Hospital

  Slumped over the table and their cold cups of tea, Coo and Tully woke on Monday morning to Tully’s phone buzzing on the table. Burr hopped on top of it, pecking the plastic case.

  Tully sat up with a start. “Is it Lucia? Or the lawyer? What day is it? Oh, it’s Nicolas. Hello?”

  Coo rubbed her eyes. Recently she had become used to seeing worry and sadness on Tully’s face. But now there was something else.

  “Really? Oh my goodness, Nicolas. This wasn’t the news I was expecting. How can I thank you? We’ll be there in an hour or two. I remember the way. See you soon.”

  Tully hung up and grinned. “The flock is okay, Coo!”

  Coo blinked. It was hard to believe what Tully said. But seconds later she felt a flutter of excitement mixed with relief.

  “Get your shoes on. Give Burr a good-bye hug—it’s too long of a trip to bring him,” said Tully. “We’re going on the train!”

  Sharp little snowflakes were falling. Tully called them flurries. The word sounded so funny that Coo laughed, even though she was again sick with worry for her flock. What if Tully had misunderstood Nicolas? What if the flock was still in danger?

  Coo and Tully joined the jumble of umbrellas heading for Steinway Street. Nicolas lived all the way at the other end of the city, Tully said. They had to take a subway to get there. It would be Coo’s first time.

  “Here we are,” said Tully. “Our train’s down there.”

  Coo peered into the black, damp mouth of the stairwell. People pushed past them. The stairwell belched menacing rumbles, metallic shrieks, and crackly static voices. The sidewalk trembled every few seconds.

  “I don’t like this,” Coo murmured.

  “This is how millions of people get around.” Tully nudged her toward the steps, but Coo tightened her grip on the top of the railing. “It’s amazing we haven’t had to ride it yet. Come on.”

  “No, Tully.”

  “Come on, Coo,” said Tully. “One step at a time.”

  With Tully coaxing her and holding one elbow, Coo took the stairs gingerly. Some people squeezed around them, muttering. Behind them, a stout woman stomped her large umbrella against the step and grumbled, “Really? Hurry up.” Tully swiveled around and silenced her with a fierce stare.

  Coo made it to the last soaked step, only to find the station itself was even more intimidating. Tully prodded Coo down the dark, drippy corridor toward an ever-growing roar and stopped in front of a row of silver gates. People rushed past, swiping small yellow cards through boxes and pushing their bodies against the gates so they moved. Tully took her own card out of her pocket and nudged Coo forward. It took less force than Coo expected to walk through the turning bars. Tully followed behind her and led Coo down another set of stairs, beneath which was something Coo, for all her years living above a rail yard, had never seen up close.

  Her jaw dropped.

  The train came clattering, growling, singing into the station just as they reached the bottom step. Like a car, but a thousand times more terrible. Coo jumped back, screaming, but the roar drowned out her voice. “Hush,” Tully said. “It won’t hurt you.”

  The train slowed. It was huge. Faces peered out its windows. Coo watched its doors open and the crowds on the platforms cram in.

  The trains—humans were inside them! In all her years on
the roof, she never thought about what was inside the trains.

  “Hurry, love, it’s our train.”

  Coo followed Tully into the crush of damp coats and dribbling umbrellas. The train lurched, and Coo grabbed a pole. Her head spun.

  A few stops later, when humans poured off the train, a nice gentleman offered Tully a seat. Coo forgot her fear. Now she was just curious. She studied every face and peered out the windows when she could, even though all they showed between the places called stations was a dense blackness. Staring into the darkness, she was suddenly overwhelmed by questions. Was the flock really going to be okay? What was going to happen with Lucia?

  At last they arrived at 95th Street, their station. It was just as loud and damp as the one where they’d started. They emerged onto a bright, noisy sidewalk. It was hard to understand how far they were from home. It looked almost exactly like the neighborhood they’d left, though the flurries had stopped.

  They started walking, and soon the streets looked very different. Instead of just brick buildings packed tightly together, there were also houses painted different colors and small yards that were brown and gray. There was still some old blizzard snow piled up in the deepest, shadiest yards. It was very quiet.

  “It’s been a couple of years since I brought a sick pigeon to Nicolas,” said Tully as they walked. “But everything looks the same.”

  They stopped in front of a tall yellow and white house with many windows and a big porch. There was a small white gate in front, which Tully opened and shut behind them. They walked past a row of heavy evergreen shrubs and up to the front door. Coo was startled to see a bear peeking through some bushes, and behind it, a tiny bearded man in a pointed hat. She squinted. They were definitely made of stone.

  “I think it’s this bell,” said Tully, pushing one of the three buttons.

  When the door opened, all of Coo’s worries seemed to explode.

  “My flock!” She clutched Nicolas’s arm. “Show me!”

  “Coo—it’s not polite to grab people—”

  “No, no, I understand.” Nicolas smiled at Coo. “You must be very worried. Come, let’s go straight to the pigeons.”