by Kaela Noel
“Don’t be alarmed!” Lucia began walking toward them, her hands out. “Tully, I have no idea. I didn’t call them! They say they’re looking for you. I just came by with Camille to talk to you and maybe have some coffee. We called, but you didn’t answer.”
“I’m an attorney,” said Camille, the woman in the plaid scarf, turning to the police. “Why do you want to speak with Ms. Tully?”
“Interfering with health department business,” said one of the cops. “We got a complaint. You’re Bettina Tully, ma’am?” He looked at Tully, then at Coo. “We have a few questions.”
Tully stood in silence on the sidewalk. If Coo had been a bird, she would have soared up to the sky for safety. But she was human, so her legs turned to jelly.
“What kind of questions?” said Lucia. She took a few steps closer, until she was standing between Coo and Tully. “Tully, you don’t have to answer any questions.”
“It’s okay, Lucia,” said Tully, her voice hoarse. “I know what this is—”
“No, Tully!” Coo couldn’t fly, but she could run. Even with jelly legs. “Come on! The flock will help us! Run!”
Tully stood frozen. Coo’s eyes locked with hers.
“Come on, Tully.” Tears came, and Coo swallowed them back so her throat burned. “Not safe here, you. Because of me. I’m sorry! Please, run!”
“Honey—no.” Tully shook her head. “This is not your fault. This is more complicated than—”
“Tully, please!”
“Coo! What is happening?” Aggie appeared on the apartment steps, her big pink backpack hanging off her shoulder. Beside her stood her dad.
“Not the police,” Aggie gasped. “Coo, run!”
Tully and Lucia reached for Coo at the same time. Shielding Burr with her hands, she ducked between them and around the police. Then she bolted into the street.
Never before had she run so hard or so fast. Voices shouted behind her, but she didn’t stop. She dodged three overflowing trash cans; a man walking four Lhasa apsos on leashes; an elderly can collector balancing two huge bags on a pole over her tiny shoulders; a delivery truck sitting outside the bodega with its lights blinking and a man hauling big cartons of soda off the back; and all the terrifying morning rush-hour traffic by Food Bazaar.
Any moment she expected big police hands to yank her back.
None did.
So she kept running.
She thought about what was probably happening to Tully and gulped back tears. No matter what Tully had said before, it was clear now. Coo had brought nothing but trouble into Tully’s life.
When she made it to the alley, she slowed. Despite the winter air, sweat poured off her. Her insides felt shattered. What was the point of doing anything?
Burr shifted in his pouch.
Burr.
Did you get to keep your pigeon when social workers and police took you away?
A chill ran down Coo’s spine.
She knew what life was like without Tully. But without Burr? Unthinkable.
She sprinted down the alley, shot through the fence, and scrambled up the stairs to the roof.
“Here, me and Burr!” Panting, Coo plopped down by the dovecote. “Need help, me and Burr! Fast!”
Burr shimmied out of his pouch and onto her shoulder.
The pigeons gathered around, peering at them curiously. In the bright winter sun, their feathers glinted in every iridescent shade of purple, white, silver, and black, like a flock of wizards in shimmering robes.
“Sick, you?” tittered New Tiktik. “Need water, you?”
“Not sick, me. In danger, me. And pigeons, too!”
It was hard, but Coo did her best to explain everything, including the return of Frank and Stan. Every pigeon in the city was at risk.
The pigeons were baffled by her attempts to describe the woods. “All trees! Far north!” Coo said, waving her arms around. “No humans! No poison!”
“Trees? Pigeons?” Hoop asked. “Roofs, better.”
There wasn’t time for Coo to explain. She stood up.
“Fly there, now. Bring other flocks. Hurry!”
“Fly? You?” Ka looked at her blankly. “How?”
“Holding me, you.” Coo tugged her coat. “With beaks, you. Fly to safety, us!”
“Like when she was small,” piped up Burr. “Flew her then, us.”
The pigeons stared at Burr, at his sling.
“Light as bread then, you,” Old Tiktik said quietly. “Too heavy now, Coo.”
The tears came hot and fast.
“Try, you!”
“Remember, flock. Saved us, Coo did,” said Hem. “From poison. Help her, us.”
Coo heard tires on the gravel in the alley below. All at once, with a realization that felt like a sudden punch, she remembered that Queenie was back at Tully’s apartment. Would she ever see Queenie again? She gasped, sobbing.
Roohoo flew from the top of the dovecote and landed hard on the ground in front of Coo.
“Fly her, flock,” he said. “Must try, us. Right, she is.”
Coo was so shocked she stopped crying.
Roohoo was helping her?
“More clever than they seem, humans,” he continued. “Clever, too, us. Fly Coo, us. Now!”
As Roohoo barked orders, there came the sound of car doors slamming and people calling Coo’s name in the alley below.
“Hurry!” said Burr. “Pouch now, Coo.”
Hands trembling, Coo bundled Burr back into her coat. There was hardly time to think about what they were about to do. Her stomach rumbled. No donuts in the woods. Berries, maybe? She could eat roots and nuts too, like Rapunzel after she escaped the witch’s tower.
“Coo!” Tully’s voice rang clearly from below. “Are you up there? It’s okay! Lucia and her friend are helping us. Please don’t be scared! I’m coming up to the roof!”
Beaks hooked into the fabric around Coo’s hood, arms, and back. Wings beat against her and filled the air. Pigeons swooped around her in tight arcs.
“Lift!” called Roohoo, zooming from bird to bird, directing them. “Lift now!”
One, two, three.
Her coat tugged tight against her body. Never had Coo felt her own featherless heaviness so intensely. She peered down at Burr. He was calm and silent.
Four, five, six.
“Lift!” said Roohoo. “Up, all! Up!”
With a sudden lurch, Coo’s feet left the ground. Between her and the roof was a foot of air. Then more. And more. The pigeons wobbled over the edge of the roof, north, over the alley and toward the rail yards.
Coo gasped. She was flying.
“Slow enough to be hawk’s food, you!” Old Tiktik cried to the flock, swooping nearby. “Faster!”
The flock heaved up and pitched down. They banked to the left and then dragged to the right. Two pigeons let go and Coo plunged ten feet in an instant. Her stomach flipped and flopped. Try as they might, it seemed the flock could not speed up.
Until New Tiktik grabbed a section of Coo’s hood and pumped her wings. The flock stabilized.
“Look!” shouted a voice Coo didn’t recognize. “Those birds are carrying the girl!”
Someone in the alley below had seen them.
The door on the roof burst open.
“Oh my God!” Tully screamed. “Coo, no! Come down! Please, no!” From the corner of her eye, Coo saw Tully running across the roof. But Coo was already heading for the rail yard.
“Coo is flying!” Coo heard Aggie shriek from somewhere. “Daddy, look! She’s going to save the pigeons!”
It was glorious. The wind whipped past her legs. She glanced down. People were running back and forth. Very tiny people. She flinched, thinking how worried Tully probably was. But then she looked up.
She was flying.
The flock followed Roohoo’s lead, sailing over the cluttered brown rail yards and silver-black-gray roofs toward the big river. Sometimes Coo looked down and saw people jumping, shouting, and pointing,
and ambulances and fire trucks with flashing red lights that seemed to be following her. But she was so high up now that she could barely hear any of it.
The sky was much quieter than she’d expected. All around her, she was bathed in its clear, bright, cold light.
Unfamiliar pigeons swooped up and pestered Coo’s flock with questions, curious to know what was happening.
“Going north, us,” New Tiktik told them. “Poisoned, us. Survived. Going to safety now.”
“Tell other flocks, you!” Coo shouted. “All the flocks, heading north! Leading you, me! To safety!”
Many other pigeons had heard rumor of poisonings, too, and decided to join Coo’s flock. Soon more pigeons arrived. And more and more.
Coo’s view became dense with birds. She stared around in astonishment, her heart swelling as each new group appeared. At this rate, maybe there would soon be no more pigeons for the city to poison.
A shiver ran down Coo’s spine.
Maybe she could save all the birds.
A broad flat ribbon of brown appeared below, dotted with different shapes rippling very slowly across its surface.
“Boats!” Coo exclaimed in English. “It’s the river!”
The river was much wider than she’d imagined, much bigger than a puddle or Tully’s bathtub.
Her flock didn’t seem to notice. Surrounded by more and more pigeons, they swooped onward. The last roofs and streets fell away, and when Coo looked down again, she saw only the dark water far below.
She closed her eyes. Her heart was beating hard and loud in her ears. When she opened her eyes again, the water was still beneath her. The pigeons flew steadily. She started to relax, even though her neck hurt and her dangling feet were numb.
How long would it take to get to the woods?
Moments later they reached the jumble of stone and glass she’d spent so many years staring at from the roof, and her worries were swept away by awe. Her surprise at the unexpected height and heft of the buildings was similar to how she felt the very first time she met Tully. How different things were up close! But you had to get close to find out.
“Which way, us?” called Hoop.
“North!” Coo shouted.
“North, all!” echoed Roohoo.
The flocks shifted as one, filling the spaces between the buildings until Coo could see nothing but feathers in every direction. When gaps appeared here and there, Coo was startled by the shocked human faces pressed against the skyscraper windows. Some were taking photos. Some were screaming, but Coo couldn’t stop herself from giggling. She was flying!
Coo looked down in giddy wonder. City noises—sirens, horns, shouts—made a muffled rumble below, but Coo floated in a deep calm. It felt like so long ago that she’d sat at the kitchen table with Aggie, looking at Tully’s palm full of sugar. Here were all those people. So many millions. Each one had a name and a family, just like pigeons. Each one had loves and hates, fears and dreams. The world was so fantastically complex and vast.
She felt Burr stir.
“Flying, me,” Burr said happily, wiggling his head out of the pouch. “Feels good, air.”
Coo was startled out of her daydreams by a glimpse of fields and trees, crisscrossed with lines like tangled yarn. Paths, she realized, paths that were dense with people stopping to look up.
The park!
Only a few days before, Aggie had told her about a magical thing called ice-skating. It was something you could do at the park. Coo spotted a flat white shape, almost like an egg, that people were twirling across. Was that it? It looked a lot like ballet. Aggie had talked about asking Octavia or Tully to take them ice-skating before winter was over.
“Oh well.” Coo sighed. “More important, this.”
They passed over more buildings, though they were shorter, and then—Coo looked down and gasped. Below her was a churning brown ocean.
Had the pigeons gotten mixed up and flown out to sea?
No. There! Across the other river was a solid expanse of trees.
“The woods!” Coo cried with relief. “Made it, us!”
Coo was surprised to see a big bridge and some tall buildings far away, beyond the woods. But there were so many trees directly in front of her, she was sure they had reached the wild forests of the north.
“Too close, this,” said Roohoo. “Can’t be north.”
“Know how, you?” said New Tiktik. “Left the city ever, you?”
Roohoo fell silent, and Coo was relieved.
“Getting tired, us,” said Ka, letting go of Coo’s pant leg. “Land now!”
“Land where, us?” asked Pook as the trees grew larger, his beak muffled by Coo’s hood. “Sleepy, me.”
The pigeons had been switching off, with some of the unfamiliar flocks even helping to carry her, but all were reaching exhaustion.
“Anywhere!” said Coo. “Find a good spot, you!”
The trees were dense and brown and gray. Patchy snow soon appeared underneath them.
It was going to be cold at night, Coo realized with a sudden sinking feeling. There were no dovecotes in the woods, just like there were no dumpsters.
What if another blizzard came?
Why hadn’t she thought any of this through?
“There!” Coo said shakily, pointing to a particularly dense patch of trees above a cliff.
Maybe she could build a small shelter with branches. She wished Aggie was here to help.
It was going to be hard being the only human again. But everything was up to her now—she had to try to protect the pigeons and be their leader.
“Land now!” cried Coo.
“Not north, this,” muttered Roohoo, somewhere to Coo’s left. “Right beside city, this.” But everyone ignored him.
“Careful, all!” said Burr, peering out Coo’s jacket. “Slow, all!”
But the pigeons were too tired to be careful and slow. Packed so close together and unfamiliar with judging trees, they bounced and staggered toward the ground.
Five birds lost their grip on Coo’s pants, and she plunged twenty feet in two seconds.
Exhausted, more birds let go. Coo sank again, too shocked to even breathe. The tall, tangled arms of the trees were getting closer and closer. They looked like horribly spiked forks pointed straight at her.
“Crash, us!” Burr shrieked. “Jump, Coo!”
Then there were no birds holding her.
Coo wasn’t flying.
She was falling.
Chapter Twenty-Six
No Dumpsters in the Woods
Coo lay blinking in a knot of branches high off the ground.
The first thing she noticed was how cold she was. Her fingers burned like she was back on the roof in a winter storm. Her cheeks were raw.
Next came the pain. Sudden and searing. Her arms, her back, her head. But worst of all was her right leg. She couldn’t move it.
There were pigeons everywhere, more than she had ever seen in one place in her life. They covered every tree and what little she could see of the ground ominously far below.
Coo was astounded. She had never dreamed so many flocks would really follow her. Thousands and thousands of birds—maybe more—were going to be safe.
“Did it, me,” Coo whispered to herself.
It quickly became apparent, though, that all of those birds wanted to talk to her.
And after their long and tiring flight, they had one thing on their minds.
“Food, where?”
“Hungry, us.”
“Bagels?”
“Donuts?”
“Seed?”
“Find food, you!”
“Always have food, humans!”
Some of the chattering pigeons were from her own flock, but most were not. For the first time, pigeon was a loud language. A roar filled Coo’s ears.
“Quiet, all!” she pleaded. Moving her mouth hurt. “Thinking, me!”
Everything hurt. Her head felt like a cracked egg.
Where was
Burr?
Hands shaking, hardly daring to breath, she tried to unzip her jacket.
“Finally!” Burr’s voice rang out, muffled but bright, and Coo felt him wiggle his way toward the opening of her coat. “Stuck, me.”
Burr wasn’t hurt.
But Coo was.
Hurt, stuck, and hungry, too.
“Berries? Grow on bushes, them,” she said weakly to New Tiktik, who sat near her head asking about the closest dumpster. Coo realized with a sudden lurch that in the wintertime, berries were probably only at the supermarket.
“No food, here,” said Ka. “Your idea, Roohoo. Bad idea.”
Roohoo glowered on a branch above Coo, a sullen ball of feathers.
“Thought Coo had a plan, me,” he grumbled. “Wrong, me. Not so special now, Coo. And not north, this!”
“Always special, Coo is,” Burr said sharply. “Saved pigeons from poison. Helped us, her. Trying her best.”
“Right, Burr is,” said New Tiktik. “Help us now, Coo! Food, where?”
Coo’s own stomach rumbled. Her triumphant joy had rushed away like a plastic bag caught in the wind.
What in the bare winter woods could thousands of hungry pigeons and one human girl possibly eat?
“Tree bark?” Coo suggested hopefully.
“Gives stomachache, tree bark,” said Ka.
“Roots?”
The pigeons looked at her blankly.
“Too scared to think earlier,” Coo mumbled. “Bad idea, this. Made a mistake, me.”
Everything had happened much too fast. Back on the roof, with the police and Lucia and the poisoners all in pursuit, flying away had seemed like the only option— the best chance to save the birds and Tully, too.
But what kind of solution was this? No food, no shelter, and frigid cold.
“Hungry, me,” whined Pook. “Need food now, me.”
“Food soon,” said Coo. “Find some, me. Somehow.”
She tried to haul herself up and out of the branches, but the pain in her leg made it impossible to move.
“Fix it, me,” Coo said, wincing. “On my way.” Despite the pain, despite the way things seemed to be turning out, she had to try.
“Hurt, Coo is,” Burr said. “Worried for her, me.”