Where she saw the note, written on the back of a Bargain Blaster receipt. The printing was minuscule, wasting not an inch of paper or drop of ink.
Loah,
No help for it this time. Will call. Do not use stove or knives.
Miss R.
Loah clutched Theo’s blanket. What could Miss Rinker mean? Had Theo gotten sicker? Had he fallen again? Could those red drops on the floor be what they looked like, no please no? Miss Rinker’s driving was scary enough on a clear, calm day. But in this storm! Loah read the note again and saw how Miss Rinker’s normally firm handwriting wobbled. Had she been… afraid?
Of the many things Miss Rinker scorned, fear topped the list. Thunderstorms, centipedes, clowns, garden snakes, sirens, basements, mean teachers, and midnight intruders didn’t bother her, and over the years she’d soothed Loah’s fears on all these things and many more.
If Miss Rinker was afraid, it was serious.
One of the opera singers gave a piercing scream. Loah snapped the radio off.
She tried to think. Had they gone to a doctor? But which one? Certainly not her pediatrician, the only doctor she knew. The hospital maybe. There was one on the far side of town. She could call there and ask.
But Loah hated talking on the phone, especially to strangers and most especially to strangers who might tell her bad news. She stared out the window. A beetle landed, clung to the screen for a desperate moment, and was blown away.
She should never have left them. She should have disobeyed Miss Rinker and stayed home. Staying home was always the best course of action! This proved it. She would have been here to help. She’d be with them now, wherever they were. Instead she was alone, with no idea what to do.
Thunder clapped the house between iron hands.
Loah curled up in Theo’s E-Z Boy and pulled his wild-ponies blanket over her head. She tucked her knees under her chin and hugged them close.
Inside an egg, it is always peaceful. The baby bird is never lonesome, never scared or confused. Outside, the wind can howl and the rain lash, but inside its shell, the chick has nothing to worry about. Tucked deep in the nest, it hears its parent’s heart beat out the message, Fear not. While I have you beneath my wing, nothing will ever hurt you.
The phone rang. Loah tossed the blanket aside.
“Hello?”
“Loah?” Miss Rinker’s voice was as faint as if she were calling from another galaxy.
“Miss Rinker!”
For a long moment, the two of them just breathed. In out, in out.
“I’m at the hospital. My brother had another fall,” Miss Rinker whispered as if revealing a shameful secret. “I did what I could, but… it seems he needed stitches.”
Relief surged through Loah. Stitches were terrible, but not life-threatening.
“Then he’ll be all right. You’ll be home soon.”
A pause.
“He’s not coming home. I demanded an explanation, and they said, Why don’t you sit down and have a nice cup of tea. Tea! Do they think I’m sick? I drink coffee and I drink it black. Do you know what one doctor called me?”
“What?”
“Dear! Calm yourself, dear, she said. As if I were a blubbering child.”
Loah pictured Miss Rinker in a hospital corridor, wearing her cactus sweater and goose-feather hat. When she was upset, Miss Rinker had a habit of pounding her fist on whatever was in the vicinity. Loah prayed it wouldn’t be a nurse or doctor. She tried to think of something soothing to say.
“I’m sure it will be all right. Theo will rest, and then—”
“His heart leaks.”
What could she mean? Theo had the most dependable, sturdy heart of anyone Loah knew.
“From the scarlet fever he had in the orphanage.” Miss Rinker made a sound like a plugged-up drain. Glup. “I remember it like it was yesterday. They took him to the infirmary, and I was forbidden to visit. He was only four years old. He cried and held out his little arms to me as they took him away.”
Loah picked up Theo’s blanket again. She wrapped it around herself.
“I marched into that infirmary, and when they tried to throw me out I bit them. More than once, I’m proud to say. I had all my own teeth then. You’d better believe they let me stay.”
“Please don’t bite anyone, Miss Rinker.”
“You hate thunderstorms. You’ll need your supper. I’ll be home as soon as I can.”
“You can’t leave Theo all alone.” Loah saw him in a glacial white hospital bed, attached to beeping machines, snaking wires, evil tubes. Strangers came and went, and nothing, nothing whatsoever was familiar. Theo was a homebody, just like her. The hospital would be his worst nightmare. “You have to stay.”
“But…” Miss Rinker’s voice faltered. “What about you? Even I can’t be in two places at once.”
Thinking of Theo in the hospital was painful enough. Thinking of him there all alone was unbearable.
“Don’t leave him, Miss Rinker. You’ve always been by his side. He needs you.”
“Do not tell me what…” Miss Rinker’s voice trailed off in confusion.
“I’ll be all right,” Loah said. “I can take care of myself till you get back. Miss Rinker?”
Miss Rinker was speaking to someone else. “Who else would I be?” she demanded. “Who are you is the question?”
Loah waited, watching the wind thrash the tree branches. Imagine being a wild creature fending for yourself against that wind and wet. The birds had to. Thank goodness she had a house. Thank goodness her natural habitat was safe and dry and not wild. Thank goodness—
Miss Rinker was back. “The doctors have all ganged up and want to talk to me.”
“Do whatever they say, okay?”
“Make yourself a sandwich for supper. Do not touch the stove! Do your ocular exercises and watch that silly show of yours, Lonely Family—”
“One and Only Family.”
“Loah Londonderry!” Miss Rinker suddenly sounded as if she was being torn in half. Coming apart at the seams. “Are you sure you can manage till I get home? It could be very late.”
Loah leaned against the table. She was not sure. Not sure at all. In its bowl, her fish blew a stream of silvery bubbles and flicked its tail. It swam close to the glass as if trying to send her a silent, fishy message.
“Miss Rinker, I’m not alone. I have my pet fish, remember? Thanks to you and Theo. It will keep me company.” She could hear another voice, low and urgent, in the background. “Talk to the doctors. Don’t worry about me. And please—please give Theo my love. Tell him I bought him a surprise.”
“I’ll be home as soon as I can.”
Loah set down the phone. She looked around the empty kitchen. Up till this moment in her life, she’d always assumed that empty was empty. Now she understood: There were degrees. There was such a thing as very empty.
Carefully, she folded Theo’s blanket and set it on his lounger. She wet a paper towel, squinched her eyes, and scrubbed the red splotches off the floor. Upstairs, she changed out of her damp shorts and T-shirt, which smelled like grass and baby goat. She climbed the steps to the attic, where the doors to Theo’s and Miss Rinker’s rooms stood open. They were neat and sparse, what Loah imagined rooms in an orphanage would look like. At the sight of the empty beds, her heart faltered. She set out buckets to catch the leaks, then went back downstairs to close windows and mop wet sills. In the library, she sank into the chair at her mother’s desk where, in the midst of the feathery, papery, eggshell-y mess, the phone sat silent.
Very silent.
Are you an orphan?
When is she coming back?
Isn’t that dangerous?
The phone rang. Loah grabbed it.
“Hello?”
An earnest man offered to waterproof her basement (which did, in fact, need it). He could beat anyone else’s price and was prepared to offer a money-back, once-in-a-lifetime guarantee. When Loah didn’t reply, he took it as encouragement
. He spoke reassuringly about trenches and hydraulic cement. Any basement, the man promised, could be made shipshape-tight. Even basements that flooded badly could be saved and restored.
Who knew a stranger could be so comforting? When, at last, he gave up and said goodbye, Loah missed him.
Her stomach growled, reminding her she hadn’t eaten since breakfast, but when she went to the kitchen to make a sandwich, she discovered they were out of bread. Rummaging in the cupboard, she found a can of pea soup. Miss Rinker couldn’t see her, but Loah, who always found comfort in being obedient, didn’t turn on the stove. She ate the congealed soup cold from the can, then locked the doors, fetched the fishbowl from the kitchen, and switched off the stag-head chandelier. Slowly (remember how tired she already was, and that she’d ridden her bike through a storm, and that athletic was the last word to describe her), she climbed the stairs to her room, where she set her fish on her bedside table next to the photo of her and Mama. She did her ocular exercises, climbed into bed, and watched One and Only Family on her laptop. Loah waited for the show to make her feel content and drowsy, as if she’d eaten a dozen sugar cookies. Instead, the longer she watched, the more forlorn she felt, as if she had her nose pressed to a bakery window full of treats she’d never be allowed to taste.
Outside, something large crashed to the ground. Down the end of the hall, from behind the turret door, came an echoing thunk.
Loah pulled the covers up. The wind blew. The walls creaked. The windows rattled. As the hours went by and Miss Rinker did not return, she grew more and more anxious. Though her window was shut, she heard, undaunted by the storm, the shivery call of a screech owl. This bird is only nine inches tall, with sweet little tufts that almost look like ears. If you saw it in the light of day, it might remind you of a kitten. Yet few things are more blood-chilling than its long, tremulous wail. If you’ve ever watched a horror movie, or gone to a Halloween haunted house, you’d recognize that ghostly sound.
A lullaby, her mother called it.
Every night of her life, Loah had slept with Rinkers overhead. They’d watched over her like beaky, scraggy storks.
Tonight she lay in bed, covers to her chin, with no one between her and the endless dark sky.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Here is how many birds sleep: They find a nice thicket, a cozy hole in a tree, or a branch where they can snuggle close to a trunk still warm from the sun. They fluff their feathers, tuck their beaks, pull one leg up to their soft bellies, and good night.
No one knows for sure if they dream.
Just before dawn, they wake. And here is another thing that no one, even devoted ornithologists like Dr. Londonderry, understands for sure: why they immediately begin to sing as if their lives depend on it.
Are they so thrilled it’s a new day? Are they letting their friends (and enemies) know they’ve survived another long, perilous night? Scientists agree that birdsong is one of the most complex and glorious phenomena in all of nature. Yet how birds acquire it, and why, and what this remarkable skill might reveal about communication in general—much of this remains uncertain.
The bird brain holds many mysteries.
When Loah opened her eyes the next morning, sunlight streamed through her tall, cracked windows. She lay still, straining her ears for sounds of life inside the house, but all she heard was the familiar sighs and murmurs of the old house itself.
Maybe you’ve had the experience of suspecting, in a dark corner of your brain, something you really, truly wish wasn’t so. Maybe you’ve done what Loah did now, which was to put off discovering the truth as long as possible, as if that might somehow change the truth, which is of course impossible.
The human brain holds many mysteries, too.
Slowly she climbed out of bed. She pushed open her windows and let the morning birdsong pour in. The ground was soft from the rain, and the worm-eaters bustled about. An American robin cocked its head, listened to the ground, then zap—the poor worm was a goner.
Loah tried to brush her hair, which bristled with seeds and pods from chasing Aquaman through the meadow. Happily, her fish, like the birds, had survived another night. It even looked a little frisky. She performed her ocular exercises, and then, having run out of ways to stall, she carefully carried the fishbowl down to the kitchen, where, just as she had feared, the two E-Z Boys stood empty. Very.
The phone rang. Miss Rinker, she thought, and dived to pick it up. When she saw the number displayed, her heart cartwheeled.
“Mama!”
“Sweetie! My sweet sweet sweetie!”
Never, ever had Loah been happier to hear her mother’s voice, and that was saying something. “I’ve been waiting and waiting for you to call. Where are you?”
“Approximately five kilometers northwest of Kunaat.” Dr. Londonderry gave the GPS coordinates, which Loah memorized. “I’m so sorry to be out of touch. The weather is a catastrophe. Windy, cloudy, and horribly, unnaturally warm. My jeep got stuck in mud! If a couple of kindly hunters hadn’t come by, I’m not sure—”
“But you’re all right?”
“I’ve hit some unexpected rough patches, and I’m a bit low on rations, and keeping this phone charged is nearly impossible with the cloud cover. But that’s all in a day’s work. The land, though! The terrain this far west is worse than I knew. The satellite images can’t begin to tell the full story. Yesterday I saw a herd of musk oxen that were nothing but skin and bones.” Her mother’s voice caught. “They broke my heart. For a moment, I lost hope.”
Loah’s own heart twisted. Musk oxen were adorable, shaggy creatures with long, mournful faces. Huge as they were, they lived on moss, lichen, and Arctic flowers.
“But then,” said Mama. “Then! Oh sweetie—my hunch was right. She’s come to the coast to nest.”
Loah fell into her mother’s chair. “You saw her?”
“I heard her call again—unfortunately, it was too windy to record. But with the binocs I caught another unmistakable glimpse of her in flight. What an amazing girl she is—fooled us all! Hundreds of other species driven into extinction, over a quarter of existing species threatened with extinction—but our girl! She’s survived! And she did it quietly, without any of us scientists ever noticing.”
Loah leaned back as her mother launched into a description of the loah bird’s habits. Loah the human had heard it all before—how the bird lived on insects and seeds, how it migrated in winter but returned to the tundra to breed, how the female, with the patch of gold on her wings, was more colorful than the male, which was unusual. She could have recited it all by heart, but she was so befuddled, and her mother so excited, that she didn’t interrupt. The loah bird, her mother went on, laid her eggs on the rocky shore. The fate of those two or three eggs was always dicey but never more so than now, what with the violent, unpredictable storms, the rising seas, the competition for dwindling food supplies, and the increase in predators.
“The red fox has migrated here for the first time—did I tell you that, sweetie? The temperature has risen enough for it to live here and now it will compete with the Arctic fox for…” Her mother paused. “Loah? Are you there?”
“Yes, Mama.”
“The bad news is, I haven’t seen any sign of the male. I’m hoping to spy him when I make it to the coast. Normally she incubates, while he’s the food source for her and the chicks.… I really hope nothing’s happened to him.”
In the silence Loah heard the gusting wind.
“Mama…”
“You understand how crucial it is for me to stay, don’t you? To find our loah and, if there really are eggs, to protect them till they hatch. It’s all too possible these are the last ones! Think what a tremendous loss that would be. Our bird, but so much more as well. The ties between living organisms are so intricate and dependent—pull one tiny thread of the tapestry, and the whole thing can unravel. If I actually document a sighting, I could get funding to do the work I’ve always… Oh sweetie! I’m sorry. The last th
ing you need is a lecture. And my battery is running low again. Tell me quick-quick: How are you? Fine, right? No school! Home every day, the way you like. Knitting, reading, everything quiet and lovely…”
“The thing is—Theo had a fall. He needed stitches.”
“What?” Her mother gasped. “Oh no! Miss Rinker actually went to a doctor? Put her on, sweetie. Hurry, before my phone dies.”
“But she’s—” Gone. The word was nearly out before Loah swallowed it back.
“What? Miss Rinker’s what?”
“Miss Rinker, she’s…” Loah flattened her palm on the tabletop. “She’s Miss Rinker.”
“Ha.” Her mother’s laugh was uncertain. “I suppose that’s true, no matter what. She’s probably mercilessly scolding Theo while taking tender care of him.”
“Probably.”
Should she tell her mother about Theo’s heart? About being left here alone? Yes she should. No she shouldn’t. Mama would get so upset, she’d probably decide to come home, and what was the good in that? It would take her at least two days to get here, and by then, for sure, Theo and Miss Rinker would be back. Meanwhile, her mother—the planet, really—would lose the chance, possibly the last chance ever, to find and save the loah.
“Loah?”
She pictured a tiny egg lying on the rough, rocky shore. Its mother tried to protect it, but the waves crashed. The wind howled. Predators crept close. Inside, the baby bird had no idea of the danger it was in, no idea how scary the world outside was. Loah’s heart tilted. How could she ask Mama to abandon the egg and its mother?
“I miss you so much,” Mama was saying. “You’re the first thing I think of every morning and the last thing—”
A hollow, hungry howl made Loah catch her breath. “What was that? It sounds like a wolf pack!”
The Most Perfect Thing in the Universe Page 6