Magpie

Today he hears their harsh clacking. There they are in the cherry tree, five or six of them, ying-yang, bold and brash. Nest robbers, they may be but he likes their brilliant white breasts, their glossy tails and wings. Evil birds, some say. He knows it’s not all black and white.

He holds a cup and, as he wipes it with the towel, their hocus-pocus noise takes him back to … that time he heard a thud on the window. There on the glass was the shape of a bird like a Fox-Talbot negative – vague, ghostly, wings and all. He shut the cat away then prowled into the yard. Stark against the earth lay the bird. He thought it had died but it quickened in his hands.

The other birds sensed peril. One swooped to the shed, a couple stayed in the tree. There was one swaying on the aerial. They all bobbed and twitched. Panicked. Chattered. Squawked.

“Look at that green and blue glimmering in its tail,” his sister said. He pointed out the cruel dark bill, the way they frighten smaller birds, their fascination with shiny stuff. He reminded her how they often taunted Patches, perching and cackling just out of the cat’s reach.

“That’s shows how clever they are,” she said.

They contained the stunned bird in a box she found then placed it in the shed, proud to think they were the bird’s protectors.

“It could become some kind of familiar,” she said. “You know, looking after us.”

The following morning, when she went to the shed, she found the bird had gone. He told her he’d found it on the floor of the shed pecking at crumbs and dust.

“I thought it best to let her go,” he said, “and she flew into the tree. The others joined her and they all scrammed.”

“Why did you do that without me?”

“She might not have recovered,” he said. “I didn’t want you to see her … you know … dead.”

Today he stands alone, watching the antics of the magpies in the tree. He hears their bold, aggressive chatter. He shrugs and salutes them. Then, as he returns to his domestic task, a vision of her magpie appears in his mind’s eye and, beyond that, some blurred movement in the shed.

Andy Larter

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