Birds of Summer

by Zilpha Keatley Snyder

  On the path, beneath the branches of the tall trees, it was very dark in spite of the full moon; but when she reached the road, she switched off the flashlight and went on running. She ran for a long way—up the steep road, at times scrambling up shortcuts between the frequent switchbacks. At last sharp cramps in her legs and a searing pain in her chest forced her to stop. She dropped to her knees and crumped against the embankment. It wasn’t until the pain had subsided and her ears were no longer deafened by the thunder of her heart and the rasp of her breath that she began to listen—and to think.

  Just ahead the road was leveling out, which meant she was almost to the wide plateau where the Fishers lived. She listened, trying to hold her breath, but there was no sound except for the faint rustle of a brisk ocean wind in the surrounding pine trees. The road ahead, which she had walked many times in the days when the McIntyres were welcome visitors, was a narrow canyon between tall trees and thick underbrush. And at the end of the road there would be—what? The dog-murdering Creep, Neanderthal Bart, slimy little Jude, dangerous watchdogs, and whatever was behind all the mysterious changes of the past months. If she got up and went on, she would walk alone and in the dark into the midst of whatever it was.

  It was not something she had planned on when she dashed out of the trailer in pursuit of Sparrow. If she had thought at all, it must have been that she would catch up with Sparrow while she was still on the road. But she hadn’t, and now she would have to decide what to do next. Whether to give up and go home—or to keep on going.

  A sane, reasonable-sounding voice in her mind argued against it. “Go back,” it said. “She probably isn’t here anyway. She probably curled up and went to sleep somewhere in the trailer, the way she does, and just didn’t hear you calling. Or maybe she turned off the road to go to that secret tree stump of hers and Marina’s, and if you start back maybe you’ll find her on her way home.” But there was another part of her, the stubborn, hardheaded part that had always made her swim against the current, that answered the reasonable voice with a firm, “No.” Nothing else just “No.” She said it out loud—stood up—and started on up the road.

  The gate was new. Fastened with a heavy chain and padlock, it crossed the road just as it emerged from the heavily wooded hillside and entered the clearing. Moving as quietly as she could on the graveled surface, Summer crept forward until she could peer between the crossbars. At first, in the uncertain soft-edged moonlight, everything looked just as it always had. Ahead of her was the big house, an enormous log cabin with a wide stone chimney and deep veranda. A light was on in the living room, but no one was visible through the small-paned windows. Just to the right was the grape arbor and the large gazebo that Galya called the summer house, and farther back, behind the arbor, Summer could see the dim outline of the smokehouse and beyond that the small cabin that had belonged to the grandfather. The smokehouse was dark, but a light shone in the window of the old cabin.

  Farther to the right were the enormous greenhouses—first the two familiar old ones and, beyond them, dimly seen in the distance, what seemed to be at least two more, where the raised beds of the summer gardens had been before. A high gate and new greenhouses, but nothing else. No sign of patrolling dogs or humans. Cautiously, Summer climbed to the top of the gate, and then down the other side.

  She had just reached the ground when a sudden sharp noise made her drop down and cower against the gatepost, trying vainly to compress herself into its narrow shadow. The front door of the house opened, and a long swath of golden light shot out across the yard. In the middle of that pathway of light lay an elongated human shadow. Summer raised her head and turned slowly and carefully until she was able to see the person to whom the shadow belonged. It was Oriole.

  Carrying what seemed to be a large tray, Oriole crossed the veranda, descended the steps and took the path that led past the arbor toward the far side of the clearing and Dyedushka’s cabin. Still crouching, Summer watched until she reached the cabin and disappeared inside. Seeing Oriole made Summer feel a little less frightened. Oriole wouldn’t be calmly carrying a tray if Sparrow had been chewed up by dogs or shot by an itchy-fingered guard. There was even the possibility that the tray was for Sparrow—a bedtime snack before she was taken back to the trailer.

  A split second later and Summer would have been in the midst of the yard at the very moment when the man and dog came out of the house. As it was, she had taken only a step or two when she heard the front door open again. There was time to jump back into the shadow of the gate before the huge man called Bart and an enormous doberman came down the steps and headed across the yard.

  Fright was a hot hand squeezing her throat. Cowering on the ground, certain that at any moment the dog would get her scent and race toward her, she tried to make herself leap up and climb the gate. But she couldn’t move—and the dog kept on going in the direction of the greenhouses, tugging eagerly at his leash. When they reached the first greenhouse, Bart opened the door, and he and the dog went inside. Summer got shakily to her feet.

  This time she turned sharply to the left, keeping in the shadows of the trees that edged the cleared land. She would circle around the house until she came to the far side of the clearing and the old cabin, keeping the big house between herself and the greenhouses—and keeping the wind in her face, the strong wind that had undoubtedly saved her already by blowing her scent away from the doberman. She had gone several yards, moving silently on the carpet of pine needles, when she stopped again, paralyzed by a sudden sound. A rapping noise, not loud but very near. It seemed to come from the direction of the house. Shrinking back into the deeper shadows below the trees, Summer listened and watched.

  The house was not far away, but the windows in this rear wall were dark and silent. The first, Summer knew, opened on the room that had been Marina’s, and the next two were in the boys’ bedrooms. The rooms were dark—empty or occupied by sleepers; but the noise went on. “Rap, rap, rap,”—a pause, and then the same thing again. A soft persistent knocking. Gradually curiosity got the better of fear, and Summer moved forward, following the sound, until she could see that a blurred shape, which had seemed to be only a part of a large camellia bush, was actually something separate. Separate and alive and dressed in a flannel nightgown—Sparrow!

  “Sparrow,” Summer whispered, and the small, shadowy figure below Marina’s window froze into immobility. But then, as Summer moved cautiously forward, there was a sharp gasp, a flurry of motion and Sparrow’s arms were wrapped tightly around her waist.

  “Oh, Summer. I’m so glad you’re here. Marina came again and told me to come so I did, but she won’t come to her window and I was so frightened.”

  “Shh!” Summer put her hand over Sparrow’s mouth. “Keep your voice down.” She unwrapped Sparrow’s arms, and grasping her firmly by her wrist, she headed back for the shelter of the trees. But Sparrow resisted.

  “No. No. Knock on the window first. On the glass. I couldn’t reach the glass. I want to see Marina.”

  “Marina’s in Lodi.”

  “No. No, she’s not. She’s here. I know she’s here.” Sparrow’s voice was getting louder again, and she struggled fiercely, digging in her heels and trying to wrench her wrist out of Summer’s grasp. Her voice had taken on the high-pitched wail that usually preceded a fit of hysterical crying. In frightened desperation, Summer capitulated.

  “Okay. Okay,” she whispered. “We’ll look. We’ll look to see if Marina’s in her room. Now please, be still. Okay.”

  Sparrow gulped and nodded. Clutching Summer’s hand, she pulled her back toward Marina’s window. Summer held back, moving slowly while she wondered desperately what she was going to do. Knocking on the glass was out. With Marina away, someone else was probably using her room, possibly one of Angelo’s thugs. But somehow Sparrow had to be convinced.

  Standing below the window, the solution came to her. “I’ll look,” she said. She probably couldn’t see anything at all in the dark room, but s
he’d pretend to, and possibly Sparrow would be satisfied. She put one foot in the crevice between two logs, grasped the window sill and pulled herself up until her face was level with the pane.

  But she did see something. A dim light was coming from down low near the floor—a night light. Marina had always been afraid to sleep in a dark room. Summer’s eyes moved to the left, to where Marina’s bed was barely discernible: a white spread folded at the foot, a dark blanket and a small, dark head on the pillow. Summer was still staring in startled disbelief when the window in the next room went up with a noisy bang. Sparrow shrieked; and not far away, the dog began to bark.

  “Ssst,” a voice whispered. “Come here. Quick.” Summer looked up from where she crouched, clutching Sparrow, between the cabin’s foundation and the camellia bush. The upper half of a body was protruding from the next window, the arms motioning wildly. “Summer. Come here.” It wasn’t until he said her name that she recognized the voice as Nicky’s.

  She didn’t stop to argue. Pulling Sparrow to her feet, she dragged her toward Nicky’s window by the back of her nightgown. “Sparrow’s here, too,” she whispered.

  “Oh my, God,” Nicky said. “Lift her up here. Hurry.”

  Summer hurried, and Sparrow, who had been flailing around wildly in terror, making herself as hard to hang onto as a flopping fish, finally realized what was happening and held up her arms. As soon as she disappeared inside the room, Nicky was back in the window. Taking his hands, Summer climbed the log wall like a ladder.

  A moment later the dog was under the window, barking frantically. The narrow beam of a flashlight slashed across the room, and a loud voice growled, “Hey kid. What’s going on in there.”

  “Get down against the wall,” Nicky whispered before he leaned out the window. “Shut up,” he yelled. “Shut him up.” There was a harsh command, a yelp, and the dog was quiet.

  “It’s raccoons again,” Nicky said.

  “Raccoons? Where?”

  “Right down there. I threw some apple cores out the window, and a few minutes ago a couple of raccoons were right down there fighting over them—until old Adolph got all excited. I thought you said you trained him not to bark at raccoons anymore.”

  It worked. There were some muttered words, the rattle of a jerked leash, another yelp, and everything was quiet. Summer, who’d been lying face down against the wall, pushed herself to a sitting position in time to see Nicky getting into his jeans. Then he came back and sat down crosslegged on the floor. “Well, well,” he said. “You two taking up narcing?”

  9

  “NICKY. WHAT ON EARTH’S going—” Summer said, before Nicky stopped her with an urgent “Shhh!” He got quickly to his feet and tiptoed to the door. His ear to the crack, he listened for several seconds and then came back. As he crouched down beside her, the bright moonlight from the open window fell directly on his face, and suddenly she realized that he wasn’t nearly as calm as he’d sounded. Either his cool-sounding crack about narcing had been pure bluff, or else the reaction hadn’t set in until the crisis was past and Bart and the dog had gone. But now fear glittered in his eyes and twitched at his mouth.

  “Listen,” he whispered so softly she could scarcely hear. “We’ve got to get you out of here right away. As soon as Bart finishes his patrol. We’ll have to hurry.” When Sparrow started to whisper something about Marina, he reached over and put his hand across her mouth. “No,” he said firmly. “Be still.” And she was.

  He went back then and listened at the door for what seemed a very long time. From where she was crouching under the window with Sparrow huddled against her, Summer could hear the sound of distant voices, footsteps and finally the heavy slam of a door. She waited, holding back her own fear by concentrating on Sparrow, who was shivering violently and now and then sobbing softly under her breath. At last Nicky left the door and moved silently across the room. He picked up a jacket and was shrugging into it when he suddenly stopped, took it off and put it on Sparrow. Then he opened the window very slowly and quietly. It wasn’t until he was sitting on the sill that he whispered, “Now. Let’s go. Hand Sparrow down to me.”

  Warning her again to be quiet, Summer boosted Sparrow into the window and then down to Nicky’s waiting arms. Then she climbed down herself. Nicky was moving away, motioning for them to follow. He led the way toward the trees, and she hurried after him, dragging a stumbling, sobbing Sparrow, her ears so full of the memory of the dog’s roaring bark that several times she startled, momentarily convinced that it had begun again.

  At the edge of the clearing, Nicky turned to the right, away from the gate. Summer hesitated, wondering what he thought he was doing, until she remembered the spring path. A narrow passageway hacked out of the dense undergrowth, it led first to an artesian spring and then, after many windings, finally connected farther down the hill with the Fisher road. It was one way home, but a much longer, more roundabout way. She caught up with Nicky and grabbed his arm.

  “Why can’t we go by the road?” she asked.

  “The dog. He’ll be outside now. Tied near the summerhouse. They always leave him there after the last patrol. He’d hear you climb the gate.”

  It was reason enough. Summer followed without further argument. A few yards down the narrow pathway, Nicky stopped and asked for the flashlight. Shining the light on the ground ahead of him, he went forward very carefully, a step at a time. “There it is,” he said. “See the wire? Don’t touch it. It sets off an alarm.” A thin wire, almost invisible in the darkness, stretched across the path, an inch or two off the ground.

  When Sparrow and Summer had safely crossed the wire, Nicky handed Summer the flashlight and said, “I’m going back now. You’ll be all right from here.”

  “Nicky.” Summer was feeling a lot less frightened now and a lot more curious. She shone the light right in his face and said, “I want to know what’s going on. It’s pot, isn’t it?”

  Nicky looked warningly at Sparrow. “No. That is … I’ll tell you tomorrow.”

  “I’m working tomorrow.”

  “At Pardell’s?”

  “Yes. At Pardell’s.”

  After a moment’s hesitation Nicky seemed to come to a decision. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said and disappeared back down the trail.

  It was at least an hour later that Summer and an exhausted, whimpering Sparrow climbed into bed. Only about five hours afterwards, they got up and left for Alvarro Bay. Sometime during those five hours Oriole had come home and gone to bed. Summer didn’t expect that she would get up to see them off—and she didn’t. So there was plenty of time on the trip into Alvarro Bay to impress Sparrow with the necessity of keeping quiet about what had happened. She did a thorough job of it, making sure that the list of people Sparrow was not to tell included everyone she might possibly meet in the course of the day—with Sparrow one had to be explicit. In front of the school she issued a final warning that left Sparrow wide-eyed and sober and then went on to the Pardells’. The rest of the morning was routine until, just before twelve noon, when Nicky showed up at the Pardells’ front door.

  Summer was startled. For a lot of reasons, she hadn’t thought he would keep his word. And it had never occurred to her that he might show up at the Pardells’.

  “Hi,” he said. “Want to go down to The Pelican for a sandwich?”

  Summer looked toward the living room where Meg was conducting her last lesson before lunch. “I have to finish fixing Mrs. Pardell’s lunch, and then—” She stopped. If she hadn’t needed to know so badly, she might have said no, simply from long established habit. “Okay,” she said, instead. “Wait just a minute.”

  It was past twelve when she finished putting Meg’s lunch on the table. In the living room the same phrase of mutilated melody was being repeated for the umpteenth time. Summer eased into the room to a spot just inside Meg’s range of vision.

  “Yes?” She looked surprised. The passage of time always surprised Meg, particularly when she was teaching
or playing. “Time’s up, already? Thank you, Summer. I guess that’s it ’til next week, Bobby.” Bobby, about ten years old and a not particularly enthusiastic musician, promptly disappeared. Meg listened to a brief explanation about an invitation to lunch at The Pelican, approved thoroughly, and a few minutes later Summer was walking down Mill Street with Nicky.

  It was a typical summer day. The village was crawling with typical tourists. But there was nothing typical about Nicky’s behavior. Walking quickly with his hands stuffed into his pockets, he kept his eyes firmly on the ground, and for several minutes said nothing at all.

  “Marina’s at home, isn’t she,” Summer said finally.

  Nicky looked up frowning. “Did you tell Sparrow?” When she shook her head, he sighed with relief. “She’d give it away for sure.”

  “I know.”

  “Look. It will be hard to talk at The Pelican. I’ll get some sandwiches and meet you down by the old pier. Okay.” It was the kind of suggestion that Nicky had made and Summer had turned down dozens of times in the last couple of years; but this time his motives appeared to be different. And a little later, when he led the way to a secluded spot behind a sand dune, Summer followed. Although she could only guess at what he was going to say, she was quite certain that this time when he said he wanted to talk, talk was what he had in mind.

  But what Nicky had to say didn’t come easily. Sitting crosslegged in the sand behind the sloping dune at the foot of the bluff, Summer nibbled on her egg salad sandwich, waiting for him to begin. For a long time he simply sat, hunched over, staring down at his sandwich, not talking or eating—or making any attempt to fool around. Nicky—whose various appetites were usually so up front. Once or twice he looked up briefly and shrugged with an unhappy smile that reminded Summer of the time, years before, when somebody stole his first bicycle. She reached out suddenly and squeezed his hand. His smile wobbled, he squeezed back and started talking.