Nightbird

by Alice Hoffman

  On the evening of July 31, 1775, all able-bodied young men left Sidwell to fight the British. The information was common knowledge; it was all written up in the pamphlet tourists were given when they visited Sidwell. But there was more that no one knew. After all the men had gathered, one was missing: Lowell Fowler.

  When the other men in town went to search for him, they found him walking in the woods on his way to meet Aggie Early. He told them he couldn’t go to Concord, even though he was a patriot. He explained the next day was to be his wedding day and a man couldn’t miss that, even for a war against the king. But the men of Sidwell wouldn’t listen. They insisted that it was every patriot’s duty to go to fight, even the ones in love. The war wouldn’t wait and that was that.

  They took him without a minute to say good-bye.

  That was the minute that changed his fate and ours.

  Lowell proved his courage, saving many of his friends during his year in service, including several citizens of Sidwell, one of them a relative of Miss Larch’s.

  “Think of that! I wouldn’t exist without him and neither would Ian!” Miss Larch said. “You’d be sitting here talking to an empty chair. As a matter of fact, a lot of us wouldn’t be here if not for Lowell Fowler!”

  “Could he have written any letter back home?”

  “Likely not. The mail and everything else had been disrupted. War is war, and letters, even if written, are easily misplaced.”

  After the war Lowell finally made his way home. By then six years had passed.

  “What happened then?”

  Miss Larch was scanning the marriage and birth records. “He married a local girl and they had a son, but it seems he never left the house once he came back home to Sidwell. His wife did all the business. No one ever really saw him again.” She turned a few of the old, crinkly pages. “There was obviously something or someone who mattered to him at Mourning Dove Cottage.”

  In his will, he’d left a sum for upkeep that paid the taxes for the cottage through all the years it was abandoned.

  “I suspect he wanted to keep it up in case the previous occupant ever returned,” Miss Larch said.

  The memory tea we were drinking was definitely working, because I remembered something personal. Something I hadn’t thought about for a long time. At the end of the summer long ago when I had to give up the part of the witch, I’d found a note left on our porch.

  Good-bye had been written in blue ink.

  Your friend, Collie

  Maybe I’d mattered to somebody, too.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  How to Reverse a Curse

  WHEN AGATE AND JULIA CAME BACK FROM Brooklyn I was waiting on the front porch of Mourning Dove Cottage. Beau came running over, barking hello, and Dr. and Mrs. Hall both gave me a hug and said it was good to be home. Agate had her hands full with fabric that she’d bought in Manhattan. “Silk, satin, velvet, tweed!” she sang out, racing in to get to work at her sewing machine.

  At the library in Brooklyn the sisters had discovered that Agnes Early had lived there, and had been a seamstress in a shop famous for its wedding dresses. Agate had clearly inherited her sewing talents from her. A librarian had helped the girls find a copy of the 1790 census. By scanning through, they had discovered that Agnes had done well enough to buy her own property. Although she had never married, her younger sister Isabelle had. Aggie was devoted to her niece and nephews, one of whom was Julia and Agate’s three-times-great-grandfather.

  Then it was time for my news. I announced that I knew who was pretending to be the monster.

  “You do?” Julia applauded me on what she said was my fine investigative work. “Did you set a trap?”

  “I didn’t have to. I saw him in the woods. He’s just a boy who used to spend summers here when he was little. I think he’s trying to protect the owls.”

  “Well, he’s making things worse for your brother.” Julia reached for her backpack and took out a flyer that had been left behind the windshield wipers of her father’s car that morning.

  MONSTER HUNT

  It is advised for all townspeople to bring bats, guns, knives, nets, flashlights, lanterns.

  Meet in front of Town Hall at 8 a.m.

  A shiver ran through me.

  “It’s tomorrow morning,” Julia told me. “What if they search our houses?”

  I couldn’t even begin to answer that question. It was too horrible to consider.

  If they searched our house, my brother would be found.

  It was dusk when James and I walked through the orchard together. We didn’t speak as the colors of evening sifted down around us. We knew our lives were about to change. I’d shown him the flyer about the monster hunt. He’d read it, then crumpled it in one hand. I’d never seen his eyes that dark. I picked up the flyer and folded it into my pocket so my mother wouldn’t happen upon it.

  The garden had grown so tall no one could see us. We met Agate and Julia in the center, where the four paths crossed each other. It was only fitting it should be the four of us. We were in it together and together we could break the spell and stop the monster hunt however we could. Julia was trying her best not to stare at my brother’s wings, which were folded on his back. If you didn’t look too closely, it appeared that a cape had been thrown over his shoulders.

  “We have to end where Aggie began,” I said. “That’s the only way to reverse the curse.”

  “It doesn’t matter what we do. I’ll never be normal.” James turned to Agate. “I can’t drag you into this.”

  He stalked out of the garden even though Agate did her best to call him back. He didn’t seem to hear her, but she was convinced she could change his mind.

  “I’ll talk sense into him,” she said.

  She scrawled a note on a piece of paper and gave it to me to deliver. I went home and ran up to the attic, but James wouldn’t answer when I knocked and called his name. He was stubborn. It was his one bad trait. Once his mind was made up, he wouldn’t listen. He was like my mother in that way. In the end I slipped the note under his door.

  That evening, Agate waited in the meadow, as she’d written she would. All of the fireflies were fading. It grew so late, she fell asleep in the grass. Owls came and went. But James never appeared.

  He went out that night. When I looked out my window I noticed his shadow pass over the lawn as he flew north, toward the mountains. I climbed up to the attic, and saw that all the windows had been left open. Flash was gone. It was likely he’d followed James to one of his secret places in the woods, where no one would find him. I knew that birds belonged in the sky. But my brother belonged with us.

  He’d left a last note for me to deliver, so I was the one who met Agate in the meadow just as she was waking up. Her pale hair was loose, her feet were bare. Her black dress was rumpled. The early-morning light was yellow, like a cat’s eye, and the air was crackly with heat and humidity, the way it is before a storm. I knew what my brother wrote, because when Agate dropped it on the grass I picked it up and read it. I don’t know if that was right or wrong, but once I’d read the note I knew that he didn’t wish to hurt her, that he only wanted her happiness, and that he believed she could never find that with the Sidwell Monster. By the time they came hunting for him, he’d be long gone. I walked home through the garden where the spell had been created. Two rose petals were in the path. I picked them up and slipped them into my pocket. I thought they might bring me luck, and I needed good fortune now.

  I’d made a mess of things. If I’d never watched the Halls moving in, or climbed the apple tree, or fallen and broken my arm, if I’d never told him about Agate, if he’d never seen her standing in the grass outside our house, if I’d just stayed out of it, James might be safe at home instead of in the woods, all alone.

  I had to tell my mother the truth. All those times I’d been late, when I made up excuses, I’d been at Mourning Dove Cottage. I’d wanted a friend so desperately, I had lied, and I’d kept secrets; now because of it, J
ames had disappeared.

  We were sitting at the kitchen table. I couldn’t even bring myself to look at my mother when I admitted all I’d done. I was ready for her to tell me what a disappointment I was, but instead she took my hand in hers.

  “I knew you were going there, Twig. I didn’t stop you because I also knew how much you wanted a friend.”

  My eyes were stinging as I held back tears. “But I was lying to you!”

  “Only because the rules were unfair.”

  When my mother came to hug me, I felt something open inside me, my love for her and my gratitude for all she’d tried to do for us, even if some of it had turned out wrong.

  “Let’s go find him,” she said.

  We looked all over town, stopping at the places James told me he’d visited in the dark—the library and Town Hall—but we saw no sign of him. My mother had me go over to the Starline Diner while she searched the side streets. Mr. Rose was at the counter. He had ordered a slice of my mother’s Pink peach summer pie.

  “Twig,” Mr. Rose said when he saw me. “Are you okay?”

  I probably looked like I’d been crying. “I’m trying to find someone who doesn’t want to be found.”

  “That can be as hard as looking for a shadow.”

  I handed Mr. Rose the crumpled-up flyer that I had shoved into my pocket. He nodded, upset.

  “My aunt has been worried about the possibility of a monster hunt for some time. As a matter of fact, she called me about this before I got the job at the paper. That’s one of the reasons I came. I’m going to see what I can do to stop this nonsense.”

  Mr. Rose headed to his office, waving to me from the street.

  Sally Ann came over, concerned. “Can I get you something, honey?” she asked. “Maybe something for your mom?”

  She was so nice, I nodded, and Sally Ann gave me a coffee-to-go for my mother and an oatmeal cookie for me.

  “On the house,” she told me. “Friends are friends, even when they don’t see each other much.”

  I ran out to our car, where my mother was waiting. “Sally Ann sent you this.”

  “She always was thoughtful,” my mother said.

  I handed over the coffee and she took a few sips. Then we drove into the mountains. We parked on the side of the road and made our way through the woods, calling for my brother. We saw a blue heron take flight. We saw deer and raccoon tracks. We saw mice as they darted away from us. But we didn’t see any sign of James.

  At home, after my mother had gone to her room, where I could hear her crying, I went out to search again by myself. I walked along until I reached the old road where white stones had been scattered. On a rock beside the huge fence surrounding the Montgomery estate, there was a small blue-painted monster. I leaned over and stood on my hands. I was shaky, but I was up long enough to see the owl’s face once more. For some reason, that gave me courage.

  A few things had fallen out of my pockets, including my house key and some quarters, and I bent to gather all I could see in the shadows. I took a deep breath and went through the old gate, and after that I just kept going. The house loomed in the falling dusk. I rang the bell and stood back. No one answered, but when I turned Colin Montgomery was on the lawn.

  “My father is out to dinner,” he said. “It’s just me.”

  He looked exactly the same as he had when we were little, only different.

  “Collie,” I said. “You’re the monster.”

  He nodded, then sat down in the grass. I went to sit beside him. Maybe when you know someone when you’re really young, you always feel like you know him.

  “It was the only way I could think of to try to stop my father from destroying the woods. This is the only place I’ve ever felt at home.”

  “You’re not the only person who feels that way.”

  He nodded. “That’s why I’ve been helping Dr. Shelton.”

  “You mean stealing for him.”

  “Borrowing. And leaving signs to convince people to vote against any building in the woods.”

  “Well, now people in town are going on a monster hunt. That’s why my brother disappeared.”

  “You have a brother?”

  I don’t know why I trusted him, but I did. Maybe it was because he was the only friend I’d ever had before I met Julia. Maybe it was because of the note he left me all those years ago. The bond we’d shared fully returned when he explained that he had lost his mother the year we were in summer camp. That’s why he’d hated his lunches, because the housekeeper made them, and that’s why he was grateful to me for sharing what was mine and homemade.

  “James is the monster,” I said.

  Collie laughed, until he saw my solemn expression.

  “There are no monsters,” he said back.

  “People in Sidwell think there are.”

  “Then we’ll have to change their minds,” Collie told me.

  It was in the newspaper the following day, taking up the entire front page.

  MONSTER COMES FORWARD TO SPEAK

  Underneath there was a photograph of Colin Montgomery. He had confessed to being responsible for all of the thefts and graffiti in town. After he’d walked me home, he’d gone to the sheriff’s office. His father had arrived and told him not to say a word without a lawyer present, but Collie had told his story to the sheriff and to Ian Rose and to anyone else who would listen. He had pretended to be the Sidwell Monster to get everyone’s attention. “Vote no at the town meeting,” he said just before his father called in a lawyer from Boston and paid the fine, so that he was let go.

  I wanted to thank Collie. I knew he’d confessed because of James, and maybe, just a little, because of me. I started off toward the Montgomery estate, but when I reached Last Lake I stopped. I had a sinking feeling. I spied Julia and Collie sitting on the dock talking. I heard them laughing. I could just see them from the back, but I didn’t have to see more to know what had happened. I ran back the way I had come, my face hot.

  I should have expected as much. I was Twig, the invisible. Twig, whom no one really noticed. It made sense to me that they would like each other more than they liked me. I cried as I ran, but by the time I went through the orchard my tears were gone and I felt cold.

  I’d lived my whole life without a friend. I’d just have to remember how to do that again.

  Even though I wouldn’t have to lie to my mother anymore, I didn’t go over to Mourning Dove. Without James, our house was quieter, and I wanted it that way. When Julia called, I didn’t answer the phone. What was there to say? That we’d been friends, but that I didn’t trust her anymore? That we’d almost reversed the curse? Sometimes I would spy Agate standing outside our house in the dark. She came when she thought no one would see her, but I always did, maybe because we were both scanning the sky for James. She resembled a ghost, with her knotted hair and chalky complexion. Now I understood my mother’s wish. I wished we could go backward in time to the beginning of the summer, when everything was different, and all things seemed possible.

  On the morning of August 1, a hot, blue Saturday, when the whole town was getting ready to attend the play at Town Hall, Julia appeared at our back door. She didn’t even knock, she just walked inside, even though she’d never been there before. I was washing the dishes, and I was so startled, I dropped a glass. It shattered in the sink. The truth was, other than James, the person I missed most was Julia. I forgot that the water in the sink was running. I forgot about the broken glass.

  “I know you don’t want to talk to me because James ran away and you probably blame us.” She seemed sad, but also sure of herself. She came over and shut off the running water. “Even if you don’t want to be friends anymore, I do.”

  “Do you?” I said. “Don’t you have another friend you’d rather be with?”

  Julia furrowed her brow, confused.

  “I saw you with Colin at the lake.”

  Julia laughed. “That’s what you’re upset about?” She took out an envelope. “
He was leaving this for you. I said I’d take it to you, but every time I called to come over, you wouldn’t answer. He said you’d dropped this near his house, and he thought it would bring you luck. He told me he never had a better friend in Sidwell than you’ve been to him. When he asked if I would mind sharing you I said I would be perfectly happy to.”

  I folded the envelope into my pocket, and then I threw my arms around Julia. I had missed her so much.

  “Perfect,” I said.

  “And there’s more,” Julia said. “I think I found something important.”

  She placed a sheet of very old paper on our kitchen table. The edges were crumbling and the ink was faint. “It fell out of the drawer when my mother took the desk to the antique store. It’s the last page of Agnes’s diary. It must have been torn out.”

  The recipe for the spell.

  Take every herb in the garden in equal measure, a teaspoon of each, and add two petals of the most beautiful flower of all. Stand in the center of the garden on the night of the Red Moon. Burn the herbs and let the smoke rise upward.

  Twice say “Fly from me,” and mean it from your heart.

  Julia said she had looked up the phases of the moon in the Sidwell Herald.

  The Red Moon was the first full moon in August.

  “It’s two nights from now,” Julia said. “August third.”

  We still had time after all.

  We went to work in the Halls’ garden, picking the herbs and drying them in the sun. We worked all day. The weather was so hot we used big oak leaves to fan ourselves, but we knew we couldn’t stop until we’d gathered all of our ingredients.

  We were just about to look at Agnes’s recipe and make sure we had every element we needed when Mrs. Hall came looking for us. She came hurrying through the mint, a worried expression on her face. “Have you seen Agate?” she asked. “She said she would come home and take a nap, and then we’d go to the play together.”