Nightbird

by Alice Hoffman

  The scent of herbs rose into the air; it smelled like the tea my mother drank on winter nights. It was dusk and most people were on their way to Town Hall to see The Witch of Sidwell at the summer festival. I certainly didn’t plan on going.

  “I saw her this morning,” Julia said. “When she left for Town Hall.”

  “I just looked for her in her room.” Mrs. Hall’s face was grim. “I don’t know where she went. All I know is that her suitcase is gone.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  A Sky Filled with Lightning

  I JUMPED INTO THE CAR WHEN DR. HALL called out, gesturing for everyone to get in. We drove to Main Street in complete silence, all of us worried for Agate.

  Evening had fallen and the weather had changed suddenly, as it sometimes does in the summertime in our part of Massachusetts. One minute it’s hot and sunny, and the next you’re shivering. A storm was blowing in from the east with banks of inky dark clouds. We could hear thunder echoing over the mountains as the sky turned even darker. All the birds were hiding in their nests. Not a single sparrow flitted across the sky. The wind whipped through tree branches, and leaves started to fall and carpet the road. It didn’t even seem like summer anymore.

  I wondered if my brother was somewhere safe.

  I kept the envelope from Collie with me at all times. I would wait for a special time to open it. Until then I really did wish and hope it would bring me luck.

  In the gloomy dusk everything in Sidwell looked shadowy and strange. The thunder was constant now. Gusts of wind followed us through the door and people shivered and said we were surely in for terrible weather. They talked about storms of the past, floods and blizzards that had cut Sidwell off from the rest of the world. They remembered that during one summer thunderstorm, lightning had set half the town on fire. I realized that was when the old Herald building had burned down and all the files were lost.

  By the time we arrived, Town Hall was already jam-packed with people, all excited for the play to begin. Before it could, Hugh Montgomery jumped onto the stage and took the microphone.

  “Hello, everyone,” he said. “I know you’ve been reading some negative things about my family in the Herald, but I hope you will vote yes at the next town meeting and allow Sidwell to move into the future.”

  I saw Colin sitting in the back row by himself. He waved when he saw me and I waved back. I thought how lonely he must have been at the estate all those summers, almost as lonely as James, as lonely as I’d been.

  “Your future, not ours,” Mr. Hopper from the garden center shouted back from the audience. “What would Sidwell be without the woods? Just another slab of asphalt filled with stores that nobody needs.”

  While the mayor took the microphone to suggest that the place for this discussion was the town meeting, we went backstage. The kindergartners were all in costume. I noticed the vests Agate had sewn. Just seeing them made me feel sad. She had put so much work into each one.

  Mrs. Meyers, the drama teacher, was going over lines with the little witch. When she noticed us poking around, she came over. Only the cast and crew were allowed backstage.

  “You should be in the audience,” Mrs. Meyers told us. “We’re almost ready to begin.”

  The thunder was closer now. When a boom rumbled right over our heads, the girl playing the little witch jumped. Her costume was the best, just as Agate had said it would be, with a pretty lace collar and a black skirt that looked like a silk waterfall. The girl was the granddaughter of Mr. Hopper. I’d seen him sitting proudly in the first row when we passed by on our way backstage. “The little witch is ours,” he’d been telling everyone in the audience.

  “Was Agate here today?” Dr. Hall asked the drama teacher.

  “Of course,” Mrs. Meyers said. “She’s in charge of costumes. We really couldn’t do without her. We’d be utterly lost. She’s been such an asset.” But Agate was now nowhere to be seen and she didn’t answer when Mrs. Meyers called out her name. “That’s odd,” the drama teacher murmured. “She was here a minute ago.”

  The room was bustling with children and parents. People were hugging, wishing each other well, and making little jokes about the end of the play, when the witch is pushed off the cliff. My least favorite part. “Watch out for falling witches,” people advised each other. “What was the witch’s favorite subject in school?” I heard someone say. The whole crowd shouted back an answer: “Spelling.”

  “Agate!” Mrs. Meyers called out, more loudly. She’d been on Broadway long ago and her voice was commanding. Everyone else grew quiet. There was a huge clap of thunder, the loudest and closest yet. This time we all nearly jumped out of our shoes.

  “Agate, where are you?” Mrs. Hall shouted, her voice breaking a little.

  “I’m sure she’s here somewhere,” Dr. Hall said in a reassuring way. He had spoken to me in the same comforting manner when I’d fallen out of the tree. He took his wife’s arm and led her toward the auditorium. “She wouldn’t miss the show.”

  They were so new to town they had never heard of the play’s traditional subject matter. I didn’t think they’d really enjoy a play in which a member of their family was denounced as a witch, but they went to take their seats. I sneaked a peek through the velvet curtains. The Halls looked nervous, and Mrs. Hall turned round to search for Agate without the slightest bit of luck.

  I was stunned to see that my mother had arrived. She was being guided down the aisle by Mr. Rose. I’d forgotten about dinner and hadn’t been home all day. My mother must have thought I’d disappeared, just like Agate.

  I wanted to race over to explain that I was fine, but Julia was signaling frantically from the dressing room. I made my way through a line of children ready to go onstage. They were getting a last-minute pep talk from Mrs. Meyers. “If you forget a line just keep going,” she advised. “Don’t forget to smile.”

  Julia and I kept our heads close together so no one would overhear. She had found Agate’s suitcase under the makeup counter in the dressing room, and an envelope on which Agate had written: To my parents and my dear sister Julia.

  “Is it snooping to open it?” Julia asked.

  “Your name is on it. She must want you to read it.”

  The letter smelled a little like Agate’s perfume and a little like a garden, a combination of fragrant jasmine and freshly cut grass, possibly because she spent so many hours on our lawn in the dark, waiting for James to come home.

  Dear Family,

  After the play is over tonight I am taking the bus back to Brooklyn. I wish I could stay in Sidwell, but I have brought grief to a friend here, and I can’t stay any longer.

  Gone to Brooklyn, just like Agnes Early. It was happening all over again.

  “She must have taken off without her suitcase,” Julia said.

  “Or …,” I said.

  We exchanged a look.

  Or perhaps Agate had hidden when she heard her parents’ voices rather than face them and explain all that had happened.

  Maybe she was still here.

  We knew the play would soon begin, but instead of taking our seats in the auditorium, Julia and I began to search backstage. There were closets, dressing rooms, a cellar, staircases, an attic, and, three stories above us, the bell tower.

  By this time the thunder was so close it shook the building. We could hear some of the children out on the stage gasp and cry out for their mothers. “There, there,” people in the audience called. “All’s well that ends well,” a good-natured theatergoer shouted. Lightning had begun to crackle, so close it lit up the sky as if it were daylight.

  Julia and I went down to the old stone cellar, figuring we should get the scariest part over first. While we searched for Agate, there was a huge flash of lightning. It sounded like a thousand windows breaking, and the sky lit up as if a million lightbulbs had gone off all at once. Even the cellar windows shimmered white. Quite suddenly the lights went out, not just in Town Hall, but all over Sidwell, as if some giant hand ha
d turned off all the switches, and here we were with no electricity, stuck in the cellar, in the dark. We blinked and held our breath. Then we heard the whoosh of fire above us, on the roof.

  Julia and I could hear people shouting upstairs as they searched for their children, and the calm voice of Mrs. Meyers calling: “File out in a single line. Keep calm! Exit at the rear!”

  A flash of light came down the stairs, and we blinked in the sudden illumination.

  “Hurry,” someone called.

  We made our way upstairs, stumbling a bit, guiding our steps by keeping our hands on the wall made of rough stones. There was a strange burning odor. Through the windows we could see sparks sifting into the night. Lightning had hit the roof and set it on fire. Flames were pouring out from the bell tower.

  Collie was waiting for us at the top of the stairs.

  “Let’s go,” he urged. “This whole place could go up in flames.”

  Julia refused to go out the emergency exit behind the dressing rooms. “My sister might be trapped!”

  As we pleaded with her, Dr. and Mrs. Hall came through the dark. “There you are!” Mrs. Hall grabbed Julia and hugged her tightly. I heard a sob escape from her throat. “We thought we’d lost you, too!”

  My mother and Mr. Rose were right behind them, equally frantic. “Teresa Jane!” my mother said. “You know you’re not allowed to come to this event! We’ve been looking everywhere for you!”

  “We?” I said.

  “I’m a concerned party,” Mr. Rose said. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  The call of sirens cut through the dark. All three of the town’s fire trucks raced up and we could hear their engines rumbling. Sheriff Jackson came through the backstage area with a huge flashlight that he shone in our direction. Everything looked bright and harsh.

  “This is an emergency evacuation,” he shouted. “You need to be out this minute. Pronto!”

  “But—” Dr. Hall began.

  “No buts. This building is on fire. Exit now!”

  “You don’t understand,” Dr. Hall insisted. “Our daughter may be in there.”

  “Do you have any proof?” the sheriff asked. “If not, I can’t risk anyone’s life.”

  We were led out onto the street, where crowds of people watched the roof burn and the firemen did their best to keep it under control. Flashes of lightning continued, so that the sky seemed black and then, suddenly, a bright, blinding white. We shivered in the glare. Collie stood right next to me. Without my saying a word, he knew how frightened I was.

  Julia turned to her parents. “We can’t just wait here! Agate’s suitcase was inside. She was planning on going back to Brooklyn. But we don’t know if she really did, or if she’s hiding somewhere.”

  Smoke was streaming all over town, out past the mountains. So many sparks were flying through the air, the sheriff made us all stand in the middle of the town green, far enough away from the fire. Mr. Montgomery came running, frantic, searching for Collie. No matter how they disagreed, they were still father and son. They shook hands, and then Mr. Montgomery threw his arms around Collie.

  I heard a shift in the wind. I gazed up and couldn’t tell the difference between the stars and the flames. Then my eyes focused and I saw Agate in the bell tower. My heart went crazy. I grabbed Julia’s arm. She turned and gasped. Agate had climbed away from the flames on the roof on the ladder that circled around the bell tower. The shaky iron stairs were only used twice a year, when a watchman needed to set the chimes to the correct time.

  Dr. and Mrs. Hall clutched on to each other, in shock to see their daughter in the rickety bell tower. Agate stood still, her hair shining, like a star in the sky. There were flames above her and below her. I overheard the firemen say there was no ladder that would reach high enough. I couldn’t believe their words. Smoke was billowing into the sky, so thick it seemed we lived in the clouds.

  That was when I saw him.

  James came from the north, from the mountains. Later he told me he’d spent the past nights in a tree, along with a nest of owls. He’d seen sparks in the air above Sidwell, and he’d followed the foul trail of smoke, worried for the town, and for us, and now, most of all, for Agate. Lightning split the sky again as my brother’s shadow fell over Main Street. Some people gasped and others just blinked. At last they were seeing the Sidwell Monster, but unlike the beastly creature they had always imagined, he was only a boy.

  “That’s your brother?” Collie said.

  I nodded. “James.”

  He flew directly to the bell tower and lifted Agate off her unstable perch. His wings shimmered blue and black and feathers fell as he flew her away from the flames. By now everyone in the street was in shock. The thunder had stopped and there was a hush.

  And then there wasn’t.

  Out of the silence there came the sound of someone clapping. I looked over and saw Mr. Rose, clapping and whooping out with joy. Before long everyone joined in. The whole town went wild with gratitude, the applause like a wave that was louder than thunder.

  My brother could have escaped into the woods, where no one would have found him, but instead he landed on Main Street, depositing Agate safely on the pavement. When he set her down, she threw her arms around him.

  Flash had followed my brother and now perched in the tree directly above us. The fire was still burning out of control. My brother stared intently at the crowd, uncertain as to how they would react to him. When no one came after him, James must have decided it was safe to finish the job. He grabbed the nearest fire hose and took off into the sky once more. As we watched he put out the fire that most certainly would have destroyed most of Sidwell, as fire had done once before. Now the only thing that had been destroyed was the wooden bell tower.

  When James came back to earth, there was silence. And then one of the men from the Gossip Group started to applaud. It may have been Mr. Stern, or one of the others, but soon enough they all joined in. The rest of the town gave a great cheer, and then the residents of Sidwell rushed to my brother, not to arrest him but to celebrate him. They lifted him into the air and paraded him down Main Street. The band that was to perform the music between the acts of The Witch of Sidwell instead played “Amazing Grace” and “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow.” The little witch who was Mr. Hopper’s granddaughter threw out handfuls of fairy dust, which was really a mixture of baking flour and red chalk.

  Dr. and Mrs. Hall ran to hug Agate, and when James was let down after being carried along Main Street, they hugged him as well. I saw my mother on a corner, crying, her eyes filled with pride, and Mr. Rose had his arm around her. Collie and Julia stood on either side of me, my two best friends.

  I could not believe how perfect this terrible night had become.

  The bell tower of Town Hall had to be replaced, but the bell itself was as good as new. If anything it rang more clearly. People said that on Sundays you could hear it all the way in Boston. There was an article in the Sidwell Herald the next day about the fire, but there was no mention of a boy with wings, only that James Fowler, a resident of Old Mountain Road, had been the hero of the evening, rescuing Miss Agate Early Hall and saving a Sidwell treasure—the bell that, as it turned out, Miss Larch had discovered had been commissioned by our ancestor Lowell Fowler after the Revolutionary War to ring every evening at the hour when he was to have met his beloved beside Last Lake.

  I didn’t attend the town meeting where the fate of the woods was decided, but I learned about what had happened in the Sidwell Herald. Collie and I sat on my porch steps and read about it together before he had to go back to Boston. There was a photograph of all the citizens of Sidwell who had worked to stop the destruction of the woods, along with Dr. Shelton, whose report had convinced the town council that the breeding ground of the black saw-whet owls must be preserved at all costs. Instead of pitching a fit and bringing in his lawyers, Hugh Montgomery agreed to donate the Montgomery Woods to the town to forever be open land. He would keep only his house, for he planned
to spend summers here from now on. It was his son’s favorite place in the world, the place where they could be a family.

  Julia came over with Beau.

  “Collie,” she said, “meet Collie.”

  Beau offered his paw.

  “Perfect dog,” Collie said.

  Julia and I laughed, but we kept the joke to ourselves. Some things you just don’t share.

  We had the first apple pie of the season, made with tart green apples with honey added, to make sure it was sweet enough. We sat around the kitchen table, three friends who wouldn’t see each other until Julia and I convinced our mothers to take us to Boston for a weekend in the fall. We had it all planned out: We’d go to the aquarium, and walk along the Charles River, and visit Concord, where Lowell Fowler had fought in battle, and we’d most definitely have tea in Collie’s house on Beacon Hill, black orchid tea, which was still my favorite.

  Collie said it was his favorite, too. When we finished our tea, and Julia had gone home, I brought him to Miss Larch’s. That was something just the two of us did together on his last day in Sidwell. On the way over he asked if I’d ever gotten the envelope he sent me. I admitted I was saving it, to open after he’d gone back to Boston so I could feel like he was still in Sidwell. “Oh, I’ll be back,” he told me. “My father and I will be here at Thanksgiving.” It was the perfect time of year to get together, the season when we made not only apple pies, but also the once-a-year Pink pumpkin pie that was a great favorite in town.

  We met with Miss Larch and Dr. Shelton so that the ornithologist could thank Collie on behalf of the Sidwell owls. He gave Collie a book he’d written about owls. Miss Larch surprised me by giving me a gift as well, her own copy of Emily Dickinson’s poems. Whenever I read them I would remember that day, when we drank black orchid tea. In all my years in Sidwell, I think it was the least lonely I’d ever felt.