The Birds Are Special

I noticed the birds first.

Not the cottage. Not the path. Not even the way the trees leaned slightly inward, as though they had been waiting for me to arrive.

The birds.

They were everywhere in Rowan Hollow, but not in the way birds usually are. They weren’t frantic or noisy. They didn’t scatter when I stepped too close or burst into the trees in a blur of wings. They watched me. Not suspiciously. Not fearfully. Almost kindly, as if they already knew something about me I had only just begun to suspect.

One small bird stood near the edge of the path, round and bright, with a belly the color of twilight after sunset — blue, violet, pink, and something warmer beneath it, like a small hidden sunrise. At first I thought it was simply beautiful. Then I realized it was looking directly at me.

I stopped.

The bird stopped too, although I had the strange feeling it had been waiting there long before I came into view.

There were berries near its feet, tiny red ones still attached to a small branch. Beside them were several smooth little stones, arranged in a line as if someone had placed them there on purpose. The bird tilted its head.

Without thinking, I tilted mine back.

That seemed to satisfy it.

It gave one quick chirp. Not a song. Not a warning. More like a note being struck. Something inside me answered before I had time to think. I don’t know how to explain it, except to say the sound did not seem to enter through my ears. It landed somewhere behind my ribs, in a soft place I had been ignoring.

The bird hopped once, then again. Then it looked down at the stones.

I looked too.

There were five of them. I don’t know why that mattered, but it did. I bent down and touched the smallest one with my fingertip. It was warm. Not hot. Not sun-warmed, exactly. More like it had been held in someone’s hand.

The bird chirped again.

And suddenly I understood.

Not in words. Not exactly. But in the way you understand a room has gone quiet because something important has just been said.