The Aviary (14 page)

In spite of herself, Clara let out a scream, and then clamped her mouth shut. There, knocking on the pane with his sturdy black beak, was the white cockatoo, his sulfur-tinted head feathers raised high.

Mustering her nerve, Clara unlatched the window and
pulled it up, praying she would not frighten the bird away. But the cockatoo stood patiently until the sash was lifted, looked at Clara with his golden eyes, and pleaded in such a rich, melancholy voice that she was bound to him with all her sympathies:

“Please? Please? Oh, please?”

Clara gestured to the bird to come in. He flitted past her, straight to the top of the bureau, where Citrine thrust out her beak at him and cried. As the honeycreeper seemingly poured out her cares to him, the cockatoo nodded in reply.

It occurred to Clara that the birds in the aviary had no idea about Citrine’s fate until now. Had they been worrying all this time?

“I don’t know how you escaped,” Clara told the cockatoo, “but I must check if the other birds got out.” She shut the two birds in her room and dashed to the aviary, dreading what she might find.

From afar, Clara counted the three remaining birds still inside: the grackle perched on a dead tree branch, the bright yellow kiskadee beside him, and the mynah on
the floor, clawing at the pages of an old book. The aviary door was barely ajar, yet all the birds could have squeezed through and flown away if they had wanted. When Clara got close, she saw that a hard piece of straw had been jammed in the lock. The metal around the keyhole was crosshatched with scratches.

“The cockatoo!” Clara said, pulling the stick from the lock and closing the door. “He really is a genius.”

The mynah, who had been watching her with interest, fluttered forward. “Genius,” he repeated.

“That’s what I said,” replied Clara. “And I want to thank you, both for staying in your cage and for not screaming at me. Would you like to know how the honeycreeper is doing?”

The birds fluttered to the ground and stood rapt, waiting.

“She’s fine. Very well,” Clara said. “Her wing is healed at last.”

The grackle gave a rusty laugh as the kiskadee darted around the cage. Only the mynah stayed silent.

“What do you think about that?” Clara asked him. “Aren’t you happy?”

“Think, genius,” said the mynah, growing irritable again. “Think, think,
think!
”

“Hmmm. It seems that you want me to think,” Clara deadpanned. “Have I got it right?”

“THINK!” screamed the bird.

As Clara watched him leaping, flapping, and shredding
paper into confetti, she wondered if the bird was suffering from some form of insanity. Should she even try to make sense of what he said? “It doesn’t help, you know,” she told him. “I can’t think any better or faster for your screaming at me. Goodbye!”

Her mind turned to the daunting task of luring the cockatoo back to his cage. So far, he hadn’t been much of a wild thing, but his beak was sharp and his claws were strong. She did not know which bird had wounded her when she rescued the kitten, but in a contest of wills with the cockatoo, Clara would surely be the loser.

She hit upon the idea of luring him with food. Would the cockatoo like biscuits as much as Citrine did? It was worth a try. She went to the biscuit tin in the kitchen and took two—one for the cockatoo and one for Citrine, who would certainly be jealous if she were left out.

She eased open the door to her room and held a protective arm over her face, but the cockatoo did not stir from his place on the bureau next to Citrine. He didn’t even look up at the biscuit when Clara waved it in front of him.

“Don’t care for biscuits, do you?” she said.

But Citrine saw the shortbread and twirled in circles.

Clara broke off a crumb and dropped it in the cage. “I love watching you dance, darling thing. You’ll have me stealing biscuits all the time just for the pleasure of—”

Oh my goodness
.

She felt a tingle up both arms and dropped the entire
biscuit into the cage. Citrine was overjoyed, of course, but Clara felt she had been struck by lightning. In her mind’s eye, she saw quite clearly the blackboard upstairs, its smeared-chalk sentences written in uneven letters, the lines sloping downward:

Clara scrambled to her bed and picked up the letter from Mr. Woodruff Booth.

And George William:

Clara closed her eyes and drew a breath. When she opened them, the cockatoo was giving her that steady golden gaze. She cleared her throat and found her voice:

“Are you, by any chance, George William Glendoveer?”

The cockatoo spread his wings and bowed low like a courtier.

“Oh dear,” she croaked. Fearing she might collapse, she placed a steadying hand on her dresser. When she was sure she could remain standing, she said, “And you, Citrine? Are … are you his sister Helen?”

The bird neglected the biscuit, flew directly up to her perch, and cried to the sky with a congratulatory cheer: “Tsip-tsip!”

Clara’s lips quivered. She knew in her head that it could not be, yet felt sure in her heart that she had the Glendoveer children here beside her, in her room, in their old home.

“The biscuit tin. You knew where it was all along,” she told the little bird. “And you’ve danced for me since the first day I brought you inside.”

And to the cockatoo: “How could I not have seen how beautiful and elegant you are?”

She thought of these birds year after year in the iron cage, its roof either dripping rain or piled with snow or adrift with dead leaves of the old elm. Repetition. Desolation. Loneliness.

Yes, yes
. This
I know
.

A sense of urgency overtook her. “We must go see the others. Now.” Clara had only to raise her arm and the cockatoo perched upon it. She lifted the top off the
honeycreeper’s cage and took the little bird on her shoulder. The three went out to the aviary together.

The grackle, kiskadee, and mynah flew up and stood together on a perch as Clara opened the door. She stood in the middle of the cage and gazed up utterly without fear.

“Arthur?” she said.

The grackle swept down at her feet.

“Frances?”

The mynah circled the cage before lighting beside her brother.

Only the sleek yellow kiskadee remained aloft.

“Oh, Peter, you pretty boy, do come down!” Clara said.

The bird lifted his head. “BEE-tee-WEE!” he shouted before diving to greet her.

Clara sank to her knees, held out her arms, and let the birds take turns lighting on her outstretched hands.

“Arthur,” she told the grackle, “you have always been the loudest. I thought you were angry. How could I know that you only wanted company?”

Arthur responded by jumping on Clara’s shoulder and giving her his unmusical rusty shriek directly in her ear.

“Silentium!”
barked the mynah as the grackle fluttered out of reach.

“It’s all right,” said Clara, wincing. “I know that Arthur is just high-spirited. And you, Helen,” she said to the honeycreeper, “how am I going to call you anything but Citrine?”

“Tsip-tsip!” chirped Helen as she and Peter the Kiskadee
fluttered between perches. They were engaged in some sort of acrobatic act, with the kiskadee sometimes pausing to dive for a stray fly that entered the cage. George, the suave cockatoo, perched in a high corner and swayed from foot to foot. Arthur the Grackle’s squeaky exclamations could almost pass for laughter. The aviary radiated joy.

Clara felt it. Their mood was contagious—for everyone, that is, but the mynah.

“Frances?”

The mynah stood with her back against the wall in her torn nest of pages and regarded Clara with her masked red eyes.

“You’re quiet.”

Frances tilted her head, but would not reply. Clara tried to imagine what was bothering her. “You told me to think, didn’t you?”

“Think, yes,” said the mynah.

“I finally did, as you see,” Clara explained. “I know you have been trying to talk to me, and I didn’t understand.”

“Think!” said the mynah again.

“All right.” Clara rested her chin on her hand and struck a thinking pose. “Will this do?”

The mynah came forward and paced before Clara like an inspecting general, then stopped dead in front of her and piped up in a high-pitched voice: “
STATIM
YOURSELF, YOU NASTY OLD BIRD!”

Clara recognized her own voice immediately. “Oh dear.”

“Oh
dear,
” echoed the mynah with a decidedly sarcastic edge. “Oh dear, dear,
dear.
”

The bird’s feelings were hurt, Clara knew. But she also felt that humble apologies would not be in order either. This mynah, this
Frances
, rather, was not to be appealed to with sentiment.

“Frances, do you recall a Miss Lentham at the Lockhaven Public School?”

The mynah fluttered as if trying to summon her memory.

“Miss Lentham,” said Clara. “I have a friend who has just spoken to her. She said that you shared a regard for the classics. Do you remember?”

Frances the Mynah appeared lost. Clara first thought she shook her head to say no. Or was it just a sorry shake of the head?

George the Cockatoo fluttered down to his sister Frances and made some tender whistling sounds. Helen the Honeycreeper circled them like a moth while Arthur the Grackle and his brother Peter the Kiskadee waited patiently above.

Clara crept over to join them in the mynah’s corner. “I want to tell Frances that I will always try to understand when she speaks to me. I will never treat her with disrespect, because I know she has much to teach me.”

The mynah shifted in her nest but would not face Clara … yet.

“You have told me to hurry.
Statim?
And I want to, with
all my heart. But I don’t know what it is you want me to do!”

At this, the birds chattered among themselves, each in his or her own peculiar language, while the mynah listened.

“Tell me if you can, any one of you! Tell me what you need, and I will try to help!”

Frances the Mynah faced Clara, and the aviary went quiet.

“El-li-ot,” stated the bird, enunciating every syllable.

Clara thought back to the first words the mynah had ever uttered to her. “It’s what you’ve been trying to tell me all along, isn’t it? Elliot. I know who he is. But what should I do?”

“Help,” said the cockatoo.

“Find him, you mean?”

“Help,” he said again.

“So none of you know where he is either?”

“Genius,” said the mynah, though Clara knew she meant exactly the opposite.

“I wouldn’t know how to begin,” Clara said. “If the authorities couldn’t find him, how do you suppose an eleven-year-old girl can succeed so many years later?”

At this, the birds all scattered and pecked at the ground distractedly, leaving Clara feeling confounded. And then she heard Ruby’s voice coming from the kitchen door.

“Clara Dooley, I declare!”

“Uh, hello, Ruby,” said Clara, waving weakly. She tried
to think of how to explain her presence in the cage as Ruby sprinted over.

“I never!” Ruby said. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“I thought that Citrine might want to visit her old home?”

“Good enough,” said Ruby. “But how did you get in? Your mother gave the aviary key to me days ago.”

Clara’s mind raced. “The cage was unlocked,” she answered.

Ruby knitted her brows. “I locked up this morning, soon as I changed the newspaper, as sure as you’re born.” She bent close to the lock and had Clara come over. “Can you see any tampering? My up-close specs are in the sewing basket, and I’m helpless as beans.”

Clara pretended to scrutinize the lock. “It looks perfectly fine to me. Perhaps you didn’t turn the key far enough?”

Ruby didn’t look convinced. “If that cockatoo has finally outwitted the locksmith on this one, we’ll have to start wrapping this door in chains.”

“No need. If he hasn’t opened the door in years, I doubt he’s caught on all of a sudden.”

“You’d think so, wouldn’t you? Especially seeing how old he is. How they do hang on. They should all be suffering from dementia by now. Or worse.”

Clara cringed, embarrassed that this awful pronouncement had been voiced in the Glendoveers’ presence, not to mention the other worrisome things that had been uttered unthinkingly for all of them to hear over these many years.

She exited the cage so Ruby could lock up. There were so many questions Clara had left unanswered, but of one thing she felt sure: the birds did not want to share their secret with her mother or Ruby. Otherwise, why did they speak only to Clara?

And yet, everything that occurred today was so sensationally odd and otherworldly, Clara simply could not keep it all to herself.