Chapter 12 #3
My magic had been particularly strong around drownings and prevented most of them, but I knew it wasn’t an uncommon call for a rehabilitator to get.
With summers getting hotter, pools and garden water features were increasingly attractive to wildlife, and it was usually only a matter of time before a homeowner found an unpleasant surprise under their pool cover.
I’d only dealt with a few instances myself, but they usually went one of two ways—either the animal was just exhausted and needed time to rest and regurgitate some water, or they were brain damaged from lack of oxygen and could never be returned to the wild.
The fact that the raccoon was still in the driveway suggested the latter, if it could be saved at all.
As I left the barn, the fawn let out a single, plaintive bleat.
I’d become accustomed to every manner of call and chirp and scream possible, and yet for some reason, this one went through me like a knife.
I stopped in the middle of the aisle, physically fighting the urge to turn around.
The rest of the barn was completely silent, as if every other animal was waiting to see what I’d do.
I steeled my heart and kept walking, and as I shut the door behind me, I heard her call again.
I knew the way to Anne’s house by heart, and when I reached the little double-wide on the edge of the village, I saw the rain barrel tipped on its side amidst a forest of birdbaths, the bottom third rimed with green slime.
The sodden bundle in the driveway was stiff and cold.
I’d never felt guilty in these situations before, never had to—I rested easy knowing I’d done everything I could do to the best of my ability.
Now, looking at the little paws splayed out in the slowly evaporating puddle, I was conscious that this life wouldn’t have been snuffed out if my magic were intact.
“I told her it was already dead,” Anne’s husband, Chris, said as I collected the body. “It was just twitching.”
“Make sure you cover your damn rain barrel,” was all I said.
The second call came in before I was even home from the first one, and this time it was a child’s voice that came down the line.
“Hello, is this the animal control lady?”
“Yes, it is, who’s this?”
“My grandma said I gotta call you because there’s a crow in her yard.”
“Can you give the phone to a grown-up?”
“No, Grandma doesn’t like talking on the phone.”
I grimaced, suddenly taken with the urge to slam the phone against my dash until it was in pieces. “Is there something wrong with the crow?”
There was a rustle of static and a muffled voice in the background, and then finally: “It’s got a broken wing. Grandma says you gotta come get it so I stop trying to touch it.”
“Okay, where do you live?”
The only answer was an open-mouthed cough and a loud, wet sniff.
“Hello? Where is your grandma’s house?”
“She lives next to the old library.”
That clicked. This woman had called before—or, rather, made her neighbor call me—when a juvenile red-tailed hawk was stuck in her garage. For all that she hated talking on the phone, she certainly hadn’t been shy about trying to backseat drive the rescue operation.
“Okay, I’m on my way. Do not touch that bird, you understand? Just watch from the window. Got it?”
“Okay, bye.” The line went dead.
I hooked the nearest left and headed for Main Street.
The old library was past the parsonage, and I found myself peering through the windshield for any sign that the hex bag was doing its work.
I don’t know what I expected—maybe Rachel running out the front door screaming, or Zeke mid-exorcism in the front yard, but there was no such spectacle.
The parsonage stood as dull and hollow as it always had, the church with its ramshackle bell tower beside it.
Just around the corner, the house next to the old library was the exact opposite—life was spilling out of every nook and cranny of the place.
The front yard was a patchwork of knee-high native grass and clover, and a tangle of morning glories and honeysuckle clung and climbed their way up the porch pillars.
The window boxes were stuffed with creeping jenny and petunias, and I saw a handful of hummingbirds dive-bombing each other over the bleeding hearts that hung from baskets.
It didn’t look so different from my own house, and if I had my way, every house in Burrsville would be the same.
Is it so much to ask? I thought, watching as a squirrel poked its head from a hole in the siding and leaped to a nearby tree branch. All I want is for them to see the beauty around them and keep it safe. Why do they fight me? Why are they so determined to make this a zero-sum game?
I parked at the front of the driveway and made my way toward the backyard, keeping an eye out for the crow.
The house itself was painted a mulberry color that the sun had faded to pale grape in certain spots.
There was movement through one of the screened kitchen windows, and I heard the same open-mouthed cough and sniffle.
The woman who hated talking on the phone was on her back porch, watering a veritable jungle of potted strawberries and herbs. She had long, iron-gray hair and her feet were bare despite the worn, splintered boards of the deck.
“There you are,” she said irritably. “I’ve been keeping an eye on him. He’s over in the corner by the compost pile. Do you see him?”
The backyard looked much like the front yard, with just a small mown rectangle in the middle that contained a miniature soccer net and a ragged ball. I spotted a blue-black shadow through a clump of nigella and nodded.
“Yeah, I see him. Will you stay up there for me? If he gets away from me the first time I want to make sure someone has eyes on him.”
She snorted, as if she recognized this as the ploy it was to keep her out of my way, but waved me through the gate and made no move to join me. Carrier in hand, I waded through the tall grass to the compost heap, and assessed the damage.
The compost heap was well maintained and practically bursting with worms, which made it a pretty good place for an injured bird to land.
But the low, overgrown fence wouldn’t provide the crow with any protection from predators if he couldn’t fly, and one glance told me he couldn’t.
The right wing sagged from the joint, pin feathers dusting lightly over the grass as he hopped away from me.