“Well, that is some coincidence!” says Rob.
He is laughing and smiling, but Leah doesn’t look so happy. She looks creeped out.
“Oh, my God. The poor thing,” she says as she approaches the window.
The bird appears to be stunned but is moving slightly. I am peering over Leah’s shoulder and scanning the sky to see if any of the bird’s friends are nearby. She looks back at me, her face full of concern.
“Was it just a coincidence?” she asks me.
“Leah! This happens all the time, it isn’t the first bird to have flown into a window,” says Rob. And he isn’t wrong.
But this is no coincidence. I don’t know what it means, but after my experience in the forest, I am not willing to dismiss this. Leah seems to read my mind, I can tell just by the way she is looking at me that she understands something is wrong. She becomes all business and orders Rob to go and collect the bird.
“Get a towel Rob, and bring it into the kitchen. We can let it out in the garden if it gets better,” she tells him.
Rob walks off grumbling to himself but seems to know better than to argue. Once he is outside Leah takes my hand and leads me to the kitchen, her touch sends a tingle along my forearm which shocks me, my breath catches and I hope she doesn’t notice.
As we sit down at the kitchen table she says, “Look, Phil, I can see something weird is going on here. Rob is never going to think it is more than coincidence, but I could see the look on your face.”
She waits for a reply, but before I can manage one Rob is coming back with the bird. Now he looks confused, a grim one has replaced the smug laughing expression he was wearing earlier.
“It didn’t look that badly injured,” he says with a shaky voice, “but by the time I got outside it was like this.”
He holds the bird up for us to see, rigid and frozen it appears ready to crack. But the eyes, where are the eyes?
To be continued…
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