Lily could see the soft woody glow of the Rookery from behind the hedge before she could make out the Rookery itself. A muffled twitter of birdsong drifted through the trees as Lily followed Titus toward what looked strangely like an arched doorway in the middle of the forest. She had feared that the Rookery would be little more than a dingy collection of rooks’ nests in a half-dead oak tree, or at most an abandoned hermit’s hovel, but now she wondered whether the rooks had taken over something more substantial—an old, forgotten abbey, or perhaps a tumbledown castle.
The glow grew stronger and stronger as Lily followed Titus through a short passageway, until she finally stepped into the light. She gasped in surprise, in wonder. It was like nothing she had ever imagined, even in her many daydreams. One glance told her that this wasn’t a dirty old bird’s nest at all. It was a palace!
At first glance, Lily thought that she had stepped into a clearing in the forest. “But I can’t be outside in the forest,” she thought, “I walked through a doorway.” She could see from the perfect circle of tree trunks around the outside edge of the Rookery’s atrium that this had once been just another clearing in the forest, but the forest had been transformed. A century of rooks had lived here, each generation gently, patiently weaving together the trees’ youngest branches until, over time, they had created a cathedral in the forest. Between the tree trunks, Lily could see that the branchy walls were woven so tightly that they were nearly solid. It was almost impossible for her to tell where one tree ended and the next began.
The walls of the Rookery soared a hundred feet into the air, hundreds of branches stretching toward the center of the atrium, each twiggy hand supporting a nest of grass, hay, and string collected from the moors. Lily’s mouth hung open as her eyes rose higher and higher along the walls, drinking in the rich browns and dappled grays of the branches and the delicate craftsmanship of the Rookery walls. Her gaze finally rested on a shaft of silvery moonlight streaming in through a small circular skylight at the Rookery’s summit, which offered the uppermost roosts a view of the sky. The moon’s cool light bathed the upper levels of the Rookery in silver, but as the light descended, it gave way to the warm glow of thousands of lighted candle stubs collected from kitchen windows and church halls and placed carefully in the many nooks and crannies left by the glorious irregularity of the interwoven branches. The bare earth floor of the Rookery had been beaten hard by years of use, and was covered with fresh hay so fragrant that Lily’s head began to spin with the sheer wonder of it all.
In her amazement, Lily had almost neglected to notice the rooks—hundreds of them perched for the night in their own nests at the end of each branch. The muffled birdsong she had heard from outside had lost is musical quality and was now simply the murmur of bedside chatter, punctuated here and there by lively squawks and cackles.
“Father will never believe that this is real,” Lily thought, then turned to Titus, hoping to apologize for so rudely dismissing his story, only to discover that in his offence he had flown away. She looked up, hoping to find him among his fellows, but with a start realized that Titus was neither cousin nor friend to the other rooks—he was their identical twin, repeated a hundred times. He was nowhere to be seen—and everywhere at the same time.
Lily was unsure just what to do when she found herself on her own in the Rookery. Without Titus by her side, she suddenly felt very small and vulnerable. She wrinkled her nose, quite unsure whether or not she should be afraid, and even more unsure about a rather large rook who had begun to stare at her somewhat rudely over his very sharp black and gray beak. He studied her dress, her hair, her stockings with an amused—but not altogether friendly—look in his shiny black eyes. Then, without warning, he dropped like a stone from his roost, and Lily was sure he was about to crash spectacularly on the Rookery floor, but just as he neared the ground, his wings shot out from his body, capturing the air like kites. He thrust the air behind him with one great flap and rocketed toward Lily. She threw her arms in front of her face and tried to duck, but she was too late. The rook sliced through the air above her, plucking a beakfull of hair from the top of her head, before circling proudly upward to his roost. A company of rooks erupted in laughter as he landed, spitting the hair out in disgust. “Welcome to the Rookery, human,” he crooned to the cheers of his fellows.
“Ouch! That hurt, you awful, disgusting bird! How rude!” Lily began searching the Rookery floor for a stone to hurl toward her tormenter.
“Hey, Romulus! Looks like dinner!” a skinny rook with a missing eye shouted to him over the clamor.
“Or perhaps just an evening snack. It is a tiny morsel, after all,” another rook laughed.
Romulus tore his gaze away from Lily, glaring, somewhat oddly, Lily thought, toward another, isolated corner of the Rookery. “Don’t get too comfortable down there, you little rat. Your day is coming,” he cawed, and the whole of the Rookery erupted into cackling laughter.
“What did I ever do to you?” Lily cried, stone at the ready.
“Now, gentlemen,” arose a voice which, to Lily’s relief, could belong to no one but Titus, “that’s no way to treat our friend. There will be no more hunting tonight.” His rebuke was met with a gentle twittering peal of laughter that echoed off the Rookery walls before fading into the rooks’ resumed nestside chattering.
If Lily was unsure what do to when Titus had first abandoned her, she was even less sure now. Had she really just been threatened, or were the rooks only having a bit of fun at her expense? Should she call out to Titus for help at the risk of drawing the rooks’ attention back to herself? Should she try to find her way home alone in the dark or risk being in even more trouble by waiting until morning? These, and a thousand other questions raced through Lily’s mind as she stood quite alone in the center of the Rookery, but as the rooks’ twittering died to a whisper, her thoughts were interrupted by, of all things, the sound of a piano. She dropped the stone.
At first, Lily thought she was imagining the music because it seemed so far away, as if it was wafting through the trees from deep in the forest. But as she began to follow the music, she realized that the soft, lilting tune was coming from within the circle of trees rather than without. “But how can this be?” she thought.
Only after a careful search did she draw near to the source of the faint, yet comforting sound: At the base of a larch, nestled between two gentle rises of earth resting on the tree’s powerful roots, sat a small grayish-brown mouse. To his left, a candlewick burned brightly over his nook at the Rookery’s base, and directly in front of him, its back to the tree, a tiny wooden upright piano sang a sweet Celtic tune as the mouse’s deft little fingers raced up and down the impossibly small ivories. His eyes were closed in rapture as he played, and his heart seemed so full of music that he neither stirred nor started as Lily approached. His round pink ears turned to and fro as the music drifted from one end of the piano to the other, and a contented smile spread gently over his mousey lips. He swayed as if deep in prayer and something about his movement, his contentment, was so distinguished and breathtaking that not even the rhythmic twitch of his whiskers could make him seem ridiculous.
The music went on for a minute or two, and curious as she was, Lily could not bear to interrupt him. She eased herself gently to the ground and sat quietly until at last the music died to a whisper and ended in gentle resonance, fading upward and out into the moonlit sky. With a sigh, the mouse rested his fingers, and without looking at Lily said, “Thank you.” He opened his gentle brown eyes and turned them slowly toward Lily, a trace of the music still left in his gaze. “It is not often I have such an attentive audience. My name is Arthur, and I am a mouse. What sort of creature are you?”
Suddenly shy, Lily fiddled with the dirty patches on her stockings and turned a rather becoming shade of pink before saying quietly, “Pleased to meet you, Arthur. I am a girl. My name is Lily.”
“I know you are a girl, Miss Lily,” Arthur said, his smile turning into a gentle chuckle. “I only meant to ask what kind of girl you are. Are you a good and brave little girl, as I suspect you must be, having come all this way at such an hour, or are you a naughty girl who will, in the end, only give us trouble?”
“Oh, I do hope I am a good and brave girl, but...I fear that I have been naughty on far too many occasions to be entirely good.” She was thinking of Nan and the worry she must be causing at home.
“Don’t worry, little one,” he replied, his whiskers twitching in turn. “We have all been naughty far too many times to be entirely good. You are not alone in that, to be sure. I am sure in due time you will have every opportunity prove to yourself before our story is through.”
“Pardon me, Arthur, but what story do you mean?”
“Why, this great story in which we all live out our chapters and verses in turn, of course. But where are my manners? I am pleased to meet you, Miss Lily,” he said with a low bow, “and I am glad that our paths have crossed. This will surely be a grand adventure.” Arthur laced his little fingers together and cracked his knuckles to loosen them before sitting down once again at the piano.
“Now, where were we, Miss Lily?”
“What do you mean?” Lily asked.
“You had just arrived with Titus, whom I am assuming you met on the moor in less-than-normal circumstances. He then—”
“Oh yes, they were very strange circumstances indeed!” Lily interrupted, quite forgetting her manners.
Arthur continued, unhindered, “He then brought you to the Rookery, and you, by the Great Author’s design, found me here in a moment of deep creative satisfaction. And now our story begins. Shall I play a song to mark the occasion?”
“Yes, please!” Lily clapped her hands with delight.
Arthur placed his fingers on the keys and was preparing to play when suddenly his eyes popped open as if he had had an epiphany. “Oh, but before we fully begin our tale, Miss Lily, perhaps we should set our stage. How would you like a short and, I fear, all too inadequate tour of the Rookery—the public parts only, of course.”
“Oh, yes! What a wonderful place! I couldn’t have imagined it, even if someone had told me!”
“Then let us proceed to the center. After you, miss,” Arthur smiled gracefully as he stood and gestured to the center of the Rookery floor where a small fire smoldered on a round pavement of soot-covered stones.
When they had reached the center of the atrium, Arthur said, “Would you mind, Miss Lily, if I sat on your shoulder? I promise that I’m not too heavy.”
“Of course not!” she laughed, and bent down to allow Arthur to step onto her hand, placing him carefully on her right shoulder.
“Thank you. Most of the Rookery is upward, and it wouldn’t have done for you to be looking down at me!” Arthur smiled. “What you see here, Miss Lily, is perhaps one of rookkind’s greatest achievements—and without question the most impressive feature of our forest. The Rookery was built slowly, over several decades, by these rooks’ ancestors. Each tree of the inner circle, the oaks, the larches, the birches, were claimed and cultivated by different families of rooks, and even now the rooks you see above you tend to roost in their family’s tree. Behind each larger branch, I’m sure you have noticed the passageways. Over time, the Rookery has spread so that each passage from the atrium leads to various other rooms—some kept private for use by the families who built them, some, like the council room and storehouse, open to everyone. The Rookery stretches deep into the forest—how far I don’t know, but a mouse could certainly get lost very easily in those passageways, I am sure.”
“Oh, it is like a fairy tale!” Lily exclaimed, clapping her hands and attracting the attention of some of the rooks.
Arthur laughed heartily at her delight, and then replied, “Yes, I suppose it is, for a human who has never seen such things before.”
“But where is your room, Arthur? Do you have a passageway and a room for your family, too?” Lily asked.
“Oh no, Miss Lily. No passageways and darkened holes for me. I am happy with my piano and a little pile of hay. I have not been in the Rookery long enough to want more,” Arthur said warmly.
Lily could hear some of the rooks perched on their ledges high above begin to chatter amongst themselves as they watched this peculiar tour commence. The one called Romulus was eyeing Arthur rather strangely. The others began pushing him and prodding him with their beaks, and he had just unfurled his black wings to fly down to the Rookery floor when Lily saw Arthur look up at the rook. His gentle brown eyes for a moment became very stern, like Lily’s father’s eyes when her brothers had treated her too roughly. The rook met Arthur’s gaze, and checked himself, fluttering for a moment in his nest before settling back down, clearly irritated.
“And now, Miss Lily, how about that song?” Arthur’s eyes had instantly regained their benevolence.
“Oh! Please!” she replied, looking uncertainly up toward Romulus, who shifted uneasily from foot to foot as he stared at the mouse. Lily placed Arthur on the ground and walked behind him back to the piano.
As Lily settled herself on the soft hay, Arthur sat down at his piano. His fingers pressed the keys lightly in preparation and a strange hush fell over the Rookery. Rooks stopped in mid-sentence, in mid-chew, in mid-thought, and not a feather rustled as the first strains of music danced from branch to branch, spinning and swirling upward until the last rook had become enchanted by the sound. The tune spun a tale of home and family, of summer afternoons, and evenings by the fire, and soon most of the rooks were fast asleep, resting cozily in their nests. By the time the melody had faded among the trees, Lily’s mind had drifted through the forest and over the moor to the fire in the nursery, and her soft warm bed.
“Oh, thank you, Arthur. It was lovely,” she said dreamily.
“I think we have made a beautiful beginning, don’t you?” he replied. “And now, I wonder if I might escort you to the edge of the forest? Surely someone is waiting for you at home.”
“Oh, dear! Oh my, yes!” Lily cried, lurching out of her daydream. “I had almost forgotten! Several people are waiting for me at home! Oh, Arthur, I must go at once!”
“Then let us be off, Miss Lily,” Arthur proposed, and at once he started toward the arched doorway that led back into the forest.
As they walked together toward the Rookery’s door, Romulus, his black eye gleaming in the dying firelight, called out drowsily, “Next time, mouse!”
Arthur looked up with an unruffled grin. “Goodnight, Romulus. Sleep well, friend!” And he led Lily back out into the night.
Amanda, this is so, so delightful. I love it.
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