Wayfarer

People meaning him, Timothy supposed. But it was a bit too late to stop him from wondering now. “I don’t get it,” he said. “It was only a crow.”

“You don’t understand,” said Peri, and turned an appealing look to her husband. “It was chasing one of ours, Paul. What else could I have done?”

“Ours?” Paul looked startled, as though this put a whole new complexion on the matter. “Did it get away all right?”

“I don’t know,” Peri said, pushing her feet into her shoes. “I couldn’t see her anywhere.”

“I didn’t know you kept birds,” said Timothy.

“We don’t,” said Paul. “They’re wild. It’s just that we’ve been looking after them for a few years now, and we’ve become…quite fond of them.” He glanced at his wife, who had turned her face away, then continued in a crisper tone, “The crows here are overpopulated, and they’re becoming more aggressive all the time. If something isn’t done to protect the other wildlife, we’ll soon have nothing but crows.”

“I’m going to look outside,” said Peri. “In case she’s just hiding.” She snatched up the rifle again and disappeared.

“Well,” said Paul to Timothy, “we may not get out much, but never let it be said we aren’t interesting.”

He smiled wryly as he spoke, but there was no humor in his eyes, and Timothy’s answering smile was equally thin.

Peri spent much of that morning in the garden and the neighboring fields, searching for her lost bird. When she returned to the house her expression was strained, and Paul began to look anxious as well. They kept leaving Timothy alone and going off to consult with each other in whispers, until Timothy couldn’t stand it any longer and went upstairs to play his guitar.

After five years of practicing an hour or more every day, he knew the strings so well he could have played blind. He’d even started picking out some tunes of his own lately, though songwriting proved to be more of a challenge than he’d expected. The tune he’d been working on had an amazing chord progression; just playing those three arpeggios made his bones vibrate. But he hadn’t been able to figure out what to play next, no matter what he tried.

Once again he felt eyes upon him, though he knew no one was there. Timothy steeled himself to ignore it and kept playing. Arpeggio, arpeggio, arpeggio…

Then his fingers seemed to move of their own accord, leaping up the neck of the guitar to a position he’d never even thought of before. He’d found it! Timothy slapped the guitar in triumph-and amazingly, that was right, too. Arpeggios, strum, slap, repeat. Perfect!

He was playing the line over and over, cementing it in his memory, when something small and brown flickered at the edge of his vision.

Peri’s missing bird?

Timothy thrust the guitar aside and jumped up just in time to see the thing zoom out into the corridor. Beyond the doorway a blur of distant movement caught his eye. Aha! He pelted down the hallway to the bathroom- to find nothing but his own reflection in the toothpaste-speckled mirror. He’d been chasing himself.

Maybe the bird had flown out the window? He’d only raised it a couple of centimeters after his shower, but now it gaped wide. Timothy was reaching out to close it when he saw Peri walking across the lawn.

He was about to call down to her, but then she stopped and glanced back over her shoulder, as though anxious not to be seen. Instinctively, Timothy ducked out of sight, and when he dared to look again, Peri was standing at the foot of the oak tree, one hand raised to its massive trunk. She knocked once-and then, to Timothy’s surprise, she knelt down on the muddy ground and bowed her head.

It couldn’t be what it looked like. She must be pulling a weed, or picking up a bit of rubbish, or setting another rabbit snare. But as he watched, she took something out of her pocket and tucked it between the roots of the tree. Then she folded her hands in her lap and her lips began to move, as though she were praying.

No, that was ridiculous. He’d met nature worshippers, but Peri surely wasn’t one of them. As far as he’d been able to tell, neither she nor Paul was particularly religious: That was one of the reasons he’d looked forward to coming here, knowing they wouldn’t judge him by what he did or didn’t believe.

So…what exactly was she doing?

Timothy squinted out the window until Peri rose, brushed the mud from her knees, and began walking back toward the house. But she’d left something behind: a little parcel, sticking out from the base of the tree.

He had to know what was in it.

Timothy stood still a moment, eyes fixed on Peri’s retreating figure. Then he spun around and ran back down the corridor to his bedroom. Pulling on his jacket, teeth gritted in anticipation of the cold, he slipped downstairs and eased out the front door, closing it quietly behind him.

Outside, the air felt heavy, the smell of rain-soaked earth overpowering. A damp chill seeped through the soles of Timothy’s shoes as he edged around the corner of the house and through the garden gate, keeping low so as not to be seen.

The garden looked empty: Peri must have gone back inside. Timothy waited a few more seconds, just to be sure. Then, moving so stealthily that even the sparrow hopping across the lawn didn’t turn its head, he crept toward the oak.

“Timothy!”

Peri’s voice rang out from behind him. He’d been caught, but there was no way Timothy was going to give up now. He lowered his head and started to run.

She came after him, but Timothy was faster. He sprinted across the wet lawn, then caught his foot on a root and fell sprawling. Dazed though he was, his eyes darted at once to where Peri had knelt and left her offering just a minute before….

But the little package was gone.

“Timothy, what is wrong with you?” demanded Peri as she strode up to him. “I told you to-”

“I saw something fly past me,” said Timothy, getting up and wiping his mud-smeared hands on his jeans. “Upstairs, in the house. I thought it might be your bird, so I tried to chase it down, but then it flew out here and…I tripped before I could catch it.”

Peri’s eyes narrowed. “I didn’t see any bird.”

There was nothing Timothy could say to that. He stood there looking at her, trying not to shiver as the icy wind bit through his jacket and raised a fresh layer of gooseflesh on his skin.

“Look,” Peri went on after a moment, “I don’t know why you came out here, or what you thought you were going to find. So I’ll just say this.” Her face hardened. “Stay away from the Oak.”

Not the oak tree but the Oak, as clear as if she’d written the capital letter in the air between them. She wore the same ferocious expression Paul had painted in her portrait, and Timothy stepped back, wary. “What do you mean?”

“I saw you poking at it yesterday, when you first got here,” she said. “It’s very old, and fragile, and you’re big enough to know better. So you can just keep to the house from now on, and leave the Oak alone.”

Heat rushed into Timothy’s face. Was that what she really thought-that he’d been trying to damage the old tree? Pick off the bark and carve his name into its skin like some ignorant lout with no respect for nature or other people’s property?

“I’d never do anything to hurt it,” he protested, trying not to think of the fact that only yesterday he had- albeit by accident. “This is because of the suspension, isn’t it? Just because I got into one fight at school, you think I’m some kind of troublemaker?”

Peri folded her arms and looked at him, her mouth a straight line. She didn’t speak, but all at once Timothy understood.

“No, I get it,” he said with sudden bitterness. “You don’t want me here. That’s why you never even asked me, isn’t it? Five months at Greenhill, and I never heard from you or Paul once. And now that you’re stuck with me you’ve been trying to make the best of a bad lot, but what you really wish is that I’d never come here in the first place.”

“Timothy, it’s not-”

“Yes, it is. I can tell.” He was shaking now, though with cold or anger he couldn’t tell. He felt hollow inside, like an empty cage: His last hope of security had flown and there was nobody he could count on now, not even himself. “Fine. I’ll go. I’ll stay out of your way. And I won’t touch your precious Oak again.”