The Magic Cottage

She turned her head as if looking for approaching gamekeepers with loaded shotguns. 'I don't like it here. I feel as though we're being watched.'

I rose, brushing bits of grass off my jeans. 'You're incredible. Nothing could be more peaceful and you've turned to jelly.'

'I just feel uncomfortable. Let's go, can we, Mike?' Now I regarded her with some concern; there was an anxiety in her tone that the situation hardly called for. 'Okay, Midge,' I said, taking her hand, 'we're on our way.'

We walked back to the trees and I took one last peek at the gray house before entering the shadowy preserve. From that distance, Bleak House looked innocent enough.

We found the injured thrush some time later when we were almost through the woods, returning along the same path as our outward journey (at least Midge assured me it was the same path). She led the way unerringly while I followed behind, fingers tucked into the pockets of my jeans, occasionally whistling the dwarfs' Hi-ho song.

Midge gave me a start when she suddenly stopped dead and pushed out an arm against my chest. I froze, lips still shaped in a whistle.

'What's wrong?' I whispered, but she only waved her hand at me, then crouched low on the path. I heard a frantic scuffling movement and I dropped down myself.

Midge cleared foliage beside the path and a tiny, sharp cheep warned her off. The bird peered up at us with black startled eyes and twisted its head around in frightened jerks.

'Oh, poor little guy,' Midge cried sympathetically. 'Look, Mike, he's got a broken wing.'

I shuffled closer on my haunches and the distressed bird flapped at the earth with its good wing, desperate to get away. Midge put out a gentle hand and its struggles immediately calmed, although it still eyed me with some alarm. She cooed softly and to my amazement the bird let her finger stroke its spotted chest.

'He's a mistle thrush,' Midge quietly told me. 'He must have flown into a tree or become tangled in bushes. It doesn't look like he's been attacked by any other animal— there's no signs of blood or wounds anywhere.'

I studied the gray-brown bird for a moment, noticing how Midge's stroking was having an almost hypnotic effect on it; the dark eyes were becoming lidded as though the thrush were nodding off to sleep. 'What are we going to do with it?' I whispered.

'We can't leave him here. He'd never last the night with all the predators in the forest.'

'We can't take it home.'

'Why not? We could keep him safe and warm for tonight, then tomorrow I'll take him into Cantrip or Bunbury, wherever there's a vet.'

'Midge, the bird's wing is too badly broken—you can see how badly twisted it is. Even if the shock doesn't kill it, that wing's never gonna mend.'

'You'd be surprised how tough these little guys are; he can be taken care of, you'll see.' She cupped her hands around the thrush's sides and slowly lifted, the bird protesting only mildly. Midge cradled it against her chest and I think the thrush appreciated the comfort, because the shutters closed down completely and it seemed to fall asleep. She gazed down at the small feathery body snuggled against her with such tenderness that I felt something inside me melting. Soft as I was on her, there was always that capacity for extra lump-in-the-throat softness. Call me a sentimental fool.

We both stood and I put one hand over her shoulder as she led the way back along the path, her movement even more graceful so that the injured thrush would be disturbed as little as possible.

Soon I glimpsed a tiny flash of white ahead, and knew we were approaching the forest edge and Gramarye.

But I also glimpsed something else. At least, I thought I did, because when I tried to focus it was gone.

I thought I'd caught sight of a figure standing some distance away among the trees. Midge's attention was still on the bird cushioned in her hands, so I knew she wouldn't have noticed anything. I squinted my eyes again to sharpen my vision, wondering if I'd merely noticed a shadowy bush shifted by a breeze, and scanned that section of woods. Nope, nobody there.

Yet I found it difficult to shake off the impression of someone standing among the trees. A figure dressed in black, perfectly still and watching. Watching us.

A VISITOR

WE RELAXED in the round room that evening, Midge lying on the carpet, her head propped up by cushions, me on the sofa with a guitar—a concert Spanish—tucked into my lap, wine bottle and glass on an occasional table by my side. The hurt thrush was downstairs in the kitchen, resting in a cardboard box lined with soft material, and looking pretty snug if a little mournful. Midge had coaxed a small amount of milk-dipped bread into its beak, and had laid out the broken wing as carefully and as comfortably as she could. Now it was up to the bird itself to pull through.

The sun was almost lost behind the trees and the room was bathed in that rich warm light as before, but this time more mellow, somehow deeply soothing. I touched the soft strings of the guitar, and the notes resonated against the curved walls, filling the room with lovely sounds. Midge didn't just look impressed as I moved into a piece I'd had difficulty with for some time, Paganini's Grand Sonata in A (oh yeah, I'm not only a rock-'n'-roller)—she looked positively entranced. As I was too, with my own music. No part was hesitated over, nowhere did my fingers stumble. I was overjoyed with my own dexterity, my hands confident and strong, the intricacy and the length of the composition never daunting (it always had been in the past). I made mistakes, of course, but they were lost in the flow of bright music, and when I'd finished, I think even old Segovia himself might have given me the nod. As it was, the wonder on Midge's face was enough.

She crawled over and rested an arm across my knees. 'That was . . .' she gave a quick shake of her head '. . . brilliant.'

I held up my hands, palms facing me, and looked at them as though they belonged to someone else. 'Yeah,' I agreed breathlessly. 'I was good, wasn't I? Jesus, I was incredible.'

'More,' she urged. 'Play some more.'

But I laid the guitar down. 'I don't think so, Midge. It's odd, but I don't think I've got any more left in me tonight. Or maybe I don't want to spoil anything—quit while I'm ahead, right?' That was partly the truth—I didn't want to fail with something else—yet there was another reason: I was exhausted. Whatever it had taken to play like that had also drained me of energy, physically and mentally. I slumped back into the sofa, eyes closed and smiling. Oh, that had felt good! Midge snuck up beside me and rested her head against my chest.

'There's magic in Gramarye, Mike, and it's working on us both.'

She'd said the words very quietly and I wasn't sure I'd heard them correctly. I reached for the glass of wine and sipped, content to just sit there, with Midge close and the world—if there really was a world out there— peaceful and still.

By this time, of course, I'd dismissed the lurking figure in the woods as imaginary, my own rationality dulling the memory: why should anyone hide once I'd spotted them, and how could they have disappeared so quickly anyway?

Besides, another event had distracted my mind shortly after, when we reached the cottage itself: the kitchen window had been left open and we discovered Gramarye had a visitor.

The red squirrel was perched on the table finishing off pastie crumbs left on our plates from lunchtime. I'd swung the door open so that Midge could enter carrying the injured thrush, and the squirrel's head had snapped up, then looked in our direction. It saw her first and if animals can smile, this one certainly did. There was no fear in this little beggar at all and it didn't appear to be in any hurry to leave. Our intruder resumed nibbling the crumbs.

Only when I approached the table did the squirrel become skittish. It took one look at me and jumped onto the nearby sideboard, causing the hanging cups and mugs to rattle against each other. I held up a hand in a gesture of peace, but the universal sign meant nothing to the departing animal. It skipped onto the windowsill and with a