One afternoon, just after the reading of the will, Mum got the key to the house out of a drawer. She found a torch. She and Mina put on old clothes, and they walked to Crow Road, to the dark green gate that led to the house. Mum unlocked the gate and they walked through the garden to the DANGER door. Mum unlocked that too. She pushed it open, stepped aside and bowed.
“Welcome to your inheritance, Mistress McKee,” she said in a spooky-sounding voice, and she ushered Mina into the inside darkness.
The house had big rooms, bare floorboards, bare walls. Mum shone the torch up into the corners to show the heavy plasterwork, the wallpaper curling away from the walls, the dangling light fixtures. There were cobwebs everywhere. Little creatures kept scuttling across the floors. Chinks of light shone through the cracks in the boards on the windows. Dust (skin!) danced through the torch beam. They climbed the wide stairways. Their footsteps echoed and echoed through the house.
“What on earth will you be doing with something so large?” said Mum.
“I shall live in it with my servants, of course,” said Mina. “Or I shall establish a school.”
“A school, my lady?”
“Yes. A school for the writing of nonsense and the pursuit of extraordinary activities.”
They climbed three stairways. On the final landing there was a final narrow flight of stairs.
Mum paused.
“This leads to the attic,” she said. She shuddered. “I remember hardly anything of being in this house, but I do remember looking up these stairs and feeling very weird.”
“Weird?” said Mina.
“Yes, scared, and … weird.”
“Let’s go up,” said Mina.
Mum held back.
“Do I dare?”
Mina led the way. The stairs were narrow. She reached towards the attic door and opened it.
They were in a wide room. Light came in from an arched window that had not been boarded. Beyond the window was the park, then the roofs and spires and towers of the city, and the wide wide sky. The window was broken. Glass lay on the floor beneath. There were large bird droppings upon the glass.
“Look!” said Mina.
In one of the walls there was a hole where plaster and bricks had fallen away. Below the hole there were more droppings, a few brown and black feathers and some furry balls. Mum held Mina back.
“A nest!” hissed Mina.
Slowly, slowly, she approached it.
“Mina, take care!” whispered her mother.
But Mina wasn’t scared. The hole in the wall was as high as her head. She stood on tiptoes and peered into the shadowed space. She saw the feathered bodies lying there together. She saw the bodies moving as the birds breathed.
“Oh, Mum! Oh, come and look!”
Her mum came close. She stood on tiptoes, too, and peered in.
“Owls!” whispered Mina. “Sleeping in the day, they must be owls.”
They stared in wonder for a moment, then they backed away. Mum bent down and picked up two of the furry balls.
“Owl pellets,” said Mum.
They crouched against the wall beside the door.
Mum tugged at one of the pellets and broke it apart. She showed fur and skin and tiny bones in her hand.
“They eat their victims whole,” she said. “Whatever can’t be digested is brought up and discarded.”
She put the second pellet into Mina’s hand. Mina held it. Once this furry lump had been a vole or a mouse. Mina watched the nest. She had a vision of the owls rising from their sleep, emerging from the wall, flying out into the city sky. She imagined them hunting in the park.
Outside it was still bright day.
“Mum,” she said. “Let’s stay till night. Let’s see them fly.”
Mum’s eyes were glazed with the reflection of the sky as she looked back at her. She glanced at her watch. Dusk was an hour or more away. But Mina knew that her mum was as enchanted by the vision of the owls as she was herself.
“What if they attack us?” said Mum.
“We’ll get prepared. We’ll open the door. We’ll lie on the stairs and get ready to close it again if they come for us.”
And that’s what they did. They lay on the stairs and they waited. The sky outside the window slowly darkened. They lay together and could feel each other’s beating hearts.
“I don’t know what to do,” said Mum. “We should get the window fixed. It’s letting in the damp.”
“But the owls,” said Mina.
“I know,” said Mum. She shook her head. “What are they doing nesting in the house? They should be in the park, in a tree.”
Mina smiled. It seemed so mysterious and so right. There were owls, creatures of dreams and the night, living in her house!
“I’m uncomfortable,” said Mum. “My knees are getting sore. What kind of silly woman does a thing like this when there’s so much that’s sensible to be done?”
“A silly woman like you,” said Mina. “It won’t be long.”
The shadows in the attic deepened. The sky outside turned orange, red, then inky blue, and then the silveriness of moonlight was in the sky. They lay dead still. They breathed more gently.
“They’re birds of wisdom,” whispered Mum. “They’re the symbol of seeing hidden, secret things.”
“So we should be pleased to have them in the house.”
“Yes, we should be pleased.”
They watched and watched, and then their hearts began to thunder. There was movement in the nest, a rustling of feathers, a sudden low sharp screech.
And Mina and her mother gasped. A bird stood in the hole in the wall: dark feathers, shining eyes. They saw the head turning. Then another bird appeared. Mum held the edge of the door, ready to slam it shut. There was another low screech and then the birds leapt into the air, and seemed massive as they flew a circle around the room. They perched together on the sill for a moment in the moonlight, then they leapt again, and flew out into the night.
They rose to their feet. They gasped and giggled at the thrill of what they’d seen.
“Extraordinary,” whispered Mina, and somewhere far away a hooting started.
Hoot. Hoot hoot hoot.
“We’ll leave the window as it is,” said Mum.
“No we won’t,” said Mina, and she lifted a piece of broken brick from the floor, went to the window and knocked away more of the glass above the sill, making the opening wider and safer for the birds. She gazed out. She imagined leaping, like the birds did, like Icarus did in the story from long ago. She imagined her wings spreading as she swooped over the city.
Then they left the attic. As they entered the stairwell, Mina felt a creature winding itself around her feet.
“Oh,” she gasped, and then she smiled.
“Who’s this?” said Mum.
“My familiar little friend,” said Mina. “I’ve called him Whisper.”
Later, in the house, at the kitchen table, Mina made models of the owls from heavy clay and laid them on the table. She opened up the owl pellet in a bowl of warm water. She loosened the scraps of skin and fur and bone. She laid the fragments of what had been a mouse or a vole on her table. It was still gorgeous, so mysterious. It had been alive, it had been killed by an owl, it had been inside the owl and now it was out again. It was in her fingers, on the palm of her hand, on her table beside a clay model of an owl. Later, in her dreams, she
