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Prospero ran a length of string in his jaws up the frame of the window, over the head jamb, and down the other side of the frame. The string rested in the molding over the window, and worked almost like a pulley. “Only not so easy, eh?” laughed Prospero, as he slowly raised Tildy off the ground. The string bit a little under her arms, but she was a light little thing after all, and the breezes later were worth a little pinching now.
Prospero wrapped the end of the string around a raised nail head on the floor, and ran back up the frame to help Tildy in place.
“I should be able to move myself, now,” laughed Tildy, as Prospero settled her gently onto the shelf. Prospero looked puzzled. “Well, you love me, don’t you?”
“For your sake, I wish it worked that way, dear Matilda May.”
Prospero and Tildy sat together, watching the sun come up from the shelf, until the sun burned bright in the sky. When Prospero bid good day to Tildy, she still watched the yard. She could still see the car in her imagination, as she had so many times before, pulling away, kicking up gravel dust.
If only Tildy had real tears.
Although she didn’t need to do it, Tildy missed sleeping, and so she rested every so often just to remember. Tildy was practicing that soft, slow feeling as the sun came up a few weeks after Prospero had moved her.
Prospero’s
gentle whiskers brushed her hand, and she felt him next to her on the
shelf; it was almost as pleasant as waking next to Addy. Tildy was just
about to say so when the window exploded with a crash and a shattering
of glass shards all over the room.
“Crow!” Prospero cried, and looked as if he were about to run.
“If you sail off the shelf,” Tildy said firmly, “You might as well say goodbye to me right now. He’ll pick you right out of the air.”
“If I hide behind you, what’s to stop him from knocking you over and picking me off?” Prospero whispered fiercely. “And then where will you be?”
Tildy, even in that frenzied moment of black beating wings and barking caws, was moved by his concern. “Crow!” she cried out, angry. “You should leave. You are not welcome here, and you may not take my only friend.”
The crow grew still, and gave a long, low, “Caaaaaawww.” It was a hungry, begging sound, a sound for forgiveness. Matilda May sat firm, for she was betting the crow did not know that she could not move.
Surprisingly, it was the first thing he mentioned. “I have seen you, here, in the window, daytime and night. I think that you must be trapped in stillness, else you’d long have left this place as the humans did.”
“Trapped I may be,” said Tildy, “and if it’s true, more cruel you for trying to kill my only company, but maybe, I belong to a human who is coming back. Maybe, any time.”
The crow’s black eyes softened. “I am a crow, and my job is to eat what others leave behind, and what I can catch for myself and my sisters and brothers. I can leave you one mouse.”
Prospero still did not move.
“How do we know you mean what you say?” asked Tildy.
“You may only be sure that a crow will not lie, except to an owl. I am Uriel, and I roost with my family in the old bare willow five miles north of this place. I am hunting, so I will go now. Your mouse is as safe as you are, clothling -- at least, you are safe from me.”
Uriel, to Tildy’s great surprise, came back after that, and never once did he move to harm Prospero. A meat-eater, Uriel didn’t enjoy the same foods as Prospero, but the crow often brought nuts in his long black beak as a token of peace. Once, Tildy asked him why.
Uriel gave a slim crow’s grin, and chuckled softly. “I am fond of the little mouse.”
“It seems so odd for a crow to be fond of a mouse, though, Uriel.”
“Not so strange,” Prospero said, a little huffy. “There’s nothing wrong with this mouse.”
“No, of course not,” Tildy said quickly. “I just meant that you couldn’t be more different. After all, Uriel sleeps at night, and you sleep during the day. Uriel eats meat, and Prospero doesn’t. One of you is large, the other is so small.”
Uriel laughed again, a deep-throated caw. “I think we are very much the same,” he said. “We may not eat the same food, but we both often eat what others leave behind. We are both important in that way.”
“I never thought to be a proud scavenger,” Prospero said.
“You should,” Uriel suggested. “Your family takes care of your little ones, in your home in the garden roses. We crows stay with our mother for years, helping take care of our brother and sister chicks in the roost. We may not sleep at the same time, but when we are awake, we spend time with the same sleepless friend.”
Matilda May smiled, and Prospero brushed his soft whiskers against her hand.
