Magpie 3: Girl

Ava walks across the scrubland after school, cutting through the narrow path between the hawthorn and the old sycamore. The air is warm and close, still clutching the heat from the day. She likes this part of her walk home: the way the land feels slightly forgotten and slightly wild, like it hasn’t decided whether it belongs to the suburb or to its wooded past.

She hears birds before she sees them. A trio of magpies, chattering sharply and hopping along the branches of the hollow tree near the fence. One drops down to the trunk, pecking at the rim of the hollow. Bits of bark fall away. The bird tugs at something inside, then flutters off.

Ava stops to watch. The second magpie flicks its wings and follows, landing on the edge of the hollow. It pecks once, twice, then pulls out a clump of dry debris: bits of softened bark, old leaves and accumulated dirt. The debris falls to the ground. The magpie tilts its head, loses interest and flies off after its companion.

Ava steps closer. Something pale is revealed inside the hollow: a yellowed sheet of paper, folded into a tight square. She wouldn’t have noticed it if the magpies hadn’t disturbed the tree. She wouldn’t have looked twice if she hadn’t paused to watch them.

She reaches in carefully, her fingers brushing the rough inner bark. The paper is stiff and brittle at the edges. She pulls it out. It’s folded into quarters, the creases deep and sharp. A few fragments of thin plastic cling to its surface. The remains of a sandwich bag, maybe. The kind her mum still uses for packed lunches.

She unfolds the paper. It crackles softly and threatens to split apart.

It’s a page from a magazine: faded, but glossy and still legible. A decorative border of stars and hearts surrounds a fancy title printed in looping pink letters:

MAKE A WISH — AND KEEP IT SECRET!

Below it, a short column of instructions: Fold this page three times. Hide it somewhere special. Write your wish in the box. If no one finds it for seven days, your wish will come true.

Ava smiles despite herself. It’s silly and childish. The kind of thing she might have done when she was nine years old, but not now.

At the bottom of the page is a blank box, outlined by dramatic swirls and highlighted in gold. Inside it, in faded purple biro, someone has written a few uneven and crudely joined-up words:

I wish Robin would leave me alone.

Ava reads it twice. She knows who Robin is. Everyone does, in the way they know old legends without knowing their factual origins.

She folds the page up again, carefully, along its original creases. The paper feels fragile, as if it might tear if she handles it too carelessly.

She looks toward Merle’s house. The back garden is as quiet as ever, the bird table casting its lengthy shadow across the lawn. She imagines handing the page to Merle. Imagines Merle’s face tightening again, the way it did when she saw the tin. Imagines the silence that would follow.

It feels wrong. Not wrong like a lie. Wrong like... trespass... This isn’t something Merle lost. It’s something she hid deliberately.

Ava slips the folded page into her pocket. It sits there lightly, barely noticeable. She brushes her fingers against the fabric of her skirt, feeling the faint outline of the paper.

The remaining magpie is still hopping along the dead branch above her head. It calls sharply; a sound that echoes across the scrubland.

Ava walks home. She doesn’t look back at the hollow tree. She doesn’t tell Corin what she found. She doesn’t tell anyone. The page stays in her pocket, folded, concealed and secret. The wish written inside it feels like something she should never have seen.

 

 

Magpie 4: Boy

Corin cuts across the scrubland instead of following the pavement home. The heat has seeped into the ground. The air feels thick and dusty. He follows the narrow footpath past the hawthorn, then veers left, toward the place he isn’t supposed to go.

The culvert sits at the far edge of the scrubland, half-hidden by bramble and elder. It’s not really a culvert anymore, just the collapsed remains of an old drainage system, forming a shallow dip in the land where concrete fragments poke through the soil like broken teeth. Adults say the ground is unstable. Kids say it’s haunted. Corin doesn’t believe either, but he knows he’s not meant to be here.

He steps down into the dip. The earth is dry and cracked. A fox has dug at one corner, leaving a scatter of disturbed soil. Something dark lies near the fox scrape: the body of a bird, with its wings folded awkwardly.

A blackbird. Dead.

Corin crouches to look closer. It seems recent. Its feathers are still glossy and its remains intact. No sign of injury. Just dead. He nudges it gently with a stick. It doesn’t move.

Clutched in its talons, something glints. He eases the toes apart to release a tiny metal ring. It is silvery but soft. Probably aluminium. It is stamped with small, neat letters:

BRITAIN 76 A421

He turns it between his fingers. Seventy-six. He doesn’t know much about bird rings, but he knows blackbirds don’t live fifty years.

The culvert feels suddenly claustrophobic as the air grows heavier. He pockets the ring, then climbs out and heads toward the allotments. The path becomes more defined as it leads to a patchwork of sheds, water butts and vegetable plots. His uncle Jack is tying up bean canes. His shirt is damp with sweat and he wears his cap pushed back on his head.

Corin approaches. “Uncle Jack?”

Jack glances over. “You’re out late.”

“I found something.” Corin holds out the ring.

Jack takes it and squints at the lettering. “Ah. Bird ring.” He turns it in his fingers. “That’ll be from the BTO. They stamp the year they issue them. You find old ones in the soil sometimes.”

Corin nods, feeling both relieved and disappointed at the same time.

Jack hands it back. “Where’d you get it?”

Corin hesitates. “Down by the culvert.”

Jack pauses, the twine in his hand slackening. “You shouldn’t be down there. Your mum wouldn’t like it.”

“Why?”

Jack shrugs, tying the twine again. “Old story. Someone went missing. Long time ago.”

Corin waits.

Jack sighs and wipes his forehead with the back of his hand. “Robin. Merle’s brother. You’ve heard it.”

Corin has, but only in fragments. Whispered versions from kids who weren’t born yet. Barely articulated warnings from adults who don’t explain themselves.

Jack straightens the bean cane. “Ground’s unstable down there. Always has been. Best keep away.”

He says it lightly and without drama, as if the disappearance were just another thing that happened in the suburb before Corin was born. Like the new estate being built, or the out-of-town shopping centre.

Corin nods. “Okay.”

Jack goes back to his beans. Corin walks home, the ring warm in his pocket. He doesn’t know why the blackbird died. He doesn’t know why the ring was there. He doesn’t know why the culvert feels different now, as if the ground remembers something that people don’t. He only knows that the ring says 76; that Uncle Jack said it must have belonged to another bird; that the place he isn’t supposed to go feels full of old stories that no one tells anymore.

He keeps the ring. He doesn’t tell Ava or Merle about it.