Magpie 5: Silver

Merle empties the cupboard under the stairs because the boiler engineer is due to come later today. She works methodically, pulling out old shoes, a stack of magazines and a box of tangled Christmas lights. The air smells of dust and old pipe lagging. At the very back, pressed against the wall, sits a small wooden trunk.

She hasn’t opened it in years. She knows what it is, but doesn’t think about what’s inside.

She lifts it out and sets it on the hallway carpet. The lid sticks for a moment, then opens with a soft crack of old varnish.

The first thing she sees is a folded jumper: home knitted, navy blue, with two buttons missing. Robin’s. She touches it lightly, then places it aside. It no longer smells of him. It just smells of the trunk. Beneath it lies a toy car, chipped at the edges. A threadbare teddy, its fur matted flat. A single feather, grey and white. The kind Robin used to collect from the garden and present to her as if it were magic.

She remembers taking these things from his room before her parents cleared his effects. Not because they meant anything in particular, but purely because they were his.

At the bottom of the trunk, half-hidden under the teddy, is a small piece of seaside tat: a plastic lighthouse keyring from Dovercourt Bay. Red and white, the paint scuffed. Nothing like the real thing. She remembers the day they bought it. The heat, the breeze from the sea, the smell of chips, Robin running ahead along the promenade, clutching the keyring as if it were treasure.

She turns it in her hand. It feels sticky with age. She puts it down.

Bedide the keyring is a small silver-coloured locket. It is only cheap metal and its plating is worn to a dull grey. She picks it up. It’s lighter than she remembers and feels cold against her palm. She used to wear it every day after Robin vanished. She wore it until the metal tarnished and irritated her skin. She wore it until she couldn’t bear the weight of it on her throat. Then she put it away.

She opens the locket. Its hinge resists, then gives way. Inside is a tiny photograph of Robin, aged maybe eight or nine, smiling awkwardly at the camera. The edges of the picture are trimmed to fit the cavity. The image is faded and slightly foxed, but still him.

Merle sits back on her heels, despite her protesting muscles. She doesn’t cry. She doesn’t make a sound. She doesn’t move for a long while.

She remembers wearing the locket, but not the day when she stopped. She remembers the rash on her neck; the way the metal darkened; the way she kept touching it without realising. She remembers the summer after Robin disappeared as a blur of heat and silence, her parents moving through the house like shadows.

She closes the locket. The clasp doesn’t quite catch. She places it back in the trunk, along with the lighthouse keyring, the feather, the teddy, the toy car, the jumper. She closes the lid and slides the trunk back into rear of the cupboard. The shoes can go to the charity shop, the magazines to the recycling bin and the broken Christmas lights into the rubbish.

The boiler ticks behind the cupboard door. Outside, a parliament of magpies sits, their cries sharp and metallic, until they fall silent.

Merle stands, cradling her aching back. She dusts her hands on her jeans and continues clearing up. The engineer will be here at ten o’clock.

 

 

Magpie 6: Gold

The heat has eased by evening, leaving the air warm but thankfully breathable. Ava and Corin walk home together, not talking much. They cut across the scrubland, the long grass brushing their legs. The sky is turning gold, the kind of hue that makes everything look slightly unreal.

Ava keeps her hands in her pockets. The folded Jackie page is there, crumbling at the edges. She doesn’t look at it. She doesn’t think about it. But she feels its presence: a small square of paper pressing lightly against her thigh.

Corin walks a little ahead. The coin is in his pocket, warm from his hand. He doesn’t know why he kept it. He doesn’t know why he hasn’t told Ava. He only knows it feels like something he shouldn’t have, yet not throw away.

They reach the hillock near the allotments, where the land dips toward the culvert. A sound rises from the far end of the scrubland: a soft rush, like wind blowing through a tunnel. Ava stops. Corin turns.

Above the trees, a flock of starlings lifts into the air. Hundreds of them, maybe even thousands. They move as one body, folding and unfurling. A dark ribbon twisting against the golden sky. The murmuration swells and tightens, then spills outward like ink dropped in water.

Ava watches, her breath caught in her throat. Corin stands beside her, still and silent.

The birds shift again, forming a shape that isn’t a shape... a curve, a dip, a hollow... something that looks momentarily deliberate, then dissolves. The flock moves toward the horizon, the radiance catching their wings, burnishing them briefly like sheets of brass.

Ava feels something in her chest. Not fear and not wonder, but a kind of pressure... as if the air is wrapping itself around around them. She thinks of the folded page in her pocket, the childish wish written in faded biro. She thinks of Merle’s face when she handed her the tin box. She thinks of the hollow tree and the magpie’s wings.

Corin feels the same pressure, though he doesn’t know how to name it. He thinks of the culvert, the dead blackbird, the ring stamped with a year older than he can imagine. He thinks of Uncle Jack’s voice, flat and unbothered. He thinks of the way the ground felt under his feet: unstable, as if something were stirring.

In the distance, the murmuration tightens one final time, then breaks apart. The birds scatter in different directions, dissolving into the evening.

Ava exhales. Corin shifts his weight. Neither speaks.

As they walk home side by side, the air feels changed, as if something has passed over them, or through them, or simply near enough to be felt. They don’t talk about the starlings. They don’t talk about the objects. They don’t talk about anything at all. The suburb settles around them, quiet and ordinary, holding its secrets the way it always has.

A row of half a dozen magpies sits on Merle’s back garden fence watching them impassively, apparently unmoved by the aerial display.

Ava touches the folded page in her pocket. Corin closes his hand around the coin.

 

 

Magpie 7: Secret

The evening is warm, the sun spinning its rays into soft golden filaments that make the scrubland look older and more mythical than it is. Merle stands at the edge of the allotments, watching Ava and Corin playing whatever game they’ve invented among the hawthorn and between the brambles. She’s come here for no good reason she can say out loud.

Jack is closing up his plot for the night, tying the shed door shut and brushing soil from his hands. He nods at Merle, then at the children, then at the sky, as if acknowledging all three in the same gesture.

Ava and Corin drift toward the adults, not quite ready to go home. Ava has the folded Jackie page in her pocket. Corin has the coin in his. Merle has the locket in the trunk under the stairs. Jack has a memory he has never shared.

A magpie lands on the shed, calling sharply. Another joins it. Then a third. Then four more. The birds hop along the corrugated iron roof, restless, flicking their wings. The sound is metallic and insistent.

Ava watches them, her face composed. Corin looks up too, his hand unconsciously touching his pocket. Merle folds her arms, feeling the air shift towards evening. Jack pauses, wondering whether to shoo the birds away.

The magpies call again, louder this time, as if urging something to happen.

Jack clears his throat. “You know,” he says, almost to himself, “I saw him once. That evening. Robin. Just walking. Down by the path behind here.”

Merle turns slightly, but not fully. Ava glances at Corin. Corin looks at the ground.

Jack continues, still half-talking to the air. “Didn’t think anything of it. Kids wandered them days.”

He shrugs, a small movement, barely visible. “Thought I saw you with him,” he mutters to Merle. “Funny what you remember.”

Merle doesn’t answer. She’s thinking of the locket and its tiny photograph; the way she used to touch it without realising. Ava is thinking of the spell in her pocket; the childish wish written in faded biro. Corin is thinking of the coin, the dead blackbird, the culvert. Jack is thinking of the moment he never reported, the moment that might have mattered, until the memory is gone again.

The magpies shift again, hopping around on the roof with their wings half-spread. The light catches their feathers, turning them briefly blue-black, then tarnished silver.

Ava steps closer to Merle. Corin stands beside Jack. None of them speak.

The birds call once more, then lift off together with a sudden flurry of wings, rising into the darkening sky before scattering across the scrubland.

The moment breaks as the air cools and the light fades.

Merle touches Ava’s shoulder. “Come on,” she says. “You should be getting home.”

Corin follows without looking back. Jack looks momentarily confused, then joins them.

They walk to their separate houses together: four figures moving through the same landscape, each carrying their own small secret... the spell, the coin, the locket, the memory... none of them shared and none of them resolved.

Behind them, the magpies settle in the trees and their calls fade into the distance.