Kestrel
Short story
Somewhere between the swings and the stone bridge you squat down and bend inquisitively towards the ground. I am way back on the path, navigating the after school throng. I call out to you with a too-sharp weariness, which you ignore, and drag the pram through the grass to see what you have found.
‘Mummy! Mum! Look Mum, it’s a bird!’
Your fingers are jabbing at it, testing its reaction. It cowers, eyes fixed, wings pulling around its body for protection. Talons grasping at the ground as it tries to flap one wing and move away to safety. You look at me and then back at the bird, leaning closer and prodding at it with curiosity.
‘Don’t poke it like that! It’s hurt. Stop it. Come away!’
I look closer too. The bird’s eyes are unblinking inky pools, ringed with yellow, head flecked with grey and white, small hooked beak a powerful tool. It’s feathers are brown, smattered with a pattern of black arrow heads, wings tapered and lean for slicing through the air in pursuit. I snatch at your arms and pull you roughly away. It is not safe here on the ground.
You pout, pull away, pick up a nearby stick and start moving off towards a clump of nettles. I am crouched over the bird, looking over its body for obvious signs of injury, blood or parts bent out of shape. The only obvious injury is the left wing which is held a little outstretched, the feathers ruffled. Slowly, tenderly, I reach out to hold it. The healthy wing flaps vigorously, eyes flashing with alarm, and the bird emits a shrill, sudden cry that makes my heart beat faster. Reaching out slowly, I grip its body in my hands and stand up, feeling its heart beat faster against my palms as wings try to tear it free.
‘Shhh, shhhh. It’s ok, it’s ok. I’m not going to hurt you. Come on, it’s ok.’
I speak softly, gently, holding the bird against my body and examining the beauty of its feathered back and black eyes. It stops flapping and blinks slowly, quivering against my chest. You are returning from the nettles, still curious but a little wary, eyes wider, holding the stick tightly.
‘Look sweetheart, the bird has hurt its wing and we need to take it somewhere to get it checked over by an animal doctor.’
I free my arms from my cardigan and wrap it around the bird, swaddling the wings thinking it might help it stay calm. The baby is asleep in the pram so I gently tuck the bird into my bag. It is still and you are looking up at me with interest.
‘A doctor… for animals?’
‘Yes that’s right. Come on, let’s go home.
You are quiet on the way home, holding the pram and trailing your stick along railings, fences, lamp posts. The bird is quiet too, eyes gently closing as it rests inside my cardigan.
‘Mummy? Is the bird poorly?’
‘Yes sweetie.’
‘Will it be ok?’
‘I hope so.’
The bird shuffles inside my bag as we turn the corner to home, its weight shifting uneasily in the unfamiliar container. We get home and you are tearing through the hallway, running to find your robot, pulling it out of the box of toys that you discard around you in a shower of plastic bricks, cars and aeroplanes. The baby is awake and I sit on the sofa with her feeding, scrolling through my phone to find a local wildlife hospital. She pulls at the skin on my chest, skates her chubby hand across my face, pulling on my bottom lip as I locate a nearby centre and flip the phone to my ear to call them. The answer machine says they are closed for the evening, open again in the morning. We will have to keep her safe through the night and take her tomorrow.
I search for ‘UK birds of prey’ and the picture of a kestrel matches the bird you found. Light chestnut brown with blackish spots, yellow feet and ring around the black eye, brown tail with black bars and a prominent stripe across the cheek. Most likely a female. The bird that is now quietly waiting in the cardboard box we found to keep her in overnight. Your eyes were wide again as we lowered her into the makeshift nest we made after bath time from old newspaper and the soft blanket that you offered up from your bed. Your fingers so gentle as they stroked the feather tips, holding out scraps of chicken to the motionless, unblinking patient.
‘Doubt it’ll last the night’, your Dad said when he came home, a little after bedtime with beer on his breath.
‘We’ll see,’ I replied, feeding the baby again, scrolling through screens of surgically enhanced bodies, car bombs, rising sea levels, earthquakes, bombed out cities and ways to whiten your teeth.
I check on you before I go to bed, my fingers lingering on the warmth of your soft cheek, your mouth slightly open, eyelids flickering while you dream. I kiss your forehead and you stir, snuggling into your duvet as I sneak out of the room. Downstairs in the kitchen, the kestrel is still. She has shuffled to the edge of the box and her eyes are closed as she leans into your blanket.
The house is dark and quiet when I take the baby downstairs for a feed. I shuffle on the sofa, as she nuzzles against me, foraging. When we settle, I listen in the darkness for any sounds from the kitchen. I hear the hum of the refrigerator and a distant siren and just maybe the faintest stirring of feathers. With my free hand I search for ‘common kestrel’ again and memorise facts to share with you in the morning. How they eat shrews and voles, prefer open habitat where they can hover above their prey before making a short, steep plunge to the ground. How they lay 3-7 eggs, which only the female incubates. I imagine our kestrel, alert to the world, warming the brown speckled eggs with her body, not leaving until they chip their way out of their oval cocoon to let her know they made it. Like the first time you uncurled your papery red fingers in the incubator, opened your huge eyes and looked for me. You were so small and fragile that I could have held you in one hand. But I couldn’t hold you. In agony, I expressed milk which they fed you through a tube. The warmth of the incubator was keeping you alive. The doctors said you had a 50/50 chance.
Not long before dawn, I wake suddenly from a disturbing dream. I am the kestrel, hovering at a dizzying height over a patchwork of farmers fields. It is cold and bright and I am searching. Searching with keen eyes for a glimpse of you somewhere down there on the ground. Searching for your tiny form, down there looking up. I get up and go to the kitchen, peering through the grey light into the cardboard box. The bird has got closer to the corner, eyes half closed and feathers ruffled to keep warm. I put out a hand and rest it lightly on her back, feeling a tiny tremor of life stirring still.
Later that morning, when we have been through the rituals of dressing and eating and starting again, we drive to the sanctuary with the kestrel. I am no longer sure if she is dead or alive but you brush her head with such tenderness as we leave the box on the reception desk that I feel a lump forming in my throat and I find it hard to make a sound when they ask for my telephone number.
We are in the freezer section of the big Tesco when the volunteer from the sanctuary calls.
‘Hello? Yes, yes speaking. Oh yes, yes we did. This morning. Yes.
Oh right. Right, ok.
Thanks, then. Thanks for letting me know.
Ok, bye.’
You are sliding your feet across the polished supermarket floor, pretending to skate. Gliding on imaginary ice. Laughing and running your hand along the rows of cold cabinets full of frozen meat. I feel the lump rising in my throat and then there are tears that I can’t control, that keep coming and coming from a place of thawing. I feel a part of me rising up and away into the ether, high above the tills and trolleys and bags for life. And now your arms are wide as you turn the corner to the next aisle, ready to soar.
‘Kestrel’ was written in 2020 - West Sussex Mind Short Story Competition