"What? What is?" demands Missy. "Don't you remember?" Pandora whirls to her with black brilliant eyes, "remember when we worked at the Bird Lady's house last week? To make money for Halloween and stuff? We worked taking things out of her basement to the sidewalk."

"Oh yeah, I remember!" shouts Missy.

 

CHAPTER 2
THE BIRD LADY

Ah yes, the Bird Lady. Nobody could remember when she wasn't puttering mysteriously in her big old house, and nobody could remember how old she was. As a young woman she must have been beautiful. She still was. Her long raven hair still had a gloss without a single gray strand. Her black eyes shown with a queer light of their own and was surrounded by a fine network of lines and crinkles that drew you-like in a net-to her powerful gaze with their eagle brows arching.

 

Thing was, though, she never looked at anybody. If you ever locked eyes with her, it was an accident. And when you did, she didn't looked at you so much as she looked through you-as if you weren't there. And for sure she didn't care if you were there or not-it wasn't just you; it was everybody. Even her son had a bad time and he was a city councilman.

History had it that the Bird Lady's grandfather grew rich without having to do much. He just bought a hundred square feet of property every mile or so on the roads outside of town until the town grew out to them. For some strange reason all these plots became the crossroads of the growing town, and he owned all the crossroads. He built a big mansion and had one son. His one son married and had one daughter. The daughter took to keeping birds. After ten years, the summer porch and plant room became full of feathered creatures. After ten more years the two living rooms, the pantry, six alcoves, three rooms added on with windows on all sides, housed little birds, bigger birds, and birds bigger than that. After ten more years, passers-by could hear chirps and screeches from the second story. Ten more years and the third story chirped. The Bird Lady seemed to live on the third story, if only because that's where the few lights in the house were turned on at night. But then, many midnights she was seen walking around her big yard and opening and shutting windows on all floors.