On Magpies

This short story was part of a project by New Perspectives Theatre, and will be released as a podcast later in 2022. 

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Hope is the thing with feathers.

The only thing with feathers around here is that battered old magpie who lives in the bushes behind the bus stop on the main road. Oil slick feathers shining sapphire blue, jade green, jet black. As capricious as the weather, or the price of bread and bus fares. 

She’s my magpie, although she doesn’t know it. She’s always making a nuisance of herself, cackling like a badly-drained bath as she sifts for scraps in the gravel by the twitchell between the terraces. 

There’s this old English rhyme about magpies. It’s at least three hundred years old, and it’s supposed to tell your future, based on how many birds you see in one place. 

One for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl, four for a boy. Five for silver, six for gold, seven for a secret, never to be told. 

My magpie seems pretty lonely, although she never tells anyone that. Instead, she’s digging through the dirt, or pulling abandoned fast-food packets from the bins. A group of magpies is called a mischief, but one magpie is just a problem to be solved. A single, solitary set of oil-slicked feathers flashing between parked cars, in search of roadkill or dropped chips. 

I watch a solitary school kid waiting at the bus stop. Scratching scuffed trainers in the dirt, staring at the streaming traffic. The kids in this town have had their fledgeling feathers repeatedly ruffled in recent years. Wings clipped by a world that thinks they are always making a nuisance of themselves, searching for second chances in twitchells and burst bin bags. I want to smooth down their busted plumes – sooth them with something soft – but I am digging for scraps in the gravel too. 

I construct a bird table in the back yard, and fill it with sunflower seeds. I want my magpie to feel wanted. Her solitude is no bad omen to me. My future is not her responsibility, unless it is, and if it is, then I will make sure she is well-fed. Some superstitions work, whether you believe in them or not. 

In class, I fill the kids’ pockets with sunflower seeds. Tell them how it feels to fly, and fall, and fly again. Each conversation is encouragement: smooth down your own feathers, and the feathers of your friends. Listen to the hummingbird beat of your tiny heart, and catch the currents that will lift you. 

My magpie visits the bird table often. There are more birds here now, and my magpie sits stoically with the starlings, the blackbirds, the little chaffinches chirruping nervously. I think they are friends, but you can never be sure with birds. Still, my magpie seems happy to be in good company. I haven’t seen her hunting for scraps in the twitchell for days. 

One kid asks to borrow a book after class – the collected works of Emily Dickinson – and shows me the poems scrawled in the back of his notebook. Another patiently explains how electricity works in a circuit, and tells me she’s going to be a sparky so she can Light Up the Dark Places. One kid tells the whole class he is going to be a drag queen, and no one laughs or pecks at his feathers with their sharp teenage beaks. At lunch, they share their sunflower seeds. 

Later, I watch a flock of kids at the bus stop. One girl brushes the dust from another girl’s blazer. One kid smiles as he passes a book to a friend, and a boy tentatively marks the cut crease of his eyelid with a liner pen. 

Mischief is just another name for change.  

Overhead, I see flashes of feathers soaring above the dual carriageway. Two magpies. Two magpies. Two for joy. 

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