Night Owls: Chapter One: The Pillow Case

Making a peanut butter sandwich is one thing. Making said sandwich in the middle of the night while it is raining - 

Actually, Madeleine found, the sandwich will taste the same, but the memory of that sandwich will be much different. In your mind you'll still feel the rain speckling the windowsill and hear the stars watching from somewhere behind the silent clouds.

Belly full, she retreated upstairs. Silent, she leaned her head against the window glass. Startlingly, a rock hit the frame right near her face, and she careened off of the sill onto the green shag rug. 

She grabbed an empty Chex mix bag - the only weapon handy - and crept back to the window, fully expecting a robber, Slenderman, a penguin army, something. But as usual, the Thing Throwing the Rocks was the Thing that caused most of the havoc around the neighborhood - The Dog.

The Dog had been living around the streets for forever. Many people claimed that even their grandparents had been acquainted with him. Whatever the case, he just hung around. Unable to stand unnamed things, Madeleine had named him Alan, Al for short.

The Dog threw another rock; he was exceptionally skilled at this. He would take it in his mouth, spin around several times, and then send it slinging towards his target, serenaded by a comet of drool trailing off of it, slicing through the rain. Funny how a drool-draped rock could become something so poetic.

Madeleine opened the window. Rain splashed against her face and the windowsill and the green shag rug. The last rock had fallen on the window ledge, and she hefted it - still sticky. 

"Hello, Alan", she called softly into the night, and he greeted her with a solitary bark.

A rickety trellis stuttered down the side of the house, and she reached out, grasping it in her rain-sweaty hands, swinging her feet onto it. She was careful not to touch the cord of the microwave, which was currently on the roof. And she slid down the plasticky wood, which Kevin Larrison had once climbed up with two broken arms, and went to meet The Dog.

The mud almost immediately swallowed her feet all the way to the cuffs of her pajama pants. Alan trotted up to her in a merry, calm fashion, panting-smiling, wagging his scraggly tail. Madeleine reached out to touch his ancient head, and fell promptly into the mud when her grasping hands found only empty air. Alan was dancing on his paws a bit farther ahead, expecting her to follow.

In bare feet she pattered through the front lawns of her neighbors, more than once nearly losing sight of The Dog's eager form in the raining dark. Several lurking pincushion cacti lashed out at her, and she stumbled. 

She did not know where they were going. But after the raging surge of emotion and confusion that had been plaguing her, she was grateful only for someone else to take the role of the compass, and to at least have a destination.

In the rain her memory was foggy, and the streets loomed and seemed unfamiliar to her dripping eyes. But as she broke through a bank of thistly hedges, she realized where she was. Dale Drive. Bathed in its own glow stood a little house, just to the right of the middle, front porch light bouncing off of red brick, and for a fleeting moment she felt its worn tile beneath her feet; then she came back to reality and found only mud and cold between her toes.

There was no light on in the far right windows.

Luke lived here.

Luke was a night owl to the power of ten, often exceeding Madeleine's own late bedtime by several hours. He was her best friend and trusted confidant, and basically a bird magnet. Random birds often gathered around him went he went out, perching on his car expectantly, and there were usually several racking their brains against his windowpanes. 

Where do birds go when it rains? she wondered fleetingly, before pushing the thought away and noticing that there were no birds tonight. Often they slept in piles of feathers and talons, stacked against one another close to the house, as if to get closer to him. But tonight the only sign of birds was left in residual feathers scattered about the right side of the house. 

Again, she observed, the light was not on.

Alan was trotting by now to the house, finding a sizable rock on the ground, and spinning several times, finding his aim. Whoosh, he let it go at the optimal moment, and a loud crack was heard. If dogs could wince, Alan did. Madeleine shuddered at the spiderweb crack in the corner of the bedroom window. 

And if dogs could shrug, Alan did. He selected another rock, more carefully this time. Madeleine rushed to stop him, tripped on something slippery, and was once again greeted by the mud. Tap, went the rock, and Alan did a happy dance in place at the absence of cracks. Jovially, he snatched up several more pebbles. Thwack, thwack, thump. The third hit Madeleine in the head. Stars and butterflies blossomed through the clouds for a moment, before she found that her eyes were closed, and the stars belonged only to her.

She army-crawled to the window and pulled herself up on the sill.

Her eyes met with an empty room.

Satisfied with himself, Alan fell pointedly onto his haunches. This had been his intention all along: to show her that Luke was undoubtedly missing.

"You make everything so complicated", Madeleine chastised him. 

Alan raised his eyebrows: Your point, mademoiselle?

Madeleine shook her head. "If only you could speak, Alan."

(Silly how often it was that Saint Rivas's cloudy skies found her out barefoot in the middle of the night, talking to a dog.)

She peered once again in the window, hoping her eyes had betrayed her. Yet the bed lay still bare, its sheets undimpled, and the pillow was cold. (Of course there was no way of telling this but...it just looked cold.)

Dimly, she thought, he would need it, and forced the window open, and discarded the screen, and took the pillow in her arms. 

Lost again. She stood in the darkening rain, staring at nothing. A good ten minutes went by before she noticed the sneezing. Alan was eating the drenched feathers. In comedic bursts, they shot forth from his nostrils into the downpour. Sporadic and clumpy, they seemed to be birds in themselves, flying free for a short time before alighting clumsily in the mud. And suddenly she got the point: follow the birds.

She plopped down upon the damp ground, hugging the soaked pillow tightly, gazing at the sky, waiting.

Five minutes. The squawk of a swallow being magnetized against its will, desperate feathers drifting to land on Madeleine's head and shoulders, as Luke's incredible pull yanked it towards the east. Madeleine stumbled up onto her toes and scrambled like eggs on a griddle. Cheerfully, Alan loped at her heels. She envied The Dog's practiced grace in navigating the greedy earth, and suspected he might even have been hovering a little. 

In the air above them, the victimized swallow tumbled and protested loudly. Abruptly, their scraggly compass veered to the right with an incredible shriek, and Madeleine once again flew downwards. Up, up again as Alan yanked at her sleeve with his withered jowls and - south they went. 

The soaking earth gave way to prickling gravel, ripping at the soles of Madeleine's feet. She glanced downwards on one occasion and confirmed that, yes, The Dog was hovering. You learn something new every day, she thought ironically. She dropped the pillow into the gravel a few times. She scooped it up, and the leftover pebbles embedded themselves into her forearms. 

That little swallow once again changed course abruptly, this time to the west. Madeleine's feet skittered over the gravel - she had been working on hovering like the dog, and it wasn't working - and she went sprawling onto her side. 

"NYAAAGH", she growled in frustration, before clawing her way back to her feet and stumbling after Alan and the bird. 

She would hover, someday. She would get it right. It was another thing to add to her bucket list. If she could do this, this one thing, correctly, then perhaps everything else would be resolved. Madeleine concentrated intently on her feet. Were they an inch off the ground? More like a millimeter, maybe? You just had to step really fast, she concluded, so that both feet were off the ground at the same time, and then keep on stepping really fast, so neither of them touched the ground.

So focused was she on this trivial thing that she did not notice when their course veered gently west, and more swallowing mud took the place of the harsh gravel. She was unheeding of the gentle part in the clouds, and Polaris peeking out to watch her journey. And - she was doing it! She was hovering! Just for a second, she was sure - 

And then she slammed forcefully into something hard. Her own personal stars, in rainbow constellations, prevailed over her vision again, and she was on her side on rigid concrete. Something swam and shuddered in her vision. What are you - and the sun rose behind her and Alan, bathing them in orange. Wet fur slipped and slid under her. She smelled carpet.

Madeleine became aware of someone draping a towel over her shoulders, and general hullabaloo. What are you doing out so early in the morning? It's raining, didn't you notice? Who is this dog?????

"Madeleine, there's a branch in your hair." She felt a yank as Luke removed the offensive twig. She realized with a jolt that she was in his living room, and the couch beneath her was becoming slowly drenched.

"You slammed into my front door", he told her, "and then this random dog carried you inside. Where have you been?"

She remembered something gravely important. "I have your pillow", she told him urgently, offering the sodden, muddy lump. 

"Thank you", he said graciously, taking it gently from her.

She grinned madly. "I knew you would need it."

"Have you been up all night?"

Madeleine shrugged. "I had a sandwich."

Luke shook his head. "Oh, Maddi."

"Where did you go? I came here and you were missing."

He appeared to be mildly disturbed. "I'm going to ignore the fact that you came to my house in the middle of the night. I got up to get a drink, and when I came back, my pillow was missing. I thought That Dog had taken it, and so I went all the way around the neighborhood looking for it."

"Me and Alan just followed the birds", she said proudly, rubbing The Dog's dripping head. 

"The two of you must have been just a few yards behind me. I don't know how you didn't see me."

"I was hovering", Madeleine answered. "Want me to show you?" She got up from the couch and onto her feet, fully prepared to hover all the way around the room. Luke looked horrified. 

"I think you need to sleep, silly goose", he said. And she must have fallen asleep around then, because she woke up on her own green shag rug with the stormy noon light bathing her gently. Her head throbbed, and she heard a thunk at the window. She pulled herself up on the window ledge and grabbed the pebble. Still sticky. She leaned out over the sill and saw The Dog laughing up at her, tail wagging in circles. Madeleine reached out for the trellis, which Kevin Larrison had once climbed up with both arms broken. Adventure awaited.