Owl and berry branch design

The owl is back in the old damson at the bottom of Harker's orchard, and it has been watching me all week as if I owe it rent. Mum says it is only a tawny come down from the woods for the mice in the windfalls, but it sits too straight for a tawny, with those little horns lifted like it is listening for someone to say its name.

We have been picking since Tuesday. The branches are so heavy the ladders wobble, and the baskets come down the lane on Pell's handcart stained purple to the elbow. The hawthorn along the hedge has gone red too, great hanging clusters of it, and I think of you saying the birds would strip the whole county before the frost. Up in the tree the owl ignores all of us. It just turns its head, slow, the way Dad used to when he had caught you at something.

Last night I took the torch down after supper and climbed the bottom rung. The owl did not fly. It looked at me from six feet away with its eyes gone flat and grey, and I felt, absurdly, like I had been checked against a list and found mostly acceptable. I left a bowl of bruised plums on the wall and came home.

Dad says the blue pencil you took from the dresser is still in his coat, and he would like it back before the owl gets ideas about the rest of the house. Come home by Saturday and bring it with you. The gate at the bottom is open.

Love, Nell