Owl on books with balloon on forearm

The owl came through my lane again last night, tucked under a man's coat like a sick cat. Halloran wanted it logged as contraband, so I logged it: one painted wooden owl, round glass eyes, no papers. It was not wooden, as it turned out, but a bird built from the spines of old atlases, pasted together and stacked on a pile of sea-stained encyclopaedias. The man said his daughter made it from her grandfather's books before the river took the house in Sedlec, and that she had asked him to bring it across so it could see the far side of the hills.

Tied to one of its feet was a red balloon on a string so long it trailed along the tarmac behind him. I told him balloons were not permitted in the customs hall. He said the string was the important part, and that the balloon was only there to keep the string up. A crescent moon was pinned to his lapel, cut from tin, and the lace of the cloud-shaped cardboard in his other hand had gone soft at the edges from handling. I stamped his papers and let him pass, which I suppose is what you would have done.

After his taillights went over the rise I found I had written on the manifest, in my smallest hand, 'one owl, accompanied, eyes open'. I am not sure what I meant by it. The night has been long and the booth glass keeps fogging, and I have been drawing little owls in the condensation with my thumb.

At dawn the string was lying across the bonnet of a lorry parked by the bins, and the red balloon was caught in the wire fence on the far side, bobbing like a stop sign. Come in the spring, if you can. I will show you the owl's tail feathers, which I kept.