The Bird Boy

Violet walks past the beautiful cathedral every day on her way to school, yet it's the not the majestic spire or the sweet marble cherubs that she stops to look at.

Violet lived by the river, in a beautiful house with bay windows and a cherry tree in the front garden.

She walked to her school every morning, because her nanny said that fresh air was good for a growing child, so Violet walked down Victoria Avenue and across Tempest Boulevard in rain and shine, she strolled along Michael Street and skipped down Archangel Lane, but the girl always halted before she reached the church.

The old church was built from stone, crafted with such delicacy and skill as to create a city of angels and saints, standing all in a row atop the marble columns. Violet loved the sweet marble cherubs with their sweet little faces, heart-shaped lips and angelic curls, she could look at the statues and take in every detail, inventing personalities and little lives for each one; she could stand before the mighty oaken doors and gaze up at the majestic spire for hours on end.

Yet it was not the beautiful designs which caused her to halt each day, nor was it the cathedral’s stunning architecture, it was the bird boy.

Sitting on the heavenly white steps like a soot-stain on god’s robe sat a small boy. He sat there day and night, well, Violet assumed he did for the child was sitting there whenever she passed by.

He was dressed in rags and his face was stained with dirt, Violet’s nanny always pulled up her skirts when she passed him as though the boy had a terrible illness.

Yet Violet was quite fascinated by him.

He looked around her age, but it appeared to her confusion that he did not attend school at all; she wondered where his parents were and why he didn’t take a bath.  She looked at the child and pondered as to why he didn’t buy nicer clothes and why he was so thin.

Was he a picky eater? Did he turn up his nose when his mother served him roast quail or boiled asparagus, Violet didn’t blame him, she hated greens as well. So the girl felt a slight bond with the bird boy, because he mustn’t enjoy sprouts either, if he grew so bony and pale.

Violet called him the bird boy because, even more so to her astonishment, he was always surrounded by birds. Her mother kept a darling little goldfinch in an ornate bronze cage in the sitting room, but the birds kept by the bird boy were nothing of that sort. They were pigeons, crows and sometimes ducks from the park, birds that her nanny called dirty.

Violet watched her little bird boy as he held out a small, bony arm for those dirty birds to perch on, he fed them sometimes from a little brown paper bag filled with breadcrumbs. She was astonished as to why he would give his food to the horrid pigeons and crows when he was clearly so hungry himself, but maybe he didn’t like bread either. Violet thought his mother must find him quite tiresome, to dislike so many types of foods.

However she was fascinated by him to the greatest extent, she watched him intently as he sat before the cathedral and looked up at the spire, at the clouds and up into heaven.

At least she thought he was looking at heaven at first, perhaps he was praying to god for toys or a proper birthday party like she did, but after a few weeks of following where the bird boys eyes went, Violet realized that he was actually looking at the birds.

That boy must truly love birds, she thought to herself, he looked up into the great blue sky at those smelly pigeons with such a look of longing on his face that she thought perhaps he wished he was a bird.

Violet thought it would be all well and good to fly, but birds don’t get to do any nice things like go to France in the holidays or visit the Victoria and Albert with their nannies.

Oh well, if that silly bird boy, who was too stupid to take a bath, too picky to eat his dinners and too heathen to pray for a proper birthday party wished that he could be a bird, then let him.

And so after months of watching, Violet decided that if her bird boy dreamt of flying away into the clouds then let him, and it was the next day that she was surprised to see that maybe he had indeed become a bird, for the child was gone.

The white steps were clean, the church spire pointed majestically into the heavens, and the sweet marble cherubs watched her walk past with happy smiles, the church seemed pretty again to Violet with that dirty bird boy gone.

However she saw sitting, quite abandoned on his usual step, a little brown paper bag, though it was empty now.