Free For the Forest of a Bird by Sue Saliba

spoke, clear and calm and strong.
    â€˜You poor little beautiful thing,’ Isobel said.
    And Nella took a step out of the shade and from where she stood she could see that Isobel was looking at a young plant, a young bonsai tree tied and potted and staked. It rested in the shiniest, heaviest golden pot.
    â€˜You’re a prisoner there, aren’t you?’ Isobel said.
    â€˜It’s a very big pot,’ Nella’s father spoke quietly.
    â€˜A prisoner in a very big pot,’ Isobel said.
    And in the silence that followed, Isobel reached out and held one of the tree’s tiny branches as if it were a little hand. Nella’s father shifted in the spotted light, and Nella, looking down at the place where Isobel had touched her on the wrist, was sure that she could see the mark of the swallow’s nest, bright and clear and strong.

    Bold . The mark was bold as Nella lifted the wrist to her chest and held it there as she rode along in the car beside Isobel. They had left her father’s dusty road and were travelling in to one of the side streets that must have been here the whole time Nella had visited the island but she had never noticed before.
    â€˜It’s strange how we don’t see things sometimes,’ she said to Isobel.
    Isobel looked across at her.
    â€˜I mean . . .’ Nella began and then she stopped herself. She suddenly remembered Isobel’s words in the coastal scrub. What had she said? If you look, if you look in the right way . . .
    â€˜Do you think there can be things all around us,’ Nella said, ‘that we don’t see?’
    â€˜Of course,’ Isobel answered.
    â€˜I mean stories, lives, histories . . .’
    â€˜Oh yes,’ Isobel said. ‘And inside us too.’
    Nella pressed her wrist to her chest even harder then, although she wasn’t sure why.
    â€˜This is it,’ Isobel said, as they turned into a driveway. There were trees and birds and shrubs, a pond.
    â€˜Is there a house here?’ Nella asked.
    â€˜Yes, there are lots . . .’ Isobel laughed. ‘And my mum and I have one too. Come on,’ she said, getting out of the car. ‘We need to carry my dear aunt’s gift to the verandah.’
    Nella followed Isobel to the back of the car where they worked together to lift the heavy pot with its tree inside and then carried it between the two of them along an overgrown path that wound and circled and eventually took them to an old weatherboard house.
    â€˜Here we are,’ Isobel said. ‘Well, this is my mum’s house really. I live out the back. Let’s put this down and I’ll show you.’
    Nella hesitated.
    â€˜What is it?’ Isobel said.
    â€˜I thought I just saw a flash of white in the trees. And wings.’
    â€˜Oh, they’re angels,’ Isobel answered. And then she watched Nella’s face. ‘No, not really,’ she went on. ‘It’s just what I call the corellas. They come here every day, right about now. Come on, I’ll show you something.’
    And they put the pot down and walked beside the house and out the back to a room that stood alone within the garden. It was painted blue and had two wooden steps up to its front door like a cottage in a fairytale.
    Nella followed Isobel.
    â€˜This is where I live,’ Isobel said.
    They walked into a room filled with books and pictures, fragments of writing, which were stuck to the walls. There were curtains of red silk that were held above the windows with pegs, a table covered in paints and pencils and pieces of coloured paper, an unmade bed in the corner and a flipper that hung from the ceiling by a piece of what must have been the strongest thread.
    Nella reached out and touched one of the drawings on the wall.
    â€˜The corellas,’ she said.
    â€˜Yes, it’s what I wanted to show you.’
    â€˜This is the picture I saw on the card beside my dad in