Free Chicken Feathers by Joy Cowley Page A

clothesline and covered the red geranium flowers with white. Josh needed to make a tombstone for Semolina in the shape of a big chicken. He knew exactly what to do. He gathered mounds of feathers, shaped and patted, and the white chicken seemed to grow by itself, beautiful, wings outstretched like an angel. Then something happened. The falling feathers were no longer snowbut hail. Little white stones rattled on the path and the tombstone chicken slid away in an avalanche of tiny ice pebbles. He couldn’t save it from flattening out over the garden.
    He woke, heart beating fast.
    Outside, the sky was dark as pitch and brilliant with stars. He rolled over, his back to the window, and closed his eyes. Then it came again, the hail noise. Pebbles. No. Not pebbles! Something else!
    He rolled to his knees on the bed and pushed up the window.
    “You there, buddy?” rasped a familiar voice.

Chapter Nine
    S EMOLINA LOOKED TERRIBLE. Half her feathers had gone, her eyes were shut and she was shivering sick.
    “I thought you were dead!” he cried.
    “Lift me up, buddy. I can’t fly.”
    Josh was out that window like an arrow, scooping her up and holding her against his chest. “Semolina! Oh, wow! It’s really you!”
    She kicked against him and squawked with pain. “Fox!”
    Instantly his touch became gentle. He reached through the window, placed her on the foot of the bed and then climbed back into the room. “What happened? We found your feathers. We had a funeral.”
    She was shivering. “Fox got me outside egg shed. I thought I was a goner. Rooty-tooty big fight. I shoved my beak in his front foot. He let go. I hid in straw. Stayed till morning. Then under the boat.”
    Josh put on his bedside light and looked at her. There were teeth marks on her bare, mottled back and a cut on her wing but no serious damage that he could see. He snatched his T-shirt from the floor and wrapped her in it. “We thought you had to be dead. There was so much blood.”
    Her eyes opened. “Told you, buddy. I got his paw.”
    A smile broke open inside Josh. He wanted to hold her and dance around the room. He sprawled across the bed, his face close. “We scooped up that blood, every drop. We buried it with your feathers.”
    “Excuse me! You buried my feathers with fox blood?” She struggled and freed herself from his shirt. “Me and fox?”Then she thrust her beak against his nose. “Whatcha done with my ring?” she squawked.
    He laughed. “Oh, Semolina, I love you! I love you so much!”
    Josh thought of waking his father that instant, but the idea simmered down. Morning would do. Semolina was hurting and thirsty. He went into the bathroom to get her water in his mug, and as he turned off the tap, he had the sudden thought that her return might be just a dream. He spilled water on the floor running back to his room.
    It was no dream. She was real and there, crouched under his T-shirt, her eyes half closed.
    Twice during the night, he offered to look in the fridge. She wasn’t hungry, she said, which told him surely she was in pain. The most comfortable place for her was on his chest, and that suited him real fine. He could feel her heart ticking against his and the rhythm of her breathing, the warmth of her on his skin, the occasional pricking of her claws. The old dusty Semolina smell was right there under his nose.
    Something in him felt downright foolish for all the grief he’d spent thinking she was dead, but that didn’t matter. This was the happy thing his mother talked about, only Mom had been wrong about the size of it. The happy thing was much, much bigger than the sad.
    Semolina slept some of the time and so did he. When they were both awake, she told him what had happened. The fox had come after her in broad daylight and taken her by surprise. The girl biggie was sorting eggs in the shed and Semolina was pecking at the door to get in. Sudden smell offox! Too late! Fox grabbed her from behind and carried her, head hanging