A wiggle of her fingers and sharp mental command had the box-cutter return to her hand handle-first. She caught it and flung it back immediately. Hmm, better, but still in the outer ring.
As she was about to call the box-cutter to her again, a movement from beyond her window caught her eye. There, sitting on a branch in the tree on the neighbour's side of the fence was an owl. How odd, she had never seen a wild owl before. Weren't they nocturnal? Heri's eyes sharpened automatically, getting a closer look at the bird. Her brain short-circuited at the unbelievable sight.
The owl was the size of a house cat with strange reddish-brown plumage. Its beak was long and golden, and it had great amber eyes. That wasn't the odd part though. It appeared to be eating the tail of a cat and it had two sets of legs. It was also looking right at her.
The bizarre bird and Heri locked gazes for a long moment. It didn't try to attack her like all the other supernatural beasts Heri had dealt with before, it simply sat there, eating its cat.
Without any fuss, Heri turned back to her target practice. She had seen enough to know that she didn't want to ask.
The bird continued to show up at random. Heri had caught sight of it perching in trees at her school, roosting on the roof of Mrs. Figg's house, and tearing into something while she tended to the garden. She would have been more bothered by the thing following her if it wasn't for the fact that it hadn't once been aggressive toward her.
What's more, it changed species of bird whenever it showed up. It had been an owl a few times more, but it was sometimes a pigeon, sometimes a crow, occasionally duck, and once even a woodpecker. The only reason she knew it was still the same bird was because of its glowing amber eyes, golden beak, and four legs no matter what form it took.
"Is there a reason you're following me?" Heri asked it.
It had been three weeks since she first saw it and it had wandered in and out of her life like a stray cat testing out a place to stay. Until she knew what it wanted, she didn't want it deciding that it wanted to stick around.
The bird blinked and cocked its head at her. Today it was a cuckoo and it had been serenading her with "Ooh-woo" as she did her Literature homework in the park. If it had been any other cuckoo, Heri would have tuned it out automatically, but this one was perched on her table and crooning loudly at her to annoy her, she just knew it.
"Ooh-woo," it cooed again.
Heri sighed and slammed her book shut.
"Is that so?"
She'd have to do it later while it was off wherever it was when it wasn't hanging around her.
"Ooh-woo."
"If that's your final answer, I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you go play somewhere else. This worksheet's due first thing tomorrow and you're being very distracting."
"Ooh-woo."
She got to her feet.
"Fine then! You stay here, I'll go finish my assignments up somewhere else. Have a good day."
She stuffed her books back into her bag and began to walk off.
"Ooh-woo."
Her mind might've been playing tricks on her, but Heri could have sworn that the blasted bird sounded forlorn.
She cursed her sentimentality and turned back to the bird. Sure enough, its head was tucked into its shoulders. She sighed again.
"Look, it's not that I don't like you around but I really to get my homework finished. I'm doing someone else's as well and I need the money to pay for a library book Dudley destroyed. If you want to hang out, come again some time after tomorrow."
The bird visibly perked.
"Ooh-woo!"
"DUDLEY! MR. DURSLEY! COME AND LOOK AT THIS SNAKE! YOU WON'T BELIEVE WHAT IT'S DOING!"
Heri was at the zoo with the Dursley's and Piers Polkiss to celebrate Dudley's birthday. Normally she wouldn't have been brought along, but Mrs. Figg had broken her leg and wasn't in any state to watch Heri.
She had been brought along under strict orders from Uncle Vernon to behave as if she wasn't 'an unnatural aberration that blights mankind.' She had agreed only because she hadn't known her uncle knew words bigger than three syllables. She still gave him a hell of an itch in an indelicate place though.
At this point, they had already gone through the rest of the exhibits and stopped for lunch. The reptile house was the last stop before they would pack it in and call a day. Everything was winding down when Heri fell into a conversation with a boa constrictor. All chances of leaving peacefully were shot to hell with Polkiss' shout.
Dudley came waddling toward them as fast as he could.
"Out of the way, you," he said, shoving Heri aside.
Caught by surprise, Heri fell hard on the concrete floor. What came next happened so fast no one saw how it happened — one second, Piers and Dudley were leaning right up close to the glass, the next, they had leaped back with howls of horror. Heri sat up and gasped; the glass front of the boa constrictor's tank had vanished! The great snake was uncoiling itself rapidly, slithering out onto the floor. People throughout the reptile house screamed and started running for the exits.
As the snake slithered past her, Heri heard it hiss lowly, §Brazil, here I come . . . Thanksss, amiga.§
The look on her uncle's face when Piers mentioned that Heri had been talking to the snake boded nothing good. If only she hadn't thought it rude to ignore the snake when it proved it understood her; she never thought civility would be her downfall. Though she couldn't prove it, she was pretty sure someone up there was laughing at her.
Heri never received mail. Heri had never had a desire to receive mail. She didn't know anyone that would be in a position to send her anything, and even if there had been someone she wouldn't have had the patience to deal with any kind of communication that took longer than the span of a phone call. These were just some of the simple, insignificant facts of her life.
When Heri was sent to get the mail by her uncle, she didn't waste any time in bringing them to him without a second glance. No doubt they were all bills and advertisements. She returned to the maintenance of the pancakes without pause. This was probably why she had no idea why she and Dudley were rushed out of the kitchen not a minute later as if there was a bomb in the room.
In the days after, when letters came pouring and Uncle Vernon was on the edge of a mental breakdown, Heri would wonder if maybe she should have taken a peek at the mail pile before handing it over. It was strange that her lack of curiosity was now backfiring on her after all these years.