Orlo and the Globe at the Edge of the Sill

The snow was falling inside Orlo in entirely the wrong direction, and that was how the argument had started.

Orlo was a snow globe, and he sat on the highest windowsill of the lighthouse on Vermilion Isle — the red island, the tallest of the seven, the one that smelled of cedar and cinnamon in the afternoon. From up here he could see almost everything: the yellow island to the left, the blue island to the right, the pale green island behind the lighthouse where the fig trees grew, and on very clear days, the faint violet smudge of the farthest island at the edge of the sea.

He could see all of that, but he could not see Pip.

Pip was a cormorant who had made a habit, every morning for two years, of landing on the windowsill and tapping the glass with the tip of her orange beak. Three taps. Always three. It was the sort of thing that becomes so ordinary you don't notice it until it stops, and it had stopped four days ago, and Orlo was cross about it in the way that only someone very still and very proud can be cross — completely, and entirely in silence.

He had decided, in those four silent days, that Pip was ignoring him on purpose.

He had worked out exactly why. Three weeks ago, when Pip had landed and tapped and pressed her sleek black face close to the glass, Orlo had done something he now regretted: he had shaken himself. Just slightly. On purpose. A little wobble that sent the fake snow swirling upward instead of down — a trick he'd discovered he could do by concentrating very hard on his own weight. He'd done it to be funny. Pip had reared back, startled, and tumbled off the sill with an undignified squawk that faded as she fell and then — after a long, embarrassing moment — turned into the sound of wings catching air.

Orlo had felt terrible about it for two whole days. Then the tapping had stopped, and the terrible feeling had curdled into something harder and less comfortable, a feeling that whispered: she's furious, she'll never come back, you've ruined it.

And now it was the fifth morning, and the sun was coming up over the yellow island and painting everything the colour of a ripe pear, and Orlo had made up his mind.

He was going to apologise.

The difficulty was that he was a snow globe on a windowsill, and apologising is very hard when you cannot walk.

He thought about this for most of the morning. He watched the fishing boats cross from Vermilion Isle to the green island, where the market was. He watched a pelican land on the lighthouse railing and argue with its own reflection for a full ten minutes. He watched the light shift from gold to white to a clear thin blue.

Then, around midday, Pip landed on the railing below.

She was staring out to sea. She had a fish in her beak, and she looked thoughtful, which was not the expression of a bird who was furious. She looked like a bird who was busy and maybe a little tired, but Orlo couldn't be sure, because he was not a cormorant expert — he was a snow globe, and he knew mostly about snow.

He concentrated very hard on his weight again, the way he had before. He wobbled — more than he meant to — and the snow inside him cascaded sideways instead of down, and his base struck the windowsill with a small but definite tap.

Pip's head turned. She saw him. Her eyes were gold and sharp and surprised.

She flew up and landed on the sill.

"You knocked," she said.

"I wobbled," Orlo said. "I don't have hands. It was the best I could do."

Pip tilted her head. The fish was gone — she had swallowed it somewhere between the railing and the sill, which Orlo found impressive, if slightly alarming. "You've been quiet," she said. "Four days. I thought you were annoyed with me."

Orlo's snow drifted in a slow, startled spiral. "I thought you were annoyed with me," he said. "Because I startled you. Three weeks ago. When you fell off."

Pip stared at him. Then she made a sound that was almost a laugh — a low, clicking, wet sound that cormorants make when something strikes them as profoundly absurd. "I wasn't annoyed," she said. "I was embarrassed. I told the pelicans I'd slipped on some spray. I didn't want to admit I'd been frightened by a snow globe doing something small."

"It wasn't small," Orlo said. "I did it deliberately. The snow went the wrong way."

"I know. That's what surprised me." Pip tilted her head the other direction. "I didn't know you could do that."

"I didn't either, until recently."

Pip was quiet for a moment. She looked out at the blue island, then at the violet smudge of the far island at the edge of everything. Then she looked back at Orlo. "I kept not tapping because I thought you were cross. And the longer I didn't tap, the more certain I was that you must be. It seemed easier not to come back."

"That is very silly," said Orlo.

"Yes," said Pip. "It is. I know." She paused. "I'm sorry I was away."

Orlo thought about this. He could say he was sorry too, and that would be true. He could say it didn't matter, but it had mattered, four days of mattering, and saying otherwise would be the sort of politeness that wasn't quite honest. He settled on: "I'm sorry I startled you. I should have warned you first."

"You can do it again sometime," Pip said. "If you warn me."

"Deal," said Orlo.

Pip tapped the glass once with her beak. Not three times — once, which felt right for a beginning.

Then she lifted off into the blue air above the archipelago, and Orlo watched her loop over the yellow island and vanish behind the pale green one, and the snow inside him drifted gently downward, in the direction snow is supposed to go, and the lighthouse light turned slow and gold around him as the afternoon arrived.