It is Autumn. The air is crisp. The sky is clear, with not so much as a speck of bird to mar its blueness. 
   In lieu of clouds, we sit to watch the cows ...Josephine and I ...that move slowly across the adjacent hillside, as if weightless, nudged along by the slightest of unseen breeze.

In the corner of her playpen, as far from the Maple tree as she can be, Josie is huddled in that tiny way she does when she is frightened and wants to be seen by nothing and no one other than myself. 

'What is it Jo?' I ask, leaving my work to go to her. 

'Monster,' is all she can squeeze from her shivers as I let myself in to the pen, 'Monster.' 

And it must be a fearsome monster, too, because I look, kick through the grass, and can't find a thing, and everyone knows the more fearsome the monster, the harder they are to see.




     

They will not speak, the magical ones. 
Quiet, 
     quiet, 
         quiet... 
              until one day ... 
they are gone. 

We woke to one of those rare days of unseasonable warmth that occasion the deeply wintered, Y-ending months at the forefront of our calendar year. 
     Warm, but gray, a gentle rain fell, confining Peter Pan, Silky Josephine and I to the porch, where we watched a flock of Robins that had appeared in the yard, as if from out of nowhere.  

Earthworms, deceived by the rise in temperature and the patter of rain on what would be their rooftops, had come in droves, topside, and the Robins hopped from worm to worm, plucking them up and gobbling them down.    

‘If all they eat are worms?’ Josie asked of the Robins ...for she knew that this was very nearly the case, as she has been reading a great deal about birds lately ...‘And there are only one or two days during Winter that worms come out?’ She looked up to me. ‘How are they so fat?’

Indeed, the Robins were plump as gourds. Contented. As if Winter were a season of plenty. As if it were awhir with winged insects and root-fatted grubs, and not the season of teeth-chattering bleakness it actually is, devoid of all nutrients other than those few minerals found in the tips icicles and the crimped stems of browned leaves. 

‘The Robin Trees,’ I told her.

Silky’s eyes narrowed. I could see that in her mind she was paging through her bird books for some reference to these Trees. Finally, she tilted her head to the side that meant she did not know what I was talking about. Peter Pan tilted his head likewise.  

‘What’s are Robin Trees?’ Silky asked. 

‘Well ...’ I said, and took a seat to tell them of this wonder. 

You can almost understand why Silky Josephine likes to chew on Harley’s hind legs. 

They certainly appear to be, as she says, ‘Numbley’. 

Yummy, nummy, little and stubby. 

‘Elephants!’ we hear Silky Josephine say, the boys and I. 

She’s been finding them by the dozens. Ever since I read to her the story of Terra and Bella, the inseparable elephant and dog. In everything from dried leaves to her dinner dish. Even still, Peter Pan, Harley and I turn to where she points. You never know. And Silky sounds oddly certain.

‘Elephants! Elephants! Elephants!’ she says, dancing. 

And she is right. 

There, just above the horizon is a tribe, a herd, a caravan, a parade, trunk to tail, trunk to tail, gray and lumberous, gilded by the rising sun. Elephants. 

‘See?’ Silky asks.

'They're just ...' Peter Pan says.

'Elephants,' I interrupt. 'I do see them Josephine. I do.'  

And the four of us watch as slowly they fade into the day. 

Two Wrens have wintered in Carl and Priscilla’s nest above the back door. Franz and Hannah. In for the night, their tails poke above the rim of the feathered nest, like chopsticks, idle in some strange bowl of soup.