i meant to post this yesterday! If you remember, Robin hopped through the letter box into Mrs Nancy's waiting hands, and if you don't remember, that is all right because I just reminded you....
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“You can’t keep me locked up here forever,” Robin shouted from the birdcage. The cage was small, gilded, and hung from a hook in the ceiling of a room so high he could hardly see the floor below him.
A chuckle rose from far below. “I certainly can keep you up there,” came Mrs Nancy’s voice.
“How?” Robin called down.
“By not letting you out.”
“You know…” Robin stopped. “I only wanted to talk to you.”
“Then talk way.” Her voice echoed off the brick walls. A stiff breeze came through a pair of small, bared windows, and rocked the cage precariously.
“Why?” Robin called.
“Why what?” Mrs Nancy asked. He could make her out now, way down pacing back and forth across the tiled floor, her footsteps clanking back and forth.
“Why everything?” Robin said. “Why do caterpillars crawl? Why is there sky? Why is there a world at all? And why do I ask why?”
“That’s it.” Mrs Nancy shouted, and she cranked a lever, lowering the hook from the ceiling. She held the lever until he was at eye-level, then snapped it back into place on the wall. “I won’t talk from such a distance.”
“Oh good, because my throat was getting sore from shouting.”
“A frog in your throat?” And Mrs Nancy laughed, not a pleasant laugh. “What did you want to say, stranger from another world? Why did you come here?”
“I came here to see what was on the other side of a rainbow.”
“And you’ve seen it. You can go home.”
“No I can’t. You know, that was why I came the first time. But not now, now I am here because I need to bring one family back together.”
“Shut up your little green face,” Mrs Nancy screamed, and she slammed the lever back down, sending the hook flashing back up towards the ceiling.
At the top, it was going at such a speed that the hook jarred against the top of the room, and the birdcage rocked, the hoop slipped over the end of the hook, and Robin was suddenly plummeting. He never reached the ground…