Bronze Pen (9781439156650) by Zilpha Keatley Snyder Page B

looking at her from under his shaggy eyebrows while he slowly rearranged himself so that his big paws were under him.
    â€œUrff,” he said as he struggled sleepily to his feet. A comment that had a reassuringly doggy sound. But then as Audrey turned back to reopen the door, he said clearly, “You didn’t have to kick me.”
    Once again Audrey froze. She turned slowly back to where Beowulf was on his feet and moving toward her. Moving toward her and saying, “Okay, okay. It didn’t hurt that much. Just don’t do it again. Nice people don’t kick their dogs.”
    Audrey shook her head and swallowed hard and stammered, “I—I didn’t mean to kick you. I just gave you a poke with my toe.”
    â€œOkay, okay. Let’s go. It’s late. Let’s get me outside before I make a big mistake.”
    They went down the hall side by side, a sleepy, floppy Beowulf and a stunned and staring Audrey. After crossing the kitchen, Beowulf stopped long enough to take a few laps from his water dish before he quietly, except for his padding feet and clicking toenails, headed for the back door. At that moment he was looking and actingnormally doglike again, but Audrey watched him intently as she opened the door and stepped back out of the way. As he passed her he gave her wrist a sloppy kiss and, without saying another word, disappeared into the dark yard.
    Audrey was still standing just inside the door—holding it slightly open, waiting for Beowulf to return, and desperately trying to make some sense out of what had just happened—when, from only a few feet away, someone said, “Will you shut that door! I’m freezing.” It had to be Sputnik, but he was talking in a different way than usual. Instead of being high-pitched and squawky, his voice now sounded almost human.
    Audrey was beginning to get the picture—or maybe a couple of equally confusing pictures. Either she really was flipping out or something exceptionally magical was happening. Something magical that was slowly becoming a little less shocking than it had seemed at first.
    She seemed to be talking to animals. Doing something, really doing something, that she had imagined and even played at doing when she was a little kid. It was an idea that she’d fooled around with for a long time and had been using in the novel about the girl detective. And now it was, or at least it seemed to be, actually happening.
    Leaving the door almost shut, she went closer to Sputnik’s cage. The little gray and white parrot with bright orange circles on his cheeks was scrunched up against thefar side of the perch, with his feathers fluffed up. Audrey spread her fingers out on the wires of the cage and leaned close.
    â€œWhat a fussbudget,” she said. “It’s not that cold.”
    â€œYou’re wrong. You don’t know anything,” Sputnik said. “I’m a tropical bird. If you were tropical, you’d be freezing too.”
    Just then Beowulf shoved the door open, trotted in, and without making any other comments, headed for his crib mattress in the living room. Audrey quickly closed and locked the door and came back to Sputnik’s cage. “There,” she said. “Does that feel better?”
    Sputnik made a snorting noise, flapped his wings, and sidled along his perch to where he could dip his beak into his food dish and flip seeds out onto the floor of his cage. There wasn’t anything new or surprising about that. It had been a favorite activity of his ever since Audrey’s father had saved him from the cruel reporter. But this time he stopped after five or six flips and, looking right at Audrey, said, “Look at that. All the good stuff is gone. All finished.” Squinching his head down on his chest, he looked at Audrey out of the top of one eye and said, “And there wasn’t that much of it to begin with.”
    Audrey inspected the contents of the feed