Helen Speaks

Introduction: https://helenspeaks.wordpress.com/2025/04/06/lucy-skylarks-magical-year/

Lucy meets Suki, a bird who can talk: https://helenspeaks.com/2025/04/06/lucy-skylark-entry-1-10th-march/

Dear Vera,

What a week. I think I do have some kind of weather power now – I’m wondering if I need to go and talk to Maksym. Maybe we need to go out and play!

Something strange happened the other day… Although I didn’t find it strange so much as surprising! I found an injured sparrow on the side of the road, and when I reached down to check on the poor thing, it looked up at me and said, “Help”.

In English. Out loud.

The sparrow then passed out in my hands and… well, luckily for me, I have a friend I can go to about this.

I carried the poor sparrow very carefully home. She seemed to have an injured wing and had lost some blood. Suki was intrigued. The last chick had flown the day before – Suki has been making hints she might fly too – but she always sounds so sad about it. She perked up having a patient, immediately deciding she could tend to the sparrow like one of her chicks. She brought the sparrow some squashed insects and attempted to feed her, very tenderly, but we didn’t get much out of her at first.

It seemed like it couldn’t be a coincidence that the sparrow and Suki can both talk, and I questioned Suki further on how she learned to talk. I remembered that she’d said that it was somewhere “in the North where it’s flat” and that a man had tapped her with a quill and given her the power of speech.

Even if that man didn’t know our sparrow, maybe he could help. After trying to find out where Suki meant, eventually I realised she didn’t mean somewhere in the North, but probably the town just north of Barkmouth, where there’s a university – Suki mentioned young people making noise late into the night.

It seemed worth a try – if nothing else, maybe there would be a wildlife expert there who could look after our new friend, who had just muttered a few words, only “Jacob” being very distinct.

It was a rare expedition where I took Suki and I didn’t take Teddy – I couldn’t carry the sparrow and his case and he looked reluctant to get involved with another bird, even if he and Suki are fairly good friends now. We took the bus and were a bit of a sight to the locals, who stared, and especially a group of kids about my age in school uniforms who looked and talked about us as if we couldn’t hear them. It was stressful and Suki snapped back at them, which they just laughed at.

She let out a shrill whistle of recognition when we got to the campus – “yes, this is it, where it happened!” and I picked up my steps as we went in search.

I started to worry about the sparrow. She had said “Oh” and “Hurts” and “Jacob” again and seemed to struggle to breathe. Suki flew up high, frantically flapping to find the “male with the plumage” – and then suddenly called, “He’s here! By that tree!”

I saw a tall black man behind a crowd of students – not a student himself, though, but serious, in a tweed jacket and with a fuzzy beard.

He was inspecting up in the tree – and then he turned away, just as another loud group of students rushed past.

“Sir!” I shouted. “Sir!” I clasped the sparrow close and ran for it – ducking through the crowds of students. He had long legs and walked fast. “Please – wait… Jacob?”

He turned at just the point I tripped on a tree root.

And the tree caught me. A branch tenderly clasped the injured sparrow – and I got away with only a scraped elbow (the bark was rough).

I looked an absolute sight. The students didn’t seem as curious as the school goers had been, but I can only imagine what he thought, seeing me, cradled in a tree.

For a moment, his face seemed stern and emotionless – but when he stepped forwards and saw the sparrow, it changed straight away.

“Hazel? Oh Hazel! What’s happened to you?”

He lifted her and held her gently. Then, standing very still for a moment, I… saw? Felt? I somehow knew there was power going from him to the little bird. She gasped – then lifted her wings and flapped upwards.

“Never fails, Jacob, never fails!”

He laughed with relief, and propped himself on the tree. “I should remind her not to talk,” he told me. “But… but I’m just glad to have her back.” He stared as the tree gently moved me to a standing position. “And somehow I feel that you might not be a stranger to magic – Miss…?”

“Lucy Skylark – Lucy.”

He smiled, his face softening. “Jacob – Professor Jacob Girton. But just Jacob to you, since you brought my Hazel back to me.”

“How did you…”

He motioned to my elbow, which was bleeding a little. “May I?”

I nodded. He supported the arm for a moment – and the wound closed, the scrape turning into fresh new skin.

He glanced about himself self-consciously. “I’m… not really open about it. Too many difficult experiences…”

“But you are a witch?”

He smiled. “I wouldn’t say that. Although I suppose I’ve practised, in my way.”

Suki chimed in – “You helped me. Lucy says being a witch is about helping people.”

“Oh, hello,” he said, looking a bit embarrassed. “I hope you don’t mind – being able to talk.”

“I’ve always been able to talk,” she said. “You just made it so that humans could understand me. And that’s been nice. I joined Lucy’s nest with her and Teddy… I didn’t like Teddy at first but he’s all right now.”

Jacob looked delighted. “Would you like a cup of tea? The staffroom’s normally deserted and I so rarely get to talk to…”

“A fellow witch?”

“If you say so…”

I imagined that a university staff room would be all leather chairs and books and was a little sad when it was just some soft waiting room sofas and a kettle and fridge. But he made us both a cup of tea and poured a little bowl of water for Suki. Hazel came back for a moment, and the two of them flitted about, then darted up to the tree outside a window to have a proper chatter. It was good to see Suki having another friend. I do worry that she’s lonely.

“So you’re the witch of Barkmouth?” Jacob said. “I’ve heard some strange stories. Trees reaching down to save people from floods, and I’ve been intrigued by the cinema for some time… I’m sure I heard the name ‘Lucy’ uttered in hushed tones!”

“I helped them when they had a problem,” I said, surprised and pleased as well as embarrassed. “But I’d recommend always paying for a ticket and never eating the popcorn.”

“Yes, I thought as much,” he said. “Plants seem to like you.”

“Yes – my mentor says my growing magic is the most impressive of my gifts. When I was thirteen, I disrupted a whole motorway because they’d cut down the trees. My parents were furious but my neighbour Vera – my mentor – she helped me set it right again.”

He looked wistful then. “Do your parents support you being a witch?”

“Yes – I don’t think they would have picked it for me but they understand that this is my path.”

“Ah,” he said, and he sighed, for a moment looking away.

I wondered if it would be all right to ask more. I remember once, Vera, how you told me that sometimes the kindest thing you can do is to let someone be sad. That feels like such a heavy and difficult idea, but I know that sometimes… Well, I thought of Teddy putting his cold arm around me, or Olive being kind to me when it felt like the whole of nature was against me.

“How long have you known you had power?”

He looked up. “Since my father died. I was just a boy – eight years old. My parents came over from the Caribbean as children. They’d both worked hard and succeeded and they were a team. But when Dad died, it felt like we were so much lonelier. I thought Mum could do anything but she shut up inside herself for a while. I had to cope alone… my school was in a supposedly nice middle-class area but it was a lonely place to be different – which I was, as the only Black kid, and someone who was a bit of a loner anyway. I had one friend, Parminder, who was the only Indian kid in the school, and we played all these weird imaginary games. I think if we’d have had more friends as teenagers we would’ve ended up playing D&D.

When Dad died, I felt so powerless, and I really wanted to fix things… then one day, Parminder fell as we were messing about in the bushes. We weren’t really meant to go that far, and he’d scraped his knee and cut his face. I panicked and held his hand… and then he slowly started to just… heal.

We tried to keep it secret but eight year olds are rubbish at being stealthy, so rumours got out. Some of the teachers, who had been a bit distant with me anyway, started to outright ignore me, as if I was somehow cursed or dangerous. When my mother found out, she sat down with me and told me that I must never use my power again.”

That’s awful, isn’t it Vera? Imagine helping people and being treated like that!

He went on. “But Parminder knew, of course. I was always patching him up. And… well, animals didn’t mind. I found a poor little rabbit, shivering and still on the side of a road – I think it was myxomatosis – and I went over and stroked it until it bounded away.”

“A lot of witches like animals and plants,” I said. “I think they can be more accepting than fellow humans.”

“Yes, very true. I suppose I should have become a vet or something – Mum started discouraging me from being a doctor, probably worried that it would just encourage me to do more magic. She started pushing me towards my love of books and reading, and I ended up studying natural history.”

“But you still did magic?”

“Oh, of course – how could I not, when I knew that I could help people? Parminder… He got ill. Cancer.”

He looked wistful again.

“You couldn’t heal him?”

“I… well, I did. At first. His doctors hailed it as a medical miracle and scheduled a few checks. The first few he was clear, and then a year later it returned. So I went back and did it again. We joked that it was just Parminder’s body making an excuse for us to meet up. I said I’d return whenever he needed me. And I did… but… I was away the last time. It came back suddenly and aggressively and…”

He paused. Forced himself to take a deep breath, sipped his tea.

“He was there, lying in a hospital bed, gasping and barely conscious. I sat with him, watched him struggle to breathe, let alone recognise me or talk. He was so thin and sallow, like a shadow of his former self. He’d always been so funny, Parminder. People used to say…”

He made a breathy, humourless sort of laugh. “People used to say that I seemed normal around him. And I knew that I’d never saved anyone that close to death – but I had to try. I held his hand and tried, and willed his suffering to pass… and an hour later, he was dead.”

A tear sprang from his eye, and he wiped it. He huffed, like he was physically carrying something heavy. Then he shook his head and looked up. “I’m sorry,” he said, with a smile that was sad but genuine. “I should be showing gratitude to you…”

“It’s all right,” I said. “My friend Olive says that witches should help each other. She’s right…”

He tilted his head. “Oh but Lucy, you’re so young and I’m an adult – I’m a professor! You don’t need to listen to my stories…”

“Well – could you tell me about Hazel? That must be a happy story.”

He smiled more widely then, and stood up to watch Hazel and Suki flitting about. “She’s been with me a very long time. House sparrows are meant to live about three years but… well, I keep on patching her up and she’s been with me for fifteen years so far. I picked her up from the roadside. She’s always been a little accident prone. I’m still not sure how I gave her the power of speech – it was something to do with my quill. I got it from a goose whose wing I’d mended!”

He asked me a bit about myself then, and I told him about Grainthorpe and Barkmouth and everything that has happened. He looked so wistful when I talked about it. Eventually he said, “I would have loved a mentor. I feel I missed the way… Mentoring my students helps a little.”

I suddenly thought about Maksym. “I know a young witch who might need a mentor,” I told him. “He’s seen a war and he has amazing weather powers.”

“Perhaps,” he said, sounding a little reluctant. He glanced at his watch. “Ah, goodness – I should probably get back to work. Thank you again Lucy,” he said, turning to me and suddenly clasping my hand with warmth. “It means the world – not just bringing Hazel back, but speaking to a – a fellow witch. It’s been a lonely path for me.”

He turned to a cupboard and rooted around until he grabbed a mug from the back. “I think you should take this – it was an experiment. I thought perhaps I could help people stealthily by putting some of my healing power into the mug. Then, well, they might discover their cold is getting better or perhaps even find themselves recovering from more serious illnesses. But I decided I couldn’t use it.”

“Why not?”

“Ah…” He started walking out of the room, whistling suddenly – Hazel and then Suki flew in, Hazel resting within his jacket pocket, Suki on my shoulder – “I healed someone who didn’t want it, once. And I realised that I can’t force someone to accept it.”

“They didn’t want to be healed?!”

He turned his face away, walked a bit more briskly. “My mother. She smoked like a chimney in her youth. And a couple of years ago – before Parminder passed away – she was in hospital with pneumonia. I was scared I’d lose her…”

“But – but why wouldn’t she want to be healed?!”

“This power of mine has always scared her,” he said. “I know her anger at my use of it was partly to protect me… But when she discovered that not only was she better from the pneumonia, but her lungs looked as pink and clean as a baby’s, she was furious. She felt that I’d interfered, that I might have even done something evil to her, gone against the will of God.”

I couldn’t believe this. “But you did the right thing… you…”

He turned, then, looked at me thoughtfully. “I’m not sure I did, Lucy. Perhaps if I’d asked her first, let her think about it, let her make the choice. Taken time to explain that I’ve only ever tried to use my powers for good – although I’m not sure I should be giving birds the power of speech…”

“Hey!” Hazel squeaked indignantly.

“I could already talk,” Suki added.

“Yes, but I didn’t ask your consent either. I feel… I feel that I should have been honest, and let her choose. She’s never quite forgiven me. I think she still feels guilty somehow for being in such good health. I worry she’s wearing herself out with community work to make up for it, even though I’m pleased to see how much energy she seems to have now. But…” he gestured to the mug, “I’m sure if people know you’re a witch, my healing mug could help them. Make sure you explain it, Lucy.”

“I will,” I said.

I gave him my card – I’ve made some cards. They aren’t as professional as Olive’s!

The next day I received a letter from Jacob – he thanked me and said he’d found a leaflet for a group for people finding magic later in life. It made me so happy, Vera. He was so kind and he deserves to be happy.

Oh, in other news, Olive seems to have made up with Mrs Webfoot – she told me she’d cast a spell to make Mrs W’s eyes flash when she lied. Thinking back, maybe that does make sense. I haven’t seen any flashing since. Olive also told me that she’s in her training year too and she was just embarrassed.

She hasn’t done any of her weird disappearing acts since. I think I misjudged her. She’s even cancelled the fortune telling sessions. I heard Mrs Edgwood talking about it, and she seemed quite put out. I got up the courage to ask how Suniya was, but she said that I’d done quite enough. Mrs Webfoot did not seem impressed by this, though. She said, “Oh leave the child alone, Flo,” and gave me an extra Yorkshire pudding with dinner. Which was nice because I miss Yorkshire puddings.

I do miss Suniya. I sent her a long message to apologise and she sent back “ok” but that was it. It hurts, even with my other friends rallying around. I think Suki will be going soon but she still flits in and out for a chat, so that helps.

Your friend,

Lucy.

Dear Lucy,

Thank you again for returning Hazel to me, and for listening to me ramble on! You’ve reminded me that being a witch is still important to me, even if I don’t feel comfortable sharing it. By some coincidence, I found a leaflet advertising a group for people finding magic – or wanting to explore it more – later in life. I’ve decided to go along, although the thought is terrifying! Perhaps this is the start of a new Jacob… or finding the old one again.

This is a hard truth but please think about it – sometimes we can’t help people. And sometimes we try to help people because, really, we want to fill the hole inside ourselves. Please don’t forget to take time to look after Lucy, and remember you don’t have to rescue everyone. Having a little responsibility can be intoxicating and having people need us can feel exhilarating… until we realise that we have left ourselves behind in our quest to help everyone else.

Thank you for reminding me why we need community, Lucy – take care of yourself and let others help. I wish I had realised this so much sooner. There are so many good people in the world, if we’ll only take time to notice they are there.

Best regards,

Jacob.

Next entry (Olive’s next letter): https://helenspeaks.com/2025/05/27/olive-framley-entry-12-27th-may/

Lucy’s next letter: https://helenspeaks.com/2025/05/29/lucy-skylark-entry-18-29th-may/