She parked her car in a public lot and was surprised to find she was not the only person on the beach at this early hour. A group of people in rubber boots carrying buckets and shovels was milling about, occasionally bending over to dig things out of the sand. Clam diggers, Zadie guessed as she stepped onto the beach herself. A faint peeping pulled her attention away from the diggers to the sand dunes on her right. She turned toward the sound and caught herself right before she stepped on a nest of plover chicks. Zadie backed away so as not to scare the tiny birds and watched as their mother swooped down to their rescue. She eyed Zadie warily before turning back to her brood and feeding them from her beak. I’d give them the clothes off my back is an expression that is supposed to communicate selflessness, but Zadie thought I’d give them the food right out of my mouth had more weight to it. She would be as good a mother as this bird, she decided. When her Star, Ladybug, child was born, she would give it all the food and love she could provide.

Suddenly a wave of vertigo overtook her. She stumbled away from the nest and onto her knees.

The sky is full of birds.

The premonition was back. Rather than fight it, Zadie looked up. As she did, a dark blue starling flitted through her field of vision and perched on a stem of beach grass that bowed under its weight. Starlings weren’t seabirds, so what it was doing so close to the ocean, Zadie wasn’t sure.

The sky is full of birds.

A burst of wingbeats drew Zadie’s gaze skyward again. A whole flock of starlings briefly blackened the sky before joining their cousin on the dunes. They were a noisy bunch, chittering and screeching with no regard for all the non-birds that were probably still asleep at this early hour. For some inexplicable reason, Zadie got the impression that the chittering was meant for her, that they were trying to tell her something.

The sky is full of birds.

The first bird to land was also the first to take off. The other starlings followed its lead and flocked toward the parking lot, many of them settling on the roof of Zadie’s car. It was either a sign she needed to follow these birds, or merely a suggestion that she take the station wagon through a car wash.

Feeling like Tippi Hedren in The Birds, Zadie inched through the flock to get to her driver’s-side door. Hopefully, these weren’t the kind of birds that liked to peck people’s eyes out. Once she was safely inside the car, she locked eyes with a starling perched on her windshield wiper. It seemed to be waiting for something.

The sky is full of birds.