The orphan skibberee was dizzy and lost. What a mess I’ve made of my life so far, he thought. But where did I go wrong?

He watched the feathery breast of his captor heave as the mama grisset flew on. He knew that she meant well. Sadly, her navigational skills were on a par with her singing talents. (Dismal.) True, she could manage to migrate south each autumn, and to make it back home again the following spring. But this was because she was usually accompanied by ten thousand other migrating grissets. When left to her own devices, she was hopeless. She repeated herself in circles.

Around and around the grisset swooped, over the cloverleaf, the scraps of woods, the abandoned millworks, the glittering string of river. Ten years ago, there weren’t as many fast-food outfits in the outback of dairy country — remember, this is my childhood I’m describing. Sure, a few parking lots, the first of the strip malls converting patches of upstate farming community into suburbia — but not many. Instead, just weary old farms, outliving their usefulness. Village centers arranged a century earlier around the junction of railroad lines. Schools, of course, and playgrounds: there have always been schools and playgrounds.

But the biggest difference was the amount of undeveloped land. Hills weren’t colonized: they were too hilly. Bluffs were left alone. No one wanted to build McMansions on the wetlands yet. There was more that was still wild back then, even in a settled district. We didn’t crowd the world so much with ourselves.

The skibberee felt airsick. He thought they were flying a thousand miles. Every time they passed over the new county zoo, which had been erected not far from where one highway crossed another in a snarl of curving ramps, he thought it was another zoo. He could smell the warm stink of animal ordure, which he didn’t mind, and hear the trumpeting of elephants, which he couldn’t identify. “My, this world is huge, and full of noisy, windy creatures,” he guessed. He was right about that, but for the wrong reasons.

The mama grisset didn’t set out to abandon her passenger. She only wanted him to live long and prosper. She meant well when she decided to set him down on the lip of a jaunty old chimneystack three stories above the ground. She supposed that he could rest there and then fly away when he was ready. She thought the filmy webbing bunched up at his shoulder blades was a pair of wings.

But her aim was poor, and she dropped the poor skibberee right down the chimney.

I’m cooked, thought What-the-Dickens, tumbling into the dark. I’m yesterday’s news. How brief is life, how brief! As he fell, he could hear the beginning of the mama grisset’s song, now that her beak was available for use again. It sounded, as usual, dreadful, but because it was now familiar, he regretted how it faded away.

The webbing attached to his shoulder blades opened, slowing his plunge the way a parachute might. He slid down a side flue into a small fireplace on the third floor of the big old house.

Since it was midmorning, last night’s fire had long since died out. The skibberee flumped into a mound of warm, soft ashes. A cloud of grey dust erupted as he landed, coating him at once.

Now, one thing about skibbereen that you’ll appreciate: they are as finicky in their habits of personal hygiene as cats are. They have to be, for camouflage is their only protection. Any skibberee who is dusted with, oh, wheat flour or soot, say, shows up the color of flour or soot, every little limb and lock. Visible to the naked eye.

What-the-Dickens hated the feeling. He wanted to bathe at once. He sneezed, issuing a little crumpled fold of a sound.

“What’s that?” said a voice. A croaky human voice.

He froze.

“Is that a bird fallen down the chimney?” said the voice. “When a bird comes into a house, there’s going to be a death in the family. And I know whose it is. Mine. I’m ninety-nine years old. If I could get out of bed, I’d come over there and find you, pretty little birdie, and I’d wring your pretty little neck. I’m not going to the Great Beyond till I’m ready, and I haven’t seen the morning papers yet. That fool of a grandson hasn’t brought me my funny pages.”

What-the-Dickens had the sense that the old crackly voice wasn’t really talking to him. He watched a gnarled hand emerge from some bedclothes and reach for a gnarled cane. The cane bent as it took the weight of an arm. Eventually a head emerged around the headboard.

The ancient creature peered into the fireplace.

“Can’t see a cursed thing,” complained the old biddy. “Left my glasses on the mantelpiece. Boy, why are you crying? Hee-hee. Get out of here, little birdie of death, before I fricassee you for lunch.”

What-the-Dickens froze. If he didn’t move, perhaps he wouldn’t be seen.

The old woman wore a nightcap that puffed up like a white brioche. Her sweatshirt declared, MY GRANDSON WENT TO BUSCH GARDENS AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS LOUSY SWEATSHIRT.

Guess that wasn’t the right present, thought What-the-Dickens.

Since she’d already given to history most of her teeth, her mouth was sunken into puckers. Her face was so pleated, thought What-the-Dickens, that if you could stretch her skin until all the wrinkles were flattened out, her head would be about three feet in diameter.

A stack of books tied in a length of twine was tipped onto the floor beside her bed.

“My loved ones forget about me,” she grumbled. “Birds fly into my chimney, death squats on my counterpane, and no one even brings me the newspaper. Who likes to be so alone?”

What-the-Dickens thought, I better get out of here.

Slowly he backed up. Every footfall raised a small cloud of dust, cloaking him further. He sneezed again once or twice, but the old woman seemed already to have forgotten about him.

Little by little What-the-Dickens found himself foot-shelves and handholds in the spaces between the bricks lining the hearth. It wasn’t hard to make his way up the flue. Every now and then he’d dislodge a clump of crumbling mortar, but in no time at all he was safely out of sight.

He came to a ledge in the chimney wall, formed where a flue from a different fireplace joined the one he’d fallen into. Here he rested a while.

I don’t want to be alone, either, he thought. But I don’t want to be her pet. I want to be McCavity’s pet.

From far below bubbled the ordinary household noises: a washing machine on the rinse cycle, a radio scratchily chortling news of the tennis championships at Wimbledon. But since the skibberee could identify none of it, the house sounded full of danger.

Finally the snoring of the old woman — nap time for Granny Menace or whatever her name might turn out to be — lulled the skibberee to sleep too. He dozed all day. By the time he woke up, the blue square of sky at the top of the chimneystack had gone black, and was punctuated with stars.

The world seemed no safer than before, but thanks to the soot, at least he was camouflaged. The appropriate dress for night was clinging to his limbs.

He summoned what courage he could muster and he continued his climb. His stomach rumbled, but not loudly enough to wake up the snoring old woman.

He would find McCavity yet. And find the right present to win her affection. He would not remain alone.

It was good to have a quest.