The dove crashed into the window and fell with a thump onto the floor in front of Jumble’s desk. Jumble was on the floor beside the motionless bird in a quink, and looking up at Mumble with a silent question, he lifted the bird up in his hands.

Holding it gently, he mouthed the healing words silently as he went back to his desk and sat down.

“What are you doing, you idiot?” screeched Patsy, “Just get it out of here. It’s dead”

“Maybe he likes dead birds,” remarked Davina.

“Well he likes Mumble, doesn’t he!” answered Emily viciously.

Mumble was astonished. You would have thought they’d have done enough torture after the earlier horror.

But Jumble just continued to hold the bird in his ten-year-old hands. He kept asking for the life giving process in his head.

Looking up at Mumble, he smiled gently, his blue eyes sparkling. “It’s alive,” he whispered, “I can feel its heart beating under my hands. It’s alive.”

Just then he felt a tiny movement of wings and he opened his hands wide. The dove sat there, turning its head around, then looking directly at him and with a slight nod and a pictured thank you, lifted off and flew straight out of the window.

You could have heard a pin drop in the classroom.

“He just brought that bird back to life,” said Melanie, her face painted evangelical.

“It can’t have been properly dead,” smirked Patsy.

“He just saved that beautiful bird’s life,” said Melanie, walking toward Jumble with an adoring look on her face.

LISTEN TO ANOTHER EXCERPT FROM THE ADVENTURES OF MUMBLE AND JUMBLE AND THE GREAT CORPSICLE CONUNDRUM bernie-fart-snippet