Item from Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
Wild seabirds that nest in the Upper Halls of the House — wheeling through clouds and marble galleries, the only other living community Piranesi shares his world with.
The albatrosses are Piranesi's other community, alongside the statues and the dead. He has named several of them and tracks their nesting cycles in his journal. He feeds them scraps of fish when he has extra. He watches them fly and finds in their freedom a joy that echoes and amplifies his own — because Piranesi is not a prisoner. He is a person who lives in the most beautiful place in the world, and the albatrosses confirm this: they could leave, presumably, and they choose to stay. Their presence is practically important — they indicate weather patterns, their fishing behavior reveals tidal timing, and their nests mark the boundary between the Middle Halls and the Upper Halls. But their presence is emotionally important too. In a world of stone and silence, the albatrosses are warm, alive, noisy, and graceless on land. They are a necessary counterpoint to the House's marble perfection.
Large white seabirds with enormous wingspans, soaring through the vast spaces of the Upper Halls with an ease that makes the architecture feel designed for them. They perch on statues' heads and outstretched arms, nest in niches alongside carved figures, and launch themselves from ledges into the cloud-filled galleries with a confidence that suggests they have lived here for generations. Their plumage is mostly white with dark wing-tips, and their cries — sharp, keening, wild — are the most alive sound in the House.
Also known as: The Birds, The Seabirds