Black Feathers (14 page)

When he could no longer keep up his sprint, Gordon looked back. He couldn’t see Pike but he didn’t stop. Even with Pike limping, his head start would be nothing more than a very few minutes. And Skelton would be calling in for more men. The running was hard and soon he slowed to a trot, looking over his shoulder every few steps. For the moment there was no sign of Pike. Long before he reached the end of the bridleway, Gordon was interspersing running with a fast walk to save his strength but maintain his advantage.

Finally, he cleared the last bend in the bridleway and saw the opening of the tunnel. Spurred on by making it this far, he found new strength in his legs and ran the last stretch with a growing sense of elation. He had, at least in part, paid Skelton and Pike back for taking away his family and abusing their home. He reached into his coat pocket for his torch, switched it on and ran into the tunnel. Even when he saw the Wardsman waiting for him in the darkness, he didn’t quite believe it. His momentum carried him right into the man’s arms.

The mist closes behind her and Megan is swallowed by the palpable whiteout. She can feel the direction in which the strands are pulled and she allows herself to be tugged the same way. The air is alive with a harmonic buzz which she feels more than hears. Against her face the ethereal threads of mist are damp and clinging. She fears she will breathe them in and suffocate. No amount of swiping at her face makes any difference. The earth tilts forwards, at least it feels that way – perhaps she is merely walking down a slope. The incline steepens, leading anti-clockwise. She descends, spiralling downwards, into some kind of crater. Even if she wanted to walk straight ahead she could not; whoever is manipulating the mist is drawing both it and her into a vortex.

Like steam from a kettle, the mist evaporates. In seconds it has thinned, torn and twirled into non-existence. Megan looks around her and recognises nothing. Wherever the mist has brought her, she is no longer in the Covey Wood she knows so well.

Instead of mist, there is snow. Night is falling fast. Megan stands in the middle of a huge expanse of bare, brown earth already dusted with a fine covering of powder. She is not dressed for this kind of weather and, as the light drains from the sky at unnatural speed, the temperature drops even farther. She holds her arms around herself, not knowing what to do. Finding shelter seems more important than anything else. She can see a line of trees against the darkening sky and she hurries towards them. From time to time she glances in the direction she has come from so she’ll remember her way back. Only after several checks to ascertain her relationship to the landscape does she notice that she has left no footprints in the snow.

She reaches the trees with the same unnatural speed as the coming of the dark. The highest boughs are barely visible against the deep blue of night. The branches are partially naked, dying to the autumn and leaving skeletons behind them. Perched among the spreading fingers of the trees are hundreds of crows. There is an agitation among them; they lean close to each other in hushed conference, and hop from branch to branch as through whispering rumours. When they notice Megan, all movement ceases. She feels hundreds of quick bright eyes watching her. She is rising up from the ground, rising against the fall of fluffy crystals until she is among the branches.

She looks down at her body and she is a crow.

She is able to perch on a branch and balance without any effort at all. She knows the sleekness of her own face, sees the gleaming black curve of her beak. Unable to prevent herself she unfurls her wings and feels the grace and intelligence of their design. Without intending to, she rises from the branch. Spreading her wings has been enough to give her lift on the night wind that rushes unchecked across the now snow-covered field. She settles back to the branch again, laughing to herself. And then she glances to either side, and above and below and all around are her brothers and sisters of the black feather. All of them laugh silently with her. She is welcome in their shadow clan.

The excitement she noticed on the ground is even greater up here in the branches. The crows are expectant. Something wonderful is going to happen tonight.

At some spontaneous but agreed moment, every crow in every tree around her pushes up from its branch and flaps for height and speed. Megan rises too. She wishes now that she had always been a crow, that she will always remain one. If she never saw Apa and Amu again and could not continue her path with Mr Keeper she would not mind at all. She would rejoice. To be among crows, to
be
a crow, is all that matters now.

The flock gains height en masse. On other days, Megan knows, there would be aerial cavorting and gamesmanship, there would be tag and suicide dives. But tonight there is something to see and it is their duty to attend.

From on high there is much to see. This is not the world she has left behind in Covey Wood, though the land itself is the same shape, it seems. Below her are lights the likes of which she has never witnessed. They run in streams and rivers and they congregate in great numbers in patterns far below. Even though it is dark, the world below is busy. It is noisy too, releasing an endless hiss and roar upwards. Only in seeing this world away from the sanctuary of the trees does Megan sense the great danger and imminent threat. She cannot explain it. All she knows is that along with the great event of the evening, something terrible is also coming, a dark spirit summoned by this land, for this land; a spirit who will cast a deadly shadow over all who inhabit it. For the first time since she has changed shape, Megan is unsettled. These crows she flies with, noble though they are, live in treacherous times.

They do not fly towards the lights; the crows descend away from the noisy part of their world and fly towards the great comforting darkness of the open land. Soon they dip towards a smaller group of lights, this one much smaller. No noise rises here. The few lights shine from a single building surrounded by trees, and it is into these trees that the crows silently descend in their hundreds. When the trees are full, they land on the roof.

They are focussed on one particular light, a light emanating from a room in the upper part of the building. It takes Megan a while to understand that this building is a house with two levels. She has never seen such a thing before. She flies down to a branch affording her a view of the room from which the light comes. The snow falls harder and with it comes a rising wind; it escalates like music and Megan feels the most pressing agitation. She flies down towards the light and only realises at the last possible moment that she isn’t able to fly into the bright room. Panes of glass larger than any she has seen in her own world form a barrier keeping her out. She lands on the sill and puts her beak to the window.

A woman squats on a bed in the throes of labour. Another woman supports her. A third woman wearing a tiny white hat on her fat head is struggling to kneel beside the bed. The baby is coming out at the very moment Megan arrives and its mother screams in triumph and agony as she pulls its body from her own, rocks back onto her blood-streaked heels and holds it up. At that moment the gale forces open a window near Megan and the snowstorm gains entry to the house. No one inside gives it much attention. They are all focussed on the baby boy who has just entered their world. Megan sees the boy’s eyes are already open and so she pecks the glass, trying to attract his attention. In all the fuss, he is able to see her for only a brief moment before he is handed to the fat woman in the hat.

An opening appears inside the room and three faces fill it: the child’s two sisters and his apa. Their faces tell stories. Megan pecks again, trying to get anyone’s attention now. This is a sacred moment and none of them, despite their joy, seems to realise its true import. The other crows send her mental signals, telling her not to make her presence known because the humans will harm her, but Megan persists. Someone must see her. Someone must understand what the crows have always known.

Finally heeding the frantic but silent signals of the other crows on the roof and in the trees, Megan turns and flies to the top of the tallest tree, a horse chestnut growing quite close to the house. There, with a view into the expanding night for miles in every direction, Megan is filled with insights and emotions so strong she fears her crow body will split: this night is both the beginning and the end of something. It is the end of an age. The land knows it. The animals know it. Only the people, people who once were the guardians of the same land and its animals, seem blind to what is happening; what the arrival of this boy heralds. He will point the way to something. His life will bring change to the world and the change, like birthing, will be painful. His life will be hard and the life of the world will become tumultuous. He will inspire both love and hate and no one will ever be certain of him.

If only I could tell them there is a future. If only I could make them trust in him.

Even as she has these thoughts, she understands her place in all this is not as a messenger but as an observer. This is the beginning of a story. A true story. One greater and more far-reaching than the story of a pale, gentle boy; it is the story of the Black Dawn and the Bright Day, the story of the world’s rebirth. And she must learn it. Only then will she be able to tell people there is a future. And only then will she be able to make them continue to
trust
. The idea is so strong it wants to explode from every part of her beautiful, sleek crow body. She has no choice, it seems, no choice but to rise on the whispering night wind and blend with the darkness of the black autumn sky.

The crows of Covey Wood, for she knows now that this is where they have always lived, sense her departure and she feels both their sadness at the cutting of this brief thread and their hopeful, optimistic salute to her.

Carry him, they call out behind her. Hold him in your heart as we always have.

Alone and high upon the openness of the dark Megan discovers that crows too can weep. Her tears become snowflakes and vanish among a billion others, the frozen tears of the world. She flies back to the Covey Wood of the day world and of her time with the first page of a story locked fast in her breast.

Megan’s journey is not over.

Whatever has given her the body of a crow now takes it away. She is allowed to come to earth first and then her wings and long, sleek face vanish. Her feathers melt into black smoke. The crows, even though they could see the beginning and end of everything, even though they held the pain of the world in their beaks and claws, they flew light and free, they flew exultant, knowing they were magic, knowing their place in the world. Megan, human again, girl again, feels no such wonder or certainty. She wishes only that she could have stayed a crow forever.

She has a task, though, and a path to walk. She has a duty, and even as her body fills with its former solidity – and all-too-familiar frailty – she readies herself to move forwards and keep her word.

It is early morning and she stands in a hollow in a clearing among the trees. She thinks this is Covey Wood but she has never seen this part before. This is the vortex, she thinks, into which the mist was being drawn. She walks up the gentle slope. Partway up is a single crow feather, lying on the leaf-strewn ground and agitated by some breeze she is unable to feel. She leans down and lifts it up. The sun catches the filaments of the feather and it changes colours, rippling from grey to black to blue.

“They’re the only ones I ever found.”

Startled, she looks up. A few paces away is a small, slight boy with black hair and irises of stone. Her free hand covers her mouth to prevent a tiny cry from escaping.

“I always thought of them as black. Simply black. But they’re not really, are they?”

The boy is beside her now, studying the way the light affects the feather. Megan can’t help but take a step away from him.

“Don’t be afraid. I would never do anything to hurt you.”

She is embarrassed but doesn’t know what to say. She doesn’t want him to think badly of her. He smiles and shakes his head and Megan knows he knows what she’s been thinking.

“This one is for you, Megan. You’ll need it because you don’t have language for the things you’re going to see. You’ll find it hard to keep their story alive if you have no way to describe them.”

She thinks she understands.

“The crows showed me… lights. So many of them. Some were still and others moved in lines across the land.”

“Yes. Cars and electricity. You haven’t seen that before?”

Megan shakes her head and frowns. Why would she have? She’s never been into the past before, where there were so many things that no longer exist. Things people didn’t really need.

Again, the boy is listening to her thoughts.

“You shouldn’t be so quick to judge, Megan. Just because you haven’t seen these things in your time, it doesn’t mean they’re not there. And who’s to say those things aren’t useful, even necessary, if used in the right way?”

Megan is suddenly doubtful of the boy’s wisdom and power. Maybe Mr Keeper has been wrong about the boy from the night country. Maybe he doesn’t have so much to teach her. She can’t help thinking this, and even as she has the thoughts she regrets it because the boy knows everything in her mind.

He doesn’t appear affected. Certainly he is not angry. He smiles at her, his grey eyes watching her without any inhibition. She looks away.

“From now on,” he says, “you must be ready to listen and learn at any moment and you must record everything that comes to you. Everyone has the ability, Megan, but few will ever become what you will become. You must never turn away from it, no matter how frightened you might be, no matter how alone it makes you feel. This gift is not just for you, it’s for everyone.”

The boy’s face is grave now, an expression far beyond his years to possess. What manner of child could hold such knowledge?

“There’s one other thing you must remember, Megan. Nothing will ever be simple. Nothing will ever be exactly as it seems to be now that the threads of dreaming and waking are woven, now that time is touching time. What you see will contain the truth but you will have to sift it out. There will be times when you cannot decide which world is real, the world you live in or the world into which you look. And there will always be a great darkness waiting to break through into your life and into your world. You must guard against it in all things. You must search it out within yourself and know it. You must embrace it. When you embrace the darkness within, you will always live in the light.”

Megan strains to take in what he’s saying, knowing all this must be recorded once she’s found her way back to Mr Keeper.

“I don’t understand the things you’re telling me. I won’t be able to remember it all.”

“You will and you will. Your memory of this will be clear and accurate. You can’t understand it now but in time it will make sense. Everything you need will come to hand in the very moment of its requirement.”

The boy steps close and strokes Megan’s cheek. His fingertips are like the touch of feathers.

“You mustn’t worry. I chose you for a reason. And you agreed for the same reason. This is what you were born to do, Megan.”

His final gesture is to touch the tip of the crow feather she still holds. The moment he does this, the ground beneath her begins to spin. It’s as though something has wound the land into a tight spiral, humming with tension. Now the spiral is released and she pirouettes as the land unwinds. The depression she has been standing in rises upwards and the speed of the spinning increases until she is flung up, still turning, her arms flung out to her sides by the force of it. The bounce sends her up a few feet and then she falls to the earth, stumbling in a circle and then falling onto her bottom on a thick carpet of fallen oak leaves. She feels a little sick and collapses onto her side in the soft leaf litter. When her stomach settles and her equilibrium returns enough, she pushes herself back into a sitting position and brushes the leaves from her hair and clothes.

She is among the trees of Covey Wood, back in her own time and, she hopes, in the day world. The mist which came down so swiftly is gone and sun streams through the canopy, stamping broken pot-shards of light all over the ground. Her limbs are weary. When she looks around she sees Mr Keeper sitting with his back against one of the larger oak trees, its trunk veined with ivy. He is smoking his pipe and he nods an acknowledgment when she looks his way. The smoke rising from his pipe makes Megan just a little nervous, reminiscent as it is of the vapours that took her so far away from here.

“He’s the little boy from my dream,” is all she can think of to say in the end.

“Of course. Who did you expect it to be?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know anything.” Suddenly Megan is crying. Shaking and crying and unable to stand up, she’s so tired. “I don’t think I can do this.”

Mr Keeper is beside her and lifting her to her feet.

“Come on, Megan. You need to eat.”

She is too exhausted to resist as he leads her out of the wood and back towards his roundhouse, making sure to skirt Beckby village and its nosy denizens.