Jackdaw (12 page)

Chapter Twelve

They collapsed into bed that night too exhausted for awkwardness, let alone anything more. Ben slept deeply, after a day’s work topped by a full evening on his feet, and woke to a steaming mug of tea brandished perilously near his face.

“Awake, sleeping beauty,” Jonah said with a grin. “It’s Sunday, the inn is shut thank God, and Dora’s declared a holiday.”

“Dora?”

“Mrs. Linney. She’s pleased with us, after last night’s takings, and the lack of damaged furniture or deflowered daughters.” Jonah’s eyes crinkled. “Barman and doorkeeper, who’d have thought it.”

Ben sat up and took the mug. “Born to it. When you say holiday…”

“I want to go up the coast.” Jonah sat on the bed. “Look at the sea and smell the air and
walk
, Ben.” His eyes were wide with anticipation. “I need to stretch my legs. Can we? Will you come?”

A holiday. A day out with Jonah, a walk along the clifftops, so dangerously like those long rambling walks they’d shared last year…

Ben couldn’t think of anything he’d rather do.

They set off after a good breakfast. Mrs. Linney—Dora—warned Jonah dryly not to fall off a cliff. Agnes extracted a promise from Ben that he would read
The
Pickwick Papers
that evening. Bethany was lost in dreams of her planned meeting with Aaron, to be chaperoned by her mother, but she spared a smiling glance for Ben, obviously appreciating his minor assistance in her romance.

It was a glorious morning, with the Cornish sun, somehow so much brighter than London’s, making the heaving sea glitter. Ben watched it with fascination as they walked together over springy turf, scents of salt and thyme and gorse in his nose. Jonah was quivering as he inhaled the sparkling air, nostrils flared, head reared into the wind, and after they had walked for half an hour or so he flung his head and arms back and let out a wild yelp.

“Nettle?” asked Ben, laughing.

“Freedom.” Jonah turned on the spot, arms wide, with the unfocussed look that Ben was coming to recognise. He gave a sudden, mad grin, and leapt into the air.

“Jonah!”

Jonah hit the ground lightly. “Nobody about for miles. Just us and the seagulls. And I can feel the wind.”

Then he was off, sprinting a few steps, the scent of bruised thyme rising where his feet crushed the plants, and leaping upwards. He spun, impossibly suspended in the air for a second, head tipped back to feel the sun, then dropped, bounded and darted up again. He swung by one hand from the empty air, throwing himself forward and catching on nothing.

Ben only realised his mouth was open when a bee almost flew into it.

He waved the insect away, unable to stop watching Jonah as he played like a puppy, his face transfigured with pure joy. It shivered through Ben, the pure bliss he radiated, the reckless freedom of every movement, and he found he was laughing along with Jonah, standing on the tips of his toes as though he too could dance with the wind.

Jonah looked down, grinned wildly and dropped about ten feet. Ben yelped, instinctively, and found Jonah on the grass before him, flushed with pleasure.

“Want a go?”

“Me?” Jonah gave him a gleeful, conspiratorial nod, and Ben let go of possibility and sense and everything else. “God, yes. What do I do?”

“Anything. Jump. Hands or feet. I’ll keep you up.” His eyes were blazing blue.

“All right,” Ben said, laughing, because it was so absurd, and leapt as Jonah had. His foot met the air, held. He took another step forward, hesitated, and found himself hitting the ground with a jarring thud.

“Sorry, sorry!” Jonah waved his hands. “But you have to keep moving, remember? Keep running or you fall.”

“Running,” Ben repeated, and launched himself forward and up again.

It wasn’t that hard, in fact. He had played scrum half for a tough team and was well used to throwing himself forward without flinching from inevitable impacts. So he ran, and the air held him up, and he ran faster, and turned, because he could, with the wind howling in his ears and whipping away Jonah’s calls of encouragement. He climbed, recklessly higher, keeping his eyes on the great expanse of swelling sea, until he was panting, gasping in the wind, and suddenly aware that it seemed a lot more natural to run up through the air than down.

“How do I get to the ground?” he yelled.

“Run down a hill,” Jonah called back. “Or drop and swing.” He raised his arms in illustration, as if swinging from an overhead bar, and Ben thought, with dizzy lightness,
Sod it
, and did just that.

He dropped. Grabbed with his hands, was held for a second, dropped again, closed his hands on empty air that held him, dropped a third time and fell with jolting shock into Jonah’s open arms, tipping him over so that they were sprawled on the turf together, laughing and gasping.

“God,” Ben said finally. “God. That was incredible.” He couldn’t stop grinning. It didn’t look as though Jonah could either.

“Did you like it?” That must have been obvious, but Jonah’s face was radiating eagerness and the innocent vanity of knowing he’d pleased Ben, and Ben didn’t even consider his answer. He simply pulled Jonah over and kissed him.

Jonah’s mouth met his, still curved in that unstoppable smile. A memory flashed into Ben’s mind, a ridiculous play-fight from long ago—
Stop laughing when I kiss you!
—that had ended with them both so weak with laughter that they’d given up on the attempt to fuck. A bubble of remembered hilarity rose in his chest at the thought. Jonah pulled his mouth away to look at him, eyes wide with delight, fisted both hands in Ben’s jacket and yanked him down again.

After a few frantic moments that somehow got Ben’s hand trapped under Jonah’s back, and Jonah’s hands up inside Ben’s shirt, Jonah jerked his head sideways so they broke apart, gasping for breath.

“Ben.” Jonah’s eyes were on his, with immense satisfaction. “Listen, I want…can I try something? Will you come with me?”

“Yes. What? Where? We’re in a field.”

“We are now.” Jonah squirmed out from under him, in what Ben felt was an unnecessarily provocative way, rose and pulled him up, not letting go of his hand as they stood. They went over to stand at the cliff edge together. A gust of wind whipped at Ben’s jacket, and he took a half step back.

“You stay there a moment,” Jonah said. “Let me see.”

“See?” Ben asked.

“Over the cliff,” Jonah explained, and dived off.

It hit Ben right in the heart for a fraction of a shocked second. He remembered to exhale, couldn’t quite do it. The wind was too strong here to lean over safely, and he couldn’t fly alone, so he knelt at the ridge where gorse tumbled over the edge, inhaling the too-sweet scent, and looked down with caution.

It was an extremely long way. Black rock jagged through the white foam of waves many, many yards below. There was no sign of Jonah.

“Hello?” he called. God, he couldn’t have fallen, could he? “Hello? Jonah!”

“Here!” came Jonah’s cry from somewhere beneath him. “Hold on… All right, want to come down?”

“
Where?
”

There was no reply for a second, then Jonah came leaping out into Ben’s field of vision as though he’d pushed himself away from the cliff face. He scrabbled up, lurched sideways at a gust of wind, and landed on hands and knees on the turf.

“Whew.” He grinned up at Ben. “There’s a ridge down there, set back. Plenty of room. Perfect. Come and sit with me.”

“Uh…” Ben looked out at the sea, the drop.

“It’s windy, but jump out as far as you can.” Jonah’s eyes were the deep shade of the sunlit sea. “Trust me.”

This was actually insane.
We could just sit on the ground!
part of Ben’s mind cried.

But Jonah made him fly. Jonah danced with the wind. Jonah was looking at him with an expectation that he would join the dance, and Ben might be on a terrifying edge but with Jonah’s eyes on him it was impossible to step back.

“Now?” he asked, and it was worth it to see the grin on Jonah’s face.

“Let me go first. I’ll call.” Jonah straightened, took two paces and hurtled off the edge. Ben noted how he did it—
jump out, pretend there’s something to land on right there, turn…

“All right,” Jonah’s voice came faintly from below.

Ben looked out, over the sea and the sheer drop below. “You must be mad, Spenser,” he said aloud, and he was laughing at the thought as he ran two steps and threw himself off a cliff.

He landed hard in the air and pushed himself off right away.
Don’t stop, don’t stop.
Jonah was seated in a sort of niche in the cliff face, over the precipitous drop, beckoning. Ben ran towards him, and the wind caught him and sent him stumbling sideways. “Jesus,” he gasped, and suddenly, far too late, he was afraid.

“Here!” Jonah yelled.

The wind pushed at Ben again. He shoved back, desperate, and pounded towards the cliff face, heart tightening in sudden panic as the solid, precipitous stone wall loomed, but Jonah’s arms were out for him. He ran towards those in a choking frenzy of fear and disbelief, and landed on stone, knee first, and Jonah’s arms were round him, dragging him to safety.

“Hey. Ben?”

Ben’s heart was thumping wildly, but he was on a solid surface, and Jonah was there. He managed a breath. “Fine. Fine.”

“Head between your knees. Come on, don’t faint.”

“I’m not going to faint.” Ben took a deep breath, and released what he realised was a death grip on Jonah’s forearms. “That was a bit… The cliff is big.”

“It is,” Jonah agreed, with total seriousness, and Ben exhaled hard. He shuffled backwards—the indentation in the rock meant that the ledge was about three feet deep—rested his back cautiously on the rough stone, and looked out, feeling his heart rate slow.

There was nothing but the sea. They were on—under—a promontory, where the edge of the land jutted out, and if he looked straight ahead, there was nothing. No islands, no cliffs, no land. Just the sea, forever, dotted with the red sails of the fishing fleet against blue, like butterflies in the sky, and then nothing till the horizon.

“How far can you go?”

“It’s about thirty miles to France,” Jonah said thoughtfully. “I couldn’t do that without a rest. If I landed on a ship…”

“You’d startle sailors.”

“Perhaps they’d startle me.” Jonah gave a waggle of his eyebrows that made Ben snort. “No, that’s not something I’d want to try. Anyway, I don’t want to think about land. I like the endlessness.”

“Yes.” Ben gazed out. He had his knees pulled to his chest. Jonah had one leg dangling idly over the precipice. “Thank you.”

“What for?”

“This. Making me fly.”

Jonah looked out at the waves, his face still. He was silent a moment longer, then said, softly, “I’ve never done it before.”

“What?”

“Shared it. Walked anyone else.”

“Really?” Ben said. “Hang on. You told me to run to you over a thirty-foot drop. That was the first time you’d done that?” His voice rose on the question.

“Oh, I was sure I could hold you.” Jonah spoke with utter confidence. “I windwalk, Ben, I manipulate the ether. I’m really quite good at it. I just never wanted to share it with anyone else till now.”

Ben watched a seagull circle by. He should, he supposed, be flattered, but…

“Why not? Why wouldn’t you share something so wonderful? Why would you keep that to yourself?”

Jonah shook his head. He was smiling, but there wasn’t any humour in it at all, and his gaze was fixed on the horizon.

“Jonah?” Ben felt a shiver of uncertainty at his bleak expression, coupled with the sudden awareness that he was, in fact, trapped on a remote cliff over the sea. “What is it?”

“I was twelve when my powers came in.” Jonah’s tone was distant. He still didn’t look at Ben. “It’s a funny thing, you know, the talent. It comes to you, out of nowhere. My family weren’t practitioners. I didn’t know anyone who was, and nobody knew me, and when my powers came in, they came fast. I didn’t know what was happening. I didn’t know it was wrong.”

“Wrong?”

“I had a God-fearing family, you see.” His mouth twisted in a half smile. “I found that I could walk on air—
walk on air
, Ben, it was a miracle. I thought it was a gift from God. I danced through the air to show my parents. My father beat me till the stick broke and then he flung me out of the house. Physically. He took me by the arm and leg and marched me down the path, and threw me outside the gate, in the dust, and spat at me, and said I was no son of his. Changeling, he said. Devil spawn. My mother stood in the doorway and watched.

“So I went away, and I…survived for a while, stole, slept in hedges, all that, and finally the justiciary caught up with me. They were very kind. They assured me none of it was my fault, and everything would be wonderful now, and gave me to a couple of practitioners out in Cambridgeshire for training. Well.” He laced his fingers together behind his head. “We very quickly established that I was too stupid to ever learn to read or write, and that I couldn’t teach them to windwalk. After that, I was of very specific use to them, cleaning windows and picking fruit, as well as all the other tasks they wouldn’t pay a servant for. There was no training, no education, nothing, and there was nobody for me to appeal to. I said, this isn’t what you were supposed to do, and they told me to write and complain to the justiciary. Offered to spell the address for me. They laughed about that.”

Ben swallowed. It was not easy with the anger closing his throat. He should have known this, somehow. Jonah shouldn’t have hidden it. He shouldn’t have carried it alone.

“Eventually, when I was sixteen, they gave me a paper to sign. I made my mark, and they told me I owed them for their generosity in food and board, and the accumulated interest, and I’d just agreed to work for them for life to pay for it. They said I’d signed the indentures of a slave.”

“There is no possibility that’s legal,” Ben said. “None.”

“Bollocks to legal. I got up that night and stole everything that wasn’t nailed down. Then I took all the papers I could find, piled them in the middle of the room and set it on fire.”