Earth and Air

by Peter Dickinson

  Scops spent the night in the oven with the door a crack ajar, and at first light was already calling for food. Never in his life had Yanni regularly risen so early. He fed her before he breakfasted and took her out to the barn when he and Euphanie set off for their day’s work.

  In two weeks she had doubled her size, and the same two weeks later. By then she had learnt to scrabble out of her bowl and explore round the table while they ate. Already she was moulting her baby down and the quills of her first true feathers were poking through what was left. Her head could swivel through a complete circle in either direction, so that if she happened to be looking Yanni’s way when she stretched and flapped her skimpy wings, her large-eyed owl stare gave her an expression of utter bafflement that they hadn’t done their job and carried her into the air.

  Mobility made the problem of her droppings much more difficult. Birds, Euphanie said, were untrainable, so Yanni watched her every instant she was loose, at first with a damp cloth ready to hand. Soon though he learnt the almost imperceptible signal and if he was quick enough could catch the splatter directly onto the cloth. He applied the same vigilance to all her leavings, the moulted feathers, the little pellets of mouse bones she would from time to time cough up, and so on.

  “You are getting even more fussy than me,” said Euphanie, teasing.

  “Going to church helps,” said Yanni, dead serious. “Seeing him again, week after week. He’s not going to give up.”

  By now it was high summer. The spring rains had been kindly, almost healing the ravages of last year’s drought. Between the dew-sweet dawns and the dusty cool of the evenings the island seemed to drowse its days away, purring gently as it slept. But it was not at peace. Papa Archangelos was a disturbing priest. People didn’t know what to expect when they saw the tall black figure pacing towards them along one of the network of tracks that crisscrossed the island. True to his promise he knew everyone in his flock by now, not only their names but their hopes and troubles, and their place in the complex kinships that, rather like those connecting tracks, linked the community together. On meeting he would bless you, and ask a few friendly seeming questions, bringing himself up to date with your affairs since you had last met him, but as you parted you felt he had seen into your inmost heart. Few of the islanders went to formal confession, and those only once a year, travelling to a priest on another island to do so for greater secrecy. Papa Archangelos put no pressure on his flock to come to him. There was no need. He knew.

  He was a wonderful preacher, using images of fishing and farming and housekeeping, things the islanders understood. He spoke of the Lord Jesus as if he had met him and talked with him face-to-face, walking the same earth they did and breathing the same air. But every now and then he spoke of a different Christ, the huge-eyed frowning judge whom they could just make out up in the smoky mosaics in the dome of the church, and to whom they would answer on the day of judgment for every ill deed, every sinful thought, every wicked dream in all their lives. At these times he seemed to grow taller as he spoke, and darker, the soft voice whispering though the breathless stillness until the air in the church felt midwinter cold. More than once someone listening had screamed, or shouted in terror, and rushed out into the sunlight. Yanni needed no other reminders to be careful to keep the existence of Scops a secret.

  In fact the house where he lived with Euphanie was the last on a track that led nowhere useful, and Papa Archangelos didn’t return there till the grapes were ripe on the vines. By then Scops was flying, and no longer roosted in the jar on the shelf, but on a beam up in the barn, as a wild owl might well do. She slept most of the day, but when he returned with Euphanie from the fields in the evening she would wake at the rattle of the gate and as they reached the door of the house would drift down with her uncanny silent flight, noiseless as a falling leaf, and settle on his shoulder and nibble his ear while he teased the feathers at the back of her neck. Then she would go off and hunt, but not very seriously, knowing she would find food at the house when she returned.

  One such evening Papa Archangelos was waiting for them at the gate.

  Yanni’s heart lost a beat, and another. There was vomit in his throat. But his legs walked on, helpless.

  Euphanie knew what to do.

  “Take the corn into the barn,” she whispered. “Leave it there. Say hello to Scops, then come. He’ll be gone before she’s finished hunting.”

  Papa Archangelos raised his hand in blessing as they approached and waited for Euphanie to open the gate. She handed her basket to Yanni, and led the way through. Yanni came last, turning aside with both baskets, and on round the corner of the house to the barn. As he reached for the latch Scops did her silent swoop to his shoulder and nibbled his ear. His panic eased.

  “Stay clear till he’s gone,” he whispered. “We don’t want him to see you.”

  She didn’t of course understand the words, but she seemed to sense his tension and slipped away to become part of the gathering dusk. Inside the house he found Papa Archangelos sitting at the table with a jar of wine, bread, and a dish of olives beside him, and Euphanie still standing, opposite. It wasn’t the custom of the island for a woman to sit if a man, not a member of the family, was in the room. Papa Archangelos waved Yanni to the other chair, as if this had been his house.

  “I cannot stay long,” he said. “I have two things to tell you. The first is for you alone, and is sad news. You remember I told you I would try to find whether your father still lived. I have not been wholly successful, but a priest I know in Alexandria tells me there is very good reason to believe that your father died of the plague in that city four years ago. He was working in the docks there when the plague struck and was not among those recorded as having left, and was not seen again. I am sorry, my children. He may not have been a good father to you, but your father he was, nonetheless. Let us pray for his soul.”

  He rose, so Yanni did the same and stood with his head bowed while the priest whispered three short prayers. In the silence that followed he could hear the throb of his own heart. Something was going to happen. Something . . .

  “Thank you, Father,” said Euphanie, and Yanni managed to mumble his own thanks.

  “The second thing,” said Papa Archangelos more briskly, “I am telling everyone on the island. Our blessed Emperor has ordered a census of all his peoples, and soon the census takers will be coming to this island. There is nothing to fear from them, provided you tell them the truth. The penalties for lying are very harsh. You understand.”

  “Yes, Father, of course,” said Euphanie, though he had spoken to Yanni.

  They waited for him to go, but he stood gazing down at Yanni. Unable to meet his gaze Yanni looked away and found himself watching the fingers of the priest’s right hand as they slowly turned the broad silver ring on the middle finger of his left. He was trapped, hypnotised, by the steady, repetitive movement. Something was going to happen. Something was . . .

  “What troubles you, my son?” said the soft voice. “Your father’s death?”

  “Er, no . . . No . . . I don’t . . . don’t remember him at all . . . It’s all right . . .”

  “But there is something?”

  Something? Yes, something . . . Yanni must tell him . . . something . . .

  “It was my fault, Father,” said Euphanie. “I made him go down to the tavern to be with the men there. I thought somehow he must learn to be among men, not having a father to help him, you see. They didn’t want him there. At first they cut him out but then one night they deliberately got him drunk and then threw him out—because he couldn’t stand his round, they said, though he’d told him he couldn’t. Now he hasn’t got any self-confidence at all.”

  Yanni had almost fainted with relief as she’d begun to speak. In another few seconds he would have told Papa Archangelos about Scops. But now it was all right. The pressure was gone. Papa Archangelos stood looking down at him, nodding. The reflected lamp light put an orange glint into the dark eyes.


  “Yes,” he purred. “It can be hard for a young man without a father, and no friends of his own age. But your sister is right, Yanni. You must learn to deal with men. Go to the tavern again. Kosta, I expect, was it, and Thanassi and their cronies? These are not bad men, Yanni, just thoughtless. I will speak to them. It will be all right. And I will see you in church, no doubt. Till then, my friends.”

  “You’ve got to go now,” said Euphanie, “or he’ll think there was something else after all. I’m sorry. It was the best I could think of, before you blurted out about Scops. That’s what he wanted.”

  “Kosta isn’t a good man,” said Yanni. “Nor’s Thanassi. I’ve heard them talking about what they did to Nana. I don’t think some of the others liked it either, but they didn’t want to say so. All right, I’ll go.”

  “Sorry about last time, kid,” said Kosta, squeezing him by the elbow in greeting. “It was just a bit of fun, right? And everyone’s got to get blind drunk once in his life, find out what it’s like. After that, the trick is to know what you can hold and stop there.”

  “I still can’t stand my round,” said Yanni.

  “Never mind that for now,” said Thanassi. “When we’re old dodderers and you’re earning good money, then it’ll be your turn.”

  And the others were as friendly. They made a place for him at their table where he could watch the backgammon, two games being played simultaneously with the rest of the men watching and placing small bets. Kyril, in his ear, explained the intricate skills of the simple-seeming game. He’d brought enough money for a couple of mugs of wine and placed some of it as a bet on Dmitri and doubled his stake when he won. Everyone laughed.

  “That rate you’ll be standing your round after all,” said someone.

  “I’ll start now,” said Yanni and poured his winnings back into their communal jug. They laughed, with him, not at him, though he had a slight feeling that Stavros had deliberately allowed Dmitri to win. And when he rose to go they made no effort to stop him, but waved cheery hands and told him to come back soon.

  “You’re all right, kid,” said Kosta—the same Kosta who had chortled about how he had smashed Nana Procephalos’s nose in with a well-aimed rock. How could they be one person? How could even the magical voice of Papa Archangelos have persuaded the old Kosta to change into the new one? He was still thinking about this as he passed the last house along the harbour and turned up the steep track between the olive groves.

  With the faintest of whispers Scops settled onto his shoulder and nibbled gently at his ear. He almost laughed aloud in astonishment. She was still a young bird, and he’d never seen her so far from the house before. He must have been twenty paces further on before he realised that the night had grown suddenly less dark. It wasn’t that the moon had come out—it was already bright in a clear sky, half full and setting toward the west—but the darkness itself had somehow paled, so that he could see details of the track some distance ahead, and what had been shadowy blank shapes, merely darker than the darkness of night, became solid and fully visible. It was very strange. He hadn’t had anything like this happen to him before . . .

  Yes he had! That horrible night in the spring, when the men had made him drunk and he’d thrown up on the Bloodstone—that had been pitch dark until he’d started down through the olives with the baby owl cupped between his hands and her head poking out—then it had become almost as light as this, though there had been no moon. Only everything had still seemed much fuzzier than now . . . Yes, of course, because Scops had only had baby eyes and could tell light from dark but couldn’t yet see things properly . . . And when it had started to rain and he’d tucked her under his smock, then it had gone dark again, because he’d been seeing things through her eyes and she couldn’t see anything in there. He must be doing the same now.

  He experimented, and found that he had to be looking in the same direction as Scops for the effect to work. If he turned his head suddenly to his right all he saw was dark until Scops turned her head that way too. The area to his left that was hidden from Scops by his head remained in a triangle of darkness that moved beside him up the track as he climbed.

  He didn’t have much time to wonder at the strangeness of this. He was just starting on the steepest part of the track when Scops nibbled , or rather pecked, at his ear. Not an owl kiss but a definite peck. The track ahead went dark. Startled, he turned his head and could just make out that Scops had swivelled hers right round and was watching back the way they had come. He slowed his pace and looked back over his shoulder until he could see by owl light what she was seeing.

  A man, about fifty paces behind, coming up the track.

  Well, why not? Several other families used the lower reaches of this track, and it was not that late. He passed one turning, and then another. The man took neither of them. Well, there was a way to find out. In the shadow of a tree he stopped for a piss he didn’t need and looked back, turning his head only far enough to be able to see out of the corner of his eyes, in case the pallor of his face betrayed that that was what he was doing. The man came on another dozen paces, stepping sideways out of one patch of moon shadow into another on the far side of the track. His footfall was noiseless, despite the stony ground. Yanni didn’t need the brief interval of moonlight to tell who the burly, pot-bellied figure was.

  Stavros. And he had been wearing rope-soled shoes in the tavern. Most of the men wore boots. He was a fisherman, and lived in a shack close to the harbour. There wasn’t even a woman up this way he might be visiting. Without owl sight, could he have seen Scops at that distance, perched on Yanni’s shoulder? Yanni didn’t think so, not even in moonlight. Deliberately he rattled a few pebbles as he moved on. Stavros continued to follow.

  For some reason Yanni wasn’t really scared. Tense and wary, but with a belief in himself that he wouldn’t have had a few months ago. It might only have been the wine, he realised, but in his heart he believed it was something to do with Scops, with the fact that through her he could see in the dark, and perhaps there were other powers he didn’t know about yet. And in a way it was a relief to have his doubts about the men in the tavern confirmed, to know that their sudden amazing friendliness wasn’t a change of heart, and to guess now that what Papa Archangelos had said to them had had little to do with being nice to fatherless young men. Both were part of some plan. With the help of Scops he would find out what it was, and perhaps outwit them all.

  Before they were home Scops slipped away into the night, and he walked the last stretch in the human dark. When he closed the gate he fixed the chain so that it would rattle at a touch, and as soon as he was in through the door put his finger to his lips. Euphanie stared at him. They waited tense. The chain rattled briefly, and stilled as if someone had clamped a hand over it.

  “No, it was all right,” he said, in slightly too loud a voice. “They were much nicer than last time, and I sat with them and watched them play backgammon. In fact I won a mug of wine on a bet, but I put it back in the jug as part of standing my round. I had a good time. What’s for supper? I’m hungry.”

  “Well, you’re going to need to set the table before you can eat,” she said, with the same exaggerated audibility. “Anyway, it’ll be twenty minutes till it’s ready.”

  “Then I may as well take the trash out.”

  He left with the bucket by the back door and carried it along the top terrace. As he slung its contents down the slope a horrible thought came to him. Perhaps he’d understood the whole episode wrong. Perhaps it wasn’t him that Stavros was interested in, but Euphanie—a lone young woman living with her weakling brother far from any other dwelling—a brother who now thought he could trust these friends . . .

  He turned to hurry back to the house, but Scops whispered down onto his shoulder. Now, by owl light, he could see Stavros standing in the shadow of the lemon tree, with his ear pressed to the kitchen shutter.

  Scops slipped away almost at once. Yanni walked back with the heavy iron bucket hanging
loose in his hand ready to be swung as a weapon against an attacker, and passed within six feet of the intruder, who made no move. Once in he bolted both doors, something they never normally troubled with, and he and Euphanie then discussed tomorrow’s tasks in the intervals of eating, until they heard the scratch of Scops’s beak on the shutter by which Stavros had been standing, and the soft prrp, prrp of her call, and knew that the watcher had left. He let the owl in and she sat on his shoulder while in a low voice he told Euphanie everything that had happened.

  “This is the priest’s doing,” she said. “Who can we turn to? Mother of God, who can we trust?”

  “Nobody. Only ourselves. And Scops.”

  “What can we do?”

  “Watch, listen. Bolt the doors at night, and when I go to the tavern.”

  “You’re going again?”

  “It’s the only way we can find anything out. They’ll start asking me to do something soon, to join them in something, I don’t know what. We’ll know a bit more then.”

  She nodded, frowning. It was strange that he should be the one taking the lead, and that he should accept it, but that was how it seemed to be at the moment, for both of them.

  The moon grew to its full, and waned. Yanni went each Tuesday to the tavern. The men were as friendly as before, and one of them played a board of backgammon with him, giving him odds of two free tiles, and then only one, as he learnt the game. To his surprise he found himself understanding its mathematical subtleties far better than he would have a few months back, when that kind of thing merely had the effect of making his mind go blank. Indeed on the third evening he beat Dmitri fair and square, without needing to use his free tile.