Black Feathers

by Joseph D'lacey

  Megan doesn’t hesitate in giving her description.

  “They come to me like living visions, and are full of things I’ve never seen before and do not understand. And yet, now that I have the feather, I have words for everything I see. But there’s a feeling that comes with all of this, a feeling I don’t understand. It’s as though someone else has seen the story before me. Many, many times. Is that possible?”

  “It’s more than possible. It’s true. Many have seen before you and many more will see after you. The Crowman will make certain of that.”

  “There’s something else. The boy – Gordon – he’s so… alone. And such terrible things have happened to him. Is it because of me somehow, Mr Keeper? Am I doing these things to him? I don’t want to hurt him. I don’t think I can bear to see him hurt again. And the visions, well, sometimes it’s like I am Gordon Black. Like I’m right there with him, inside him. I feel his pain and his loneliness. I feel his powerlessness. I don’t know if I have the strength to keep doing that. He’s afraid and I’m afraid for him. I have this feeling something terrible is going to happen to him. I don’t want it to be because of me. And I don’t want to be there when it happens.”

  Mr Keeper reaches across and takes her hand.

  “It’s not you creating this, Megan. It comes through you. Your function is to allow it to pass, commit it to memory and record it. Do not involve yourself in it or you may distort it. That alone would be grounds for me to end your training. You must do nothing other than be as open to what comes as the river banks are to the river.”

  Mr Keeper smokes, journeying far away himself for the briefest moment.

  “All you need to realise is that Gordon Black’s story has already happened. You must merely rediscover it. That is what it means to walk the Black Feathered Path. You have the strength to be with him as he makes his journey. If you didn’t, you couldn’t have come this far. The Crowman knows you, Megan. He knows what you’re capable of.” Mr Keeper squeezes her hand while he puffs on his pipe. “I know too. You’re going to be a Keeper one day, Megan. One of the best we’ve ever seen. In the meantime, I will help you and protect you in every way I can. If we each do what we were born to do, if we keep to our truths, all will be well. You have the strength to do this. I know it in my heart.”

  Megan sits quietly. She doesn’t feel strong or powerful, but the boy’s presence lingers now, like a familiar scent in an empty room. She cannot help but love him a little, having felt his pain and known the depth of his sorrow and loss. He seems far too young to have lived so much tribulation. Megan’s life has been slow and comfortable. It has been safe and happy. At least until she met the Crowman. Gordon’s life has been overshadowed by the dark form of his destiny. His agonies can only increase, the responsibilities he carries become greater and heavier.

  As if reading her thoughts, Mr Keeper says:

  “Your part in all this is just as important as his, Megan. Without you to tell his story, the boy suffers for nothing. He labours in vain. What you do keeps Gordon Black alive.”

  She nods without conviction.

  Exhausted as she is by the return to her body, it’s hard to give too much thought to any of this. She watches Mr Keeper smoking his pipe and that becomes a simple, pleasurable focus. As the old man’s eyes begin to stare somewhere in the far distance, something occurs to her.

  “Is that where you go?”

  It takes a moment for him to return, even though his own absence has only just begun. This is the first time she’s ever interrupted him intentionally, and she is frightened now that she has angered him. But when he is once more within the boundaries of his own body, Mr Keeper is smiling.

  “Sometimes.”

  He inspects his pipe bowl and sees that it is spent. He knocks the ash into his hand and it disappears into a pocket. He puts the pipe away.

  “At first, Megan, your journey was the one I made. The only one. But once that journey was complete, I began to make journeys to other places and times. For other reasons. Occasionally, I travel just because I can. We mustn’t be working all the time, you know…”

  “And when you go, you’re not here anymore?”

  “Part of me is rooted. The rest of me flies.”

  “Will I ever get used to it? I feel so heavy now. So tired.”

  “You’ll recover more quickly each time you return. This was a long absence, Megan. It’s no wonder you’re worn out. Here, eat some more bread and cheese. Take a little more water too, if you can.”

  Mr Keeper holds out these things to her, but Megan has gone away for a moment:

  She sees a broken road. She sees a barren hill. At its crest is a blackened, twisted tree. Three crows sit in the tree. The sun is setting, angry and bloody over the scarred, sickened land. This is…

  There is bread and cheese in her hands. A water skin, beside her.

  “What do you see, Megan?”

  She shakes her head.

  “Tell me.”

  She draws breath deeply.

  “I know this from somewhere. Or maybe he’s seen it… or will.” She puts down the food and drinks a few sips from the skin, gasping because her throat is so dry and the water opens it like a torrent through a rut. “Wait. I’ve seen this. It’s from his night country.” She looks at Mr Keeper and her eyes fill with tears. “He has nightmares. The most terrible nightmares.”

  Mr Keeper nods but not without compassion.

  “Your world and his world are woven now. You may walk in his night country and he, perhaps, may walk in yours. Do not let it deter you from your discovery, Megan. See his story. Bring it back. Write it down. That is all you are for now, a conduit for the boy’s life. Transmitting it is all you must do – all you can do until the story is told.”

  Megan, suddenly grim-faced, feels a tiny surge of pride. She has her place in the world. She has her purpose. How many can say that? She will do as she has promised to do. She will bring back the boy’s story for the good of the world.

  39

  It was a long and fruitless morning. All the snares were empty, and Gordon and John Palmer saw no game for a couple of hours. When they finally came upon a group of rabbits playing near a warren in a steep bank, John Palmer insisted on taking the shot with his air rifle. He missed a simple kill and the rest of the rabbits scattered into the many entrances of their home. The man laid his forehead against the rifle stock, and Gordon thought he would cry again, this time in plain view. It wasn’t that they needed the food – the stocks of cured meat were plentiful – it was the weight of John Palmer’s powerlessness settling heavier on his shoulders. At least, that was what Gordon supposed. The man was on the run with more fear of what was behind him than hope for what the future might hold. Gordon tried to feel some sympathy for him, and couldn’t. John Palmer’s coldness in the face of what had happened to his home and family worried him. The man’s pain was greater than his own, the crimes committed against him more brutal. Their shared misfortunes ought to have brought them closer, but John Palmer was still suspicious of him and that kept them apart.

  But when he got right down to it, there was something about Brooke’s father that Gordon just didn’t like. He couldn’t specify what it was, he only knew it was true. His instinct told him to be wary.

  For the first time in many days, they returned to camp empty-handed. John Palmer led the way. Suddenly careless of being spotted he took the direct route, foregoing the river bank and walking straight towards the area of forest where their camp was hidden behind a screen of trees. Gordon sensed John Palmer’s failure to provide seething within him and turning to anger, anger that would soon come his way.

  “You’ve done a lot for me, Mr Palmer. I could have died in that tunnel if you hadn’t found me when you did.”

  John Palmer muttered something gruff that Gordon couldn’t decipher. A verbal waving-away of his own kindness? An oath of regret that he’d ever set eyes on Gordon Black? It didn’t much matter now.

  “I’m going
to move on tomorrow,” continued Gordon. “I didn’t want you to think I wasn’t grateful for your help. I really am. I hope you and Brooke find a” – he was going to say “safe” and was glad he didn’t – “good place to live soon.”

  John Palmer took a few more steps and then stopped. He turned and looked down at Gordon.

  “You’re going off on your own?”

  “Yes.”

  “But where are going to go? How will you survive? This is a dangerous country now. Everything’s scarce. Even food and water.”

  Gordon looked around at the land. A grey blanket of sky stretched to every horizon. To the west the landscape rose into high, purplish hills. Everywhere else there was woodland and fen, smaller hills and the valleys between. Plenty of places to travel quietly. Plenty of cover for him and for the animals he would stalk. Plenty of water in the swollen streams and rivers. The land called to him, and suddenly this man John Palmer and his sad story were a weight that Gordon wished to cast off and leave far behind. The land called to him to enter it deeply and lose himself there. We will make you strong, the trees seemed to say. I will feed you, said the voice of the Earth. All over the sky, crows and jackdaws and rooks and magpies were suddenly on the wing. Not a call from any of them, not a swoop or a dive, a mere hanging upon the air in anticipation. We are your dreams, they seemed to say.

  Follow us.

  “Did you hear what I said?”

  John Palmer seemed insulted by Gordon’s confidence.

  “I’m going to find the Crowman,” said Gordon. “Do you know anything about him?”

  At the mention of the name, John Palmer resumed his walk, opening a gap between them. Gordon caught up easily, his legs stronger now than they’d ever been before.

  “Anything at all would be helpful. What you’ve heard about him. Where he’s been seen. Anything.”

  John Palmer wouldn’t look at him.

  “This is nonsense.”

  “If you don’t know anything, it’s OK. I only wondered. I have so little to go on, you see. Just rumours, really.”

  John Palmer tried to walk faster, but Gordon paced him without effort, his gait casual against the grown man’s hasty trot. Brooke’s father seemed not to notice the host of corvids dotting the sky in every direction. He saw nothing but the ground right in front of him. Gordon knew he’d get no answer. The man was too closed off. Even if he knew something, he wasn’t going to share. He was too afraid of everything.

  Gordon stopped walking and watched John Palmer stalking away across the uneven ground, walking so fast he almost tripped every few paces. This was the condition of John Palmer’s mind. Trying to escape everything: the past, the truth, himself. Gordon let him pursue his folly and slowed to enjoy the last part of the walk back to camp. The beech forest was slate grey and silent away across the fields.

  When John Palmer broke into a run fifty yards ahead of him, Gordon knew it wasn’t an attempt to avoid the truth. He’d seen something among those quiet, leafless giants.

  Gordon ran too, his booted feet finding easy purchase in the lumpy field and striking the earth surely every time. Without really trying he was running faster than he ever had in his life. And though he began far behind John Palmer, he could already see what the older man had seen.

  There were figures moving amid the trees that hid their camp. Gordon drew level with John Palmer and overtook him. He heard the shouts of men. Something zipped past the right side of his head. A figure in the beech wood stopped and reached towards its neck as if stung. The figure took its hand away and Gordon saw a red palm and a red throat. The man – Gordon could see his beard now – fell to his knees, one hand picking frantically at the wound under his chin. Blood came fast and pressurised beneath trembling, slippery fingers. It must have been John Palmer’s finest shot. For once, John Palmer’s instincts were correct. Gordon could sense the malevolence emanating from the men in the trees, men who now retreated farther into the wood.

  The wounded man’s neck pumped arterial blood in comical arcs, as though from a water pistol loaded with cheap wine. The portion of his face not covered by hair drained pale as he plucked at the entry wound for the tiny lead pellet that had already ended his life.

  Another shot passed beside Gordon, and he heard a man groan in immediate response. As he cleared the tree line and plunged into the woods, he saw more and more of what lay before them. There were several men in the camp, six more at least, and they had already begun to destroy it. At first he couldn’t see Brooke, but that was because he was looking for a blond girl dressed in sturdy outdoor gear. There was no evidence of that there.

  Gordon dodged to his left on a sudden impulse as something in the camp exploded in his direction. He side-stepped again, instinct guiding him as he reached for his father’s lock knife and unclasped it. A second explosion erased a low branch beside him. One of the men had fired a shotgun at him and was now slipping two more cartridges into the still-smoking weapon with calm, sure fingers. Gordon came at him as the man locked the gun shut and raised it.

  He dived low as both barrels discharged right over his head. His momentum folded the man in half, causing him to sit down. Gordon punched the knife blade upwards into the man’s stomach. He had no idea what he was aiming for; he merely wanted the blade to enter as deeply as possible. He was aware of the man drawing a sudden in-breath and stiffening. He withdrew the knife and rolled away. The man sighed with the exiting of the steel and sat staring straight ahead.

  There wasn’t time for Gordon to wipe the blood from his clenched fist or from his red-greased blade. Another of the men ran at him, a dirty machete raised high over his head. He too was bearded, his hair thin and grimy, his furious eyes wide and glaring. The pellet which obliterated one of them did not stop the man immediately, but it gave Gordon the opportunity to rise to his feet and skitter from his path. By the time the pellet had entered the man’s frontal lobe, he’d stopped and stood, blinking, arms still held high, the machete poised to fall. Ruined ocular mucus, the mess of one angry eye, leaked from his left orbit with each confused blink.

  “You’re lovely,” the man said, and sounded surprised by the utterance. “You’re so beautiful.” He sat down with the machete still wavering on high. “Yes, that’s it. I hadn’t realised before. I want to love you. It hurts so much and I want to be with you and I forgive you because you are so lovely. So lovely.”

  Blood followed the dregs of the deflated eyeball, the flow of it increasing until one side of the man’s face was streaked with it. Gordon stood, expecting him to attack at any moment. The deranged man muttered about beauty and peace and love, all the while his weapon pointing upwards like an antenna receiving divine transmissions.

  Four other men, equally shabby and wild, all of them so thin their clothes flapped around their limbs, had grouped by a tree. They had knives. One carried a small hatchet, another a bloodstained hammer. A pellet slapped the tree by which they stood, and their group became a huddle on the far side of its trunk. Their anger and confidence were gone. They seemed ready to scatter. One of them called out.

  “We know you, John Palmer. We know what you did. You can’t run from the past, man.”

  John Palmer entered the clearing, his gun barrel preceding him. His voice quavered.

  “I was protecting my own. That’s any man’s right, and you know it.”

  “You’re a murderer, John Palmer. A child-killer. I hope you die of shame and burn in hell.”

  Gordon looked across at Brooke’s father. Eventually John Palmer said, “I probably will.”

  It was so quiet, Gordon doubted any of the men could hear.

  “We’re even now, John Palmer,” said the speaker from behind the tree. “All debts cancelled. All bets off.”

  “What do you mean?” shouted John Palmer.

  “You’ll see.”

  As soon as John Palmer turned away, the men raced into the woods. In seconds they were out of sight. Gordon considered pursuing them, but there was blood coo
ling and coagulating on his hand and already the fire of conflict was going out of him. Whatever had happened between these men and John Palmer was not his business, except in as much as he owed John Palmer his life.

  The man with the shotgun was on his back, his weapon tight in the grip of his dead fingers. He still stared but straight up now, through the leafless canopy and into the featureless grey sky. Gordon sensed rather than saw the circling crows up there, and for the first time in his life he recognised the feeling this gave him. It was as though he had not only been watched over, but studied by something both distant and close by, something unseen high above and also invisibly at his side.

  The machete man had stopped speaking of love. He sat with his mouth open. His hands had finally sunk to rest between his legs, the edge of the blackened machete blade biting through the leaf mulch into the earth. From his sightless eye he had seen something wonderful before he died, but Gordon knew it was no more than brain-damaged hallucination.

  The noise John Palmer made was a howl of ultimate disappointment.

  Gordon turned now, walked a few paces and saw why.

  Brooke was hanging outstretched, with her face to the bark of a large beech. At first he thought they’d tied her to the tree because her feet weren’t touching the ground. But the blood that ran in such plenty, down from her upstretched arms, over her bare shoulders and down her naked back and flanks, told a different story.

  40

  They had stripped her and, judging by the welts and raised areas of redness on her skin, they had beaten her. Her head hung back, no strength in her neck. Her eyes stared up. Her hair hung, streaked red and brown. It was clear that they had done the things that, under very different circumstances, men were created to do to women, but they had done this, and worse, to a girl. The order of these acts was unclear, but the worst of them was the nailing of her hands and wrists to the grey body of the beech tree. The nails had been hammered in carelessly, and there were several. In their haste to complete the act they’d mis-hit some of the nails, bending them over before they were fully home. This had not stopped the hammering. Most of Brooke’s fingers were pulped and broken, her left ring finger hanging by torn skin against the back of her hand. Four nails had flattened each of her palms to the bark, and the natural shape of her hands, the hands that had washed and tended him with such delicate surety, were destroyed. Two nails penetrated the backs of each wrist, and it was from these wounds that most of her wasted blood originated. From these twelve nails, Brooke was suspended, her unclothed body pale and elongated like an animal hanging in the slaughterhouse.