Black Feathers

by Joseph D'lacey

  She steps over.

  She’s so used to it now, Megan almost ignores the movement that once again shudders in the periphery of her vision. When she does take a moment to glance, indistinct shapes are moving towards her from every direction. Grey figures swirling like the dust of the smashed and blasted buildings. They have form, though, these shapes. A form she recognises despite the strangeness of their appearance. They are people. Thousands upon thousands of people.

  They make no sound.

  70

  The mud on Gordon’s clothes and boots dried and fell away. With every step he kicked up dust. In many areas of the town, the powder of destruction still hung in the air like mist. He was soon coated with enough of it that people didn’t notice him anymore. Those who’d chased him, too exhausted to keep up, had fallen behind and given up. Once again, uncommon strength had come to him from somewhere. Even with his backpack he was faster.

  When he’d shaken off his pursuers, he kept away from the main road. It was more difficult and certainly more dangerous tacking back and forth through the side streets towards the town centre, but he felt safer, nonetheless.

  There were many dead in the streets and each one he came across shocked him. Many had been dealt their final blow by falling stone, timber or brick, some of them crushed or suffocated by the weight of collapsing buildings.

  The Black Light still freeze-burned his fingertips, rising there whenever he passed wounded or unconscious survivors. He tried to ignore it but the more suffering he witnessed, the brighter shone the darkness from his hands.

  In one street his path was blocked by two houses collapsed towards each other and now united in ruin. In front of one house, eyes bright with pain and disorientation, a man sat with a concrete lintel in his lap. The man’s feet lay pointing away from each other at 9 and 3 o’clock. He saw Gordon and shrugged, looking sheepish.

  He nodded to his lap.

  “Stuck,” he said.

  Gordon looked around like a kid about to steal a bicycle. There was no movement, but muffled pleas for help came from many of the buildings. It was easier to ignore them when walking, not so easy standing still. His hands thrummed. He wanted to run. The man on the ground smiled up at him, either delirious or particularly lucid.

  “It’s ironic when you think about. I’d been meaning to fit new upstairs windows and replace all the concrete lintels with steel. Now the whole house has fallen down and the only thing not broken is the bloody lintels.” The man laughed a strange, alien laugh and winced. “Still, at least I didn’t fit the new windows. I’d have had to refit them when I rebuilt the house.”

  Gordon smiled in spite of himself.

  He wondered if the man knew his injuries were fatal. No help was coming and the only thing this man would build any time soon was a colony of worms. He knelt at the man’s side and took a closer look at the damage. The lintel had hit him just below his hips. Both of his legs had been crushed like straws at the moment of impact. The heavy length of concrete had pinched the flesh of the man’s thighs almost to the point of severance.

  “I need to move this off your legs,” said Gordon.

  The smile was weak this time.

  “I do wish you wouldn’t. I’m quite comfortable as I am.”

  “I’m going to help you.”

  “That’s really not necessary.”

  “You’ll die if I don’t.”

  “Oh, I know,” said the man. “I know that. It’s fine, really.”

  “No. It’s not fine.”

  Obsidian flames leapt from his fingers. The man didn’t seem to notice and for that Gordon was thankful. He reached under the near end of the concrete lintel.

  “I’d much rather you didn’t disturb the status quo, young man.”

  Gordon locked eyes with the man.

  “It’s going to be all right. Honestly. I just need you to promise me one thing first.”

  Overhead, crows circled and Gordon wished them away.

  The man look amused.

  “Me promise you something?”

  “Never tell anyone.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Just don’t tell anyone you saw me. Never tell anyone what I did. That’s all I ask.”

  The man, fully engaged in considering the ridiculous request, screamed in pain and surprise when Gordon freed his legs from the lintel. It came away bloody and the moment he lifted it blood pulsed in generous washes from the trough it had created in the man’s flesh. Below the dust on his face, the man drained pale.

  Gordon tossed the lintel away as though it were no more than a heavy branch. The Black Light arced between his palms. His entire body shuddered with the build-up. The man stared at his lap where the speed of leakage signalled his end. His voice was a whisper.

  “I can’t really see what’s that’s achieved, young man.”

  Gordon dropped back to his knees and, to the sound of distant cawing, he grabbed the man’s thighs just below the crush point. The man’s body stiffened, white suddenly showing all around his irises. Behind his pupils, dark fire burned. The depression in both thighs inflated and his feet turned upwards. His legs shortened slightly, pulling off the heels of his shoes. The torn, blood-wet fabric of his trousers remained, as did the stains of his leaked blood on the dusty ground. But his smashed legs were whole again.

  The man looked at Gordon, who now stood, spent and relieved by the discharge of power, studying his palms.

  “That was… unexpected,” he said.

  Experimentally, he moved one foot then the other. He bent both legs towards his chest and put his shoes back on properly.

  “This isn’t possible. I’m… speechless.”

  Gordon recovered himself. It was time to move on.

  “Stay that way,” he said to the man.

  “I don’t know how to thank you. I mean that literally.”

  “Just keep your promise.”

  Gordon turned and moved away through the rubble.

  “Who are you?” the man called after him.

  Gordon kept moving. He heard the man clambering over the debris behind him.

  “I’m no one,” he said. “Please. Don’t come after me.”

  After that the man was silent and made no move to follow.

  For the rest of that day, the Black Light rose in his hands like sparkling shadows. Whenever he thought he was unobserved he helped those he could, asking nothing in return but their silence before moving on. Night fell and he knew he could not stay in the town. People were talking about him, looking for him despite their promises.

  He left the ruins behind him and walked into the darkness, knowing his only safety lay in putting as much distance between himself and the town as he could.

  71

  Megan looks around for somewhere to run to but the vast ring of eddying, insubstantial figures is unbroken.

  She backs towards the stone block at the centre of the low-walled circle. The throng closes the noose around her swiftly, seeming to drift over the ground. As they approach she notices the strange way they are dressed: more variety than she could ever have imagined. She’d thought Shep Afon was crowded, she’d thought its inhabitants diverse, but the swirling dust-storm of wraiths around her, despite their lack of colour, are greater and more multifarious by far.

  Her knapsack touches the stone pedestal and she is trapped. Glancing behind, she sees there’s a way up if she can use the many cornices as footholds. She turns her back to the throng and scrambles off the ground. Once atop the block she has an elevated view to all sides. The multitude still arrives from all directions, pouring out of every building and along every pathway. She can’t see the far perimeter of the crowd. There is no last row, no stragglers thinning out towards the back. They come from everywhere and they go on forever. Those at the front are now constricting the aperture around her as they near Megan’s miniature fortification. She removes her knapsack and empties it onto the surface of the plinth. The crowd reaches the low wall and stops. />
  Megan snatches up the knife and takes the handle with shaking fingers. The lake of grey figures observes her in silence. Now they are this close and no longer moving, she is able to study them. They are forlorn. Every face carries the same expression of sadness and loss, but they are expectant too. They have been waiting for a long time and now someone has come. Sensing no threat from them, Megan puts the knife back into the knapsack, hoping none of them have seen.

  As one, the crowd reaches out its hands, every person imploring her for something with their upturned palms. Their faces plead. Megan doesn’t know what to do. After a few moments, every expression breaks into silent weeping and the arms are withdrawn to cover their faces. The people rock back and forth with grief.

  “I’m so sorry,” she says. “I don’t know what you want.”

  Every figure in the crowd falls to its knees. The rocking gets worse. Megan is thankful she cannot hear them – the sound of their wailing would be more than anyone could stand. The only other thing in her knapsack that has any significance now calls to her. She removes the black feather from its leather sheath and rotates it by its quill to inspect it. Even as she touches it the crowd becomes still. She looks out across their hopeful faces. She holds up the feather.

  “Is this what you want? You can have it. I’ll leave it right here.”

  The crowd becomes agitated again. Those in the front ranks point down into the circle Megan occupies the centre of.

  “You want me to put it down there?”

  The pointing becomes frantic and finally Megan leans over the edge of her pedestal and looks down. She sees the broken statue and she sees her footprints. There’s nothing else to see. She watches the pointing fingers more carefully. They are gesturing towards a particular area within the squat-walled enclosure. Megan scans the dust at the place where every finger would touch if only the people could enter the circle. Though the day is so gloomy it could be dusk and though the light is as grey as the dust it falls on, Megan sees something. A lump in the grit and grime, not far from one of her own footprints. The rest of the dust around it is uniform and level. It might be her imagination, but something seems to glint through the dirt. The crowd knows she’s seen something now and they retreat a little, their hands over their mouths in expectation and anxiety.

  Megan looks at the people who make up the crowd. If they’d wanted to harm her, they would have by now. Also, it appears they are unable to come any closer than the ridiculously tiny wall around her, a wall so low a rabbit could leap over it. She puts her feet over the edge of the plinth and slides down into the small sunken amphitheatre the wall defines. She kneels beside the bump in the grime. Something does shine there. The hush of the crowd, already profound, deepens. Megan brushes away the dust. Something clean, black and pristine shines beneath her fingertips.

  When she picks it up, the entire population of gauzy grey figures evaporates. Dust motes drift to the ground in the windless air.

  Having retrieved and repacked her knapsack, Megan now sits on the low band of stone turning over the object in her hands.

  It is a thing of power, ageless and unchanged since it was created. All about it will be destruction and decay and this alone will shine. You will know it by its purity.

  A disc of black crystal the size of her palm. The crystal has been intricately carved by an expert, loving hand. The lower half depicts the roots, trunk and branches of a tree. To either side of the trunk sits a crow. One faces east, the other west. The upper half of the of the disc is entirely taken up by a black crow in flight, the underside of its wings presented to the holder of the crystal, its head looking straight up as though it is soaring to the heavens. Its wings form a protective canopy over the tree and the other two crows.

  Merely holding it in her hands is a balm to Megan’s tired mind and body. The crystal speaks to her of creation and transformation, of the tendency for spirit to progress upwards. It reinforces her sense of treading the right path.

  A voice, clear but distant, startles her:

  “It’s time to come back, Megan.”

  She looks up from the crystal. The open space here at the centre of the city is silent and deserted. She is so tired and hungry that she knows the voice must be her imagination this time. All she wants now is to be with Mr Keeper, once more under his direction and protection, but she knows she must rest before she sets off again. Heedless of the grime, she slides down until she is lying in the dust with her head on the knapsack. She holds the crystal over her heart and places her hands over it.

  Just a quick nap and then–

  But she is already asleep.

  72

  Gordon walked until dawn but the smell of smoke on the night air never left him. The road he took from the town had suffered some damage but not enough to deny him passage. Clear of the outskirts, he left the tarmac and walked on the grass between the road and the hedges beside it.

  Once it was dark, the horizon became a glowing line, the flames themselves invisible but the light they cast illuminating the canopy of cloud, a dusky orange glow rising and falling in waves to every direction. Sometimes he walked through patches of cold smoke, rolling across the land like mist. Other times his way was clear. The Earth itself was calm and quiet, but at the perimeter of his hearing its people wailed laments of injury and loss and death.

  Before dawn he heard rumbling again, felt it in the soles of his feet and braced himself for destruction. It didn’t come – at least not in the way he’d expected. The rumbling increased gradually, as did the vibrations in his feet. What approached was not an aftershock but a convoy. His first thought was that help was finally arriving – emergency vehicles, medical supplies and rescue workers. That thought was swiftly overruled; some instinct he couldn’t define made him throw himself to the ground in the drainage ditch beneath the dense hedgerow he was following. There was no time to get through the hedge and even if he’d tried he wasn’t sure he’d have made it through the tangle of thorns.

  Immediately soaked by freezing filthy water, he peeped over the lip of the ditch as the convoy passed. Six grey personnel trucks, two grey Land Rovers and three grey armoured cars. Two long haulage vehicles brought up the rear, each carrying three bulldozers and a digger. Every vehicle bore the insignia of the Ward. The armoured cars had heavy machine guns mounted above their cabs.

  After they’d passed he crawled out of the ditch, wet and stinking. As soon as he found a break in the hedge – a gate opening into a field in this case – he climbed over and followed the road from behind cover. The Ward had come of age: government, police force and army merged to become a single unstoppable force and, as theirs were the only vehicles on the road, Gordon had to assume they now had control of all the fuel reserves.

  When light began to creep over the eastern horizon, Gordon veered away from the road and looked for shelter. Having crossed a couple of fields, he saw the remains of a building frozen corpselike against the lightening sky. Nearing it, he saw it was an old brick outbuilding with a slate roof. One end of it had collapsed in the quake, but most of it still stood. The building was already old and many of the slates were missing at the “good” end. After testing the walls and some of the fallen beams for movement, he found a way in through the broken wall and thrashed his way through the weeds and nettles to the most secure-looking corner of the structure. There was no floor and the whole place smelled faintly of manure, but he could put his tent up inside and it would be out of sight from every direction.

  The ground is uneven and uncomfortable. Megan shifts to find a better position and knocks her head against the wall. The wall is ridged and rough; a sharp edge scratches her face as she turns over. Still exhausted, she opens her eyes just for a moment.

  There is no wall. There is no dust.

  She scrambles to sit up and hits her head again, this time on one of the heavy branches leaning against the trunk of a vast tree. The branch slides off the trunk and her shelter collapses around her. She struggles to free her
self from the fine weave of the sheet which presses her against the gnarly bark. Megan springs away from both tree and shelter and turns to face it, backing a few paces towards the clearing. She has one hand on her forehead as she tries to replay what happened after she lay down in the centre of the city to sleep.

  There are no memories. She was there and now she is here.

  The black crystal!

  One thing she remembers very clearly is holding the crystal to her chest as she fell asleep. She no longer holds it in either hand. Near the base of the tree, partially covered by the collapsed shelter, something reflects, concentrating the flat, grey light of the day. As she approaches to retrieve it, a vibration comes up through her feet.

  She hesitates, glancing around the clearing. The vast space is deserted and silent. The sky beyond the outer branches of the tree is white with uniform, indistinct cloud. The bright gloom mutes every colour, deadening the land in every direction. Nothing stirs.

  She takes another step and the vibration comes again, stronger this time: a tremor rising from far below. Above her, Megan senses movement. She glances up.

  The branches of the tree bristle with dark crawling shapes. Some of them detach and glide slowly towards the ground on wet gossamer threads. She stifles a cry with her fist. At the centre of the tree, descending in slow spirals and sinuous meanders, legless, muscular forms approach the glint of the crystal. Every creature means to possess the black light which the engraved stone reflects. Every creature means to prevent her from taking it away. This she cannot allow.

  With the ground beginning to rumble and roar, she dives for the crystal and her pack just as the first of the spiders reach the level of her head. The snakes, seeing their prize snatched up, dispense with crawling and now begin to fall from the trunk and inner boughs. By the time Megan is scrambling out towards the clearing, her knapsack hastily shouldered, it is raining serpents and eight-legged nightmares. Their intelligence and determination nauseate her. She crawls because she wants to stay below the falling spiders for as long as possible, but it means she can’t move fast. She hears slithering behind her, fast and loud. Meanwhile, the first heavy-bodied spiders land on her back. She can feel the tongues of a dozen snakes tasting the soles of her boots, preparing to strike.