Green Jay and Crow

by D. J. Daniels

  Kebab in hand, I wander through the tenements, past the picture of Olwin Duilis and vaguely in the direction of Eva’s apartment. Maybe it’s because it’s night time, but things appear startlingly unchanged. Not that I recognise anyone. It’s just the vibe; the ambience, if you will. The usual suspects are out and, of course, they don’t know me, so they’re out to test my intentions and capacities as well. It’s been a while since I experienced this. In fact, it’s been never, because Barlewin’s own have always known who I am. But there was, understandably, a time when I was more of an underdog. Or, tell the truth, not Guerra’s man. So I walk tall, make it seem as if I belong. Which, weirdly, I do. Try not to look around too much.

  There’s only one difference that I see—make that two. Up on the walls, there’s some kind of glowing stuff. Looks like fungus. Makes the alleyways slightly less dark, though the colour it gives off is hardly conducive to thoughts of upright citizenship. And the second difference, the one I don’t like. It’s a light too, but it flickers in and out. And I have no idea where it’s coming from. It’s as if someone has designed their own idiosyncratic lighthouse. Interestingly, the light’s not coming from the High Track, which is the habitat of the only mad man I know.

  I receive a few silent enquiries in the sign language of the alleys. A certain tilt to the head, a certain stance, a certain positioning of the feet and arms. I don’t think the passage of time—or, indeed, realities—will have changed the interpretation that much. In much the same way I endeavour to show them who I am, but they have the advantage of home turf. It troubles me that this should be so. So close to home, and so far.

  And then, because it’s close to inevitable, I realise there’s someone behind me. Close but not too close. I can feel it in the stones under my feet, because they’re my stones too, and, damn it, I was here first. I don’t like this bit, what’s coming next. It’s necessary, there’s no way around it, but still. You’d think I’d be out of practice, but there’s always someone desperate enough, wired enough to decide the only way out is through.

  I’ve reached a spot where I hope things can play out in a reasonably quick way. I move back and to the left, quickly, without indication, just enough to draw level with my follower. I swing a leg, catch him in the back of the knee, watch him fall. He stays down. I like that. A sense of the inevitable, of the necessary, of the required. All sensible. There are others, of course there are others, but they seem to have paused in their intentions. I decide the time is not yet right to pull out my knife, and I try not to contemplate the shitty way my leg feels. The Barleycorn King’s wounds have not yet healed.

  “Where you going?” asks the man on the ground.

  This does surprise. His voice is thin, and higher than it should be. On the other hand, he’s lying on the ground. No sense in replying. I keep walking.

  “She’s not there,” he says.

  Enough to make me pause. “Wasn’t visiting,” I say.

  “Sure, you were,” says the man.

  Some people just don’t know when enough is enough. I’m close enough to Eva’s apartment block for it not to matter, so I keep walking. But then there’s some scrabbling and a rush and then there’s a figure standing at the top of the steps by the front door. Not blocking it, exactly, but enough to be in the way. There’s no-one else there, there’s no door guard the way there used to be, but then by the look of the building, even in this fungal light, there’s nothing much to guard.

  “You really want to do this again?” I ask. I take the first two steps, just to show the direction I intend to move.

  The man’s shaking but he’s standing his ground. He’s pulled his hoodie halfway down his face—apparently some things never change. He’s a small thing, really, and I feel slightly guilty for knocking him to the ground. Only slightly, mind you. The night lights up with the mad lighthouse search again, and I watch him stand completely still. He’d melt into the wall, if he could. There’s a pause in the light, it rests on the bottom step. I press myself up onto the third step, close to the door, subtly, without seeming to move, the way I did when I was kid. I used to practise rolling over under the sheets. I figured if I did it slowly enough, the monsters wouldn’t see. Sometimes it even works.

  The light’s on the second step now. I push a little harder against the door, hoping it’ll give. It don’t.

  Third step. This thing’s playing with us. I look over at my hoodie friend. He reaches over, does something funny with the handle. The door falls back, and he rushes in. I’m not that far behind. The light is in the building now, just behind us, and we’re running up the stairs, all pretence of cool gone.

  We’re running for real. Right up to Eva’s greenhouse. I half expect the man to give the two-three knock at the door. That’s not what happens. But the door is opened, gently, reverently, and the man steps inside as if into a temple. He waits for me to come in, closes the door softly behind him and we both admire the view. There’s a ton of bioluminescent fungus up here, and it’s less of the murky green of the alleyway and more blue. It’s beautiful, in its own strange way. The faint light from the High Track light helps, I suppose. And apart from the fungus, the room is clean. Cleaner than I’ve ever seen it. On the walls are pictures, and there’s a double bookshelf to one side. It’s almost feels like a library. I can’t say I’ve been inside a lot of libraries, but this is without a doubt the weirdest one I’ve ever stepped into.

  The man’s been quiet for a while, and I look at him, because it don’t usually pay to forget the whereabouts of the person who recently followed you in an alley. He’s standing close to a window, looking up at the High Track, and his hoodie’s fallen back.

  There’s something about his hair I don’t like. I step over, push the hoodie back all the way. There’s no tentacles, only dreads, but the man is clearly not a man. The green tinge I’d figured was a function of fungus lighting is still there. And the features are more delicate than I’d first realised. This is a woman. But not a human one.

  “You’re not humant,” she says.

  “I think you’ll find I am. Cut me and I bleed. Though that’s not an offer.”

  “Humant,” says the woman. I could swear there’s a touch of exasperation in her voice. “Plant/human hybrid. You know.”

  I don’t, but I’m not going to tell her that. “What made you think I was?”

  She shrugged. “Who else would come here? It’s a pilgrimage.”

  “Yeah, well. Not for me.”

  “Were the time nets after you?”

  I figure she means those creepy lights that had us running up the stairs. “You didn’t look too pleased to see them yourself.”

  “No-one wants to get caught in the nets.”

  I think, suddenly, of the Hooks and the Tenties, but now is not the time to ask.

  “It’s cleaned up nice,” I offer. And she looks at me at first as if I’m mad and then as if she’d been right about me all along.

  “You’re a friend,” she says.

  Now, that’s a question I’d like to know the answer to.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Green Jay

  IT WAS A mistake to see Rose-Q. She has sent me under again, given me enough drugs to have me swimming through a heavy ocean. I suppose it was Guerra. I have used several of T-Lily’s cloths to try and fight it. They have helped, but not enough, and there are too few left for me to dare use any more. But I have learned my lesson; I will be more careful.

  I lie out in the sun, hoping it will help me. Rose-Q sits close by. She has walked me to a different chair today. From here I can see the water tower. I don’t want to see it, even though the stick man is out of sight. It brings back memories that I don’t want. The drugs make it harder for me to resist Olwin Duilis. I keep thinking of her picture. It rests behind my eyes, even when they’re closed. I try to pretend that it’s a picture of me. A picture that Blue Jay has drawn. I make up a story that he is sitting here in a chair close by and has drawn this picture. But I canno
t keep up the fantasy. There is no chance that he could visit, even if he chose to. Not with Rose-Q close by. And I know the picture is not of me but of Olwin Duilis.

  I think, instead, of what Eila said about the photograph, how it could be used to shift reality. This is knowledge Olwin has blocked from me, if she ever had it. She probably does. Olwin Duilis, it seems to me, is too clever for her own good. She places herself where she is not wanted. She tries to change things to suit herself. I must try and forget her. I must.

  I wonder if the Crow is smart enough to use the map. Probably he is. But that is not how he will be thinking. He may want to get home, but he will not think to bring the box. Perhaps it’s better where he is. I wonder if I would choose to come back if I could escape. But I am not Kern Bromley. He belongs here, and he knows that he does.

  There is a dragonfly flying close. It buzzes loud, or louder than I expected; I have never seen a dragonfly before. I let it rest on my arm. I am still, perfectly still, watching its iridescent wings and its searching eyes. Its tiny feet prickle my skin, but I do not move. It feels like an important visit, a message of some sort, but I am not able to decipher its intent. It reminds me about the story of the old woman, but that was just a story and this is just an ordinary dragonfly. The dragonfly leaves after a while. I stretch, I try not to cry. Crying used to make me feel human—no plant cries, after all. But now it seems a measure of the drugs I have floating in my system. I am too close to tears, too close to frailty.

  There are people up on the water tower, painting. It’s a strange design; I can’t make any sense of it. Patterns rather than a picture. It reminds me of a rock pool, or of the kind of stone that has layers and ripples. I force myself to watch even though I can feel my eyes wanting to close.

  Crow

  I DISCOVER THE woman’s name is Fay, that she lives here in Barlewin, “for now,” and that she likes to keep an eye on the greenhouse. “There are still haters,” is her only explanation for that. She seems to think I can offer her something, but she don’t say what. And other than give her a few much-needed lessons in self-defence, I don’t quite know what she’s after. I’m getting used to the look of her. She’s different from Eva, more substantial. Perhaps it’s just that she’s whole and healthy and not in need of constant care and attention from Tenties and the like. I cast my mind back, see if I can recall seeing other green-hued beings in the past couple of days, but no-one comes to mind. Not that I was exactly looking. Not that I didn’t have other things on my mind.

  Fay fusses about the greenhouse. She’s happy working in the blue half-gloom and that’s fine with me; I’m still a little freaked out about the lights and I don’t really want to draw attention to my lack of calm. I look out the windows. The High Track is harder to see than I expected. I mean it’s right there, but something about the angle of the windows and the curve of the High Track means that you don’t really get to see in. What you do see is a vista of Barlewin: the marketplace, the water tower, even the High Track’s number 3 staircase. And there’s someone on those stairs—in fact, a couple of someones—climbing up. The lights of the High Track make them clearly visible, but I can’t tell much about them.

  Once at the top, they turn in my direction. I stifle the urge to duck down, but they don’t seem to be looking at the greenhouse. They seem to be heading to what I can’t help think of as admin, which is just a bit further up and out of sight. I expect I’m going to lose them, but they stop, almost directly in front of me. Another figure joins them. The Barleycorn King? Doubt it. Not tall enough, too sprightly, no crazy hair. Most importantly, no cane. Although I’m beginning to think that’s more an instrument of torture than a walking aid.

  All three of them walk to the very edge of the High Track. They’ve pushed their way past plants and to the railing lining the whole thing. It’s not much of a railing, it’d not stop anyone jumping off, but it’s there in a non-functional, symbolic way. They seem to be attaching something to it, something small, possibly metallic, because the light glints off it every now and then.

  I can’t help myself. “What the hell are they doing?” I ask Fay.

  She comes closer, too close. She reminds me of Tenties that way. “Oh, that’s nothing. Just a protest.”

  “A protest against what?”

  “They’re putting on locks. To protest what happened to the Trocarn. It’s only symbolic. They’re not real Time Locks, just old-fashioned metal locks. But they do piss him off.”

  “The Barleycorn King?”

  “Yep,” says Fay. She’s already wandering away, back to her fussing.

  “But the Barleycorn King couldn’t be responsible for the Time Locks.”

  “No! Of course not.”

  The depth of my ignorance is beginning to wear at me and that’s unusual. I’m not usually someone who needs to know. Although I am happy to rejoice in anything that pisses off the Barleycorn King.

  “I’m finished now,” says Fay. Which is obviously an invitation to leave. I grab a book from the shelves while Fay’s not looking, a spur-of-the-moment acquisition. We’re both cautious as we walk down the stairs, but there’s no searching light and the alley is just an alley. Fay says goodbye and turns away into the night before I think to offer to walk with her. There’s a path up here that will take me back to the marketplace, or there should be. It’s smaller than an alley, almost a mistake, as if they forgot to make the houses bigger, or forgot to include room for a garden. You have to know the spot—there’s some not very clever graffiti, a scraggly tree—and then you duck under a bit of fence and there you are.

  I look for my landmarks. I should be able to find the place without thinking. I’ve walked this way so many times, but I second-guess myself and it takes longer than it should to find the fence. Mostly because the tree has gone. But then I’m under the rail and up the path and I almost feel as if I’m home. It’s the kind of place kids find, that’s how I found it anyway, and I’ve never seen anyone else there. And tonight appears to be no exception.

  I stand at the end of the path, looking out at the marketplace. There’s no-one around. In the Barlewin I know, there’s always some activity if you know where to look. I guess I just don’t know what direction to head as yet. There’s a buzz of something up to the left in the buildings that have their backsides facing the High Track. I head that way, mentally counting the coins I have left. Enough for something. I definitely need a drink.

  The bar is artier than I remember it. There’s a handcrafted sign above the front door which would not have lasted in the Barlewin I know and love. And there’s no scaries. Strange music playing. Something scattered and hard to hold on to. I’m underdressed, but I really don’t give a shit. I acquire a drink without too much of a fuss—a rum, Black Kraken, and it’s just as good as it should be. There’s a table by the window and I take it because I don’t especially want to converse. My view holds no Eva/Olwin graffiti, thank God; or none that I can make out. But I can see the water tower, which is all wrong, the big screen should be in the way.

  Sometimes I convince myself I’m at home, and then something small like the absence of the big screen really hits me. I wonder if it’d be possible to settle in here. Assuming I can stay, which is a big and probably unfounded assumption. Maybe the laws of physics will bounce me back home after a while. Which is an odd thought, and possibly one I should pre-empt by returning myself before it turns out to be true. But as much as I’d like to get myself home—and that’s the plan and all—can’t say I’m in a rush to Time Lock in a hurry.

  There are lights strobing the water tower and I remember my headlong rush up the stairs. If I’d been with Mac, we’d’ve been almost laughing as we ran. But Mac isn’t here. And then an image flickers up. It’s that bloody map, of course. Thankfully without Olwin Duilis’ face, but the map nonetheless. I half expect the writing to expand and a message appear saying Kern Bromley what the hell have you done with my box? But, luckily, nothing like that. Not even a jump through. I take anot
her few sips of my drink and enjoy—if that’s the right word—the view.

  The water tower goes back to being its ordinary self and the strobing lights appear to have gone for now. I decide it’s time for home. Ed and Judith’s, I mean. It’s safe, it’s known, and I can keep an eye on the Barleycorn King.

  The walk is uneventful. It’s safer, this future Barlewin, at least down here on street level. I don’t know if I like it.

  I’m back by the gardens, close to sleep and bed, when an insect starts buzzing around me. It’s a noisy little thing, and I wonder what it’s doing here. Surely it should be valiantly attacking the water tower lights or buzzing up to the High Track. I guess the farm is an attractant. But why me? I make a few casual sweeps of the arm in front of me, but the insect don’t take a hint and accompanies me all the way home. I think I’ve lost it inside the house, but up in my room it’s back, coming in through the window Judith left open. I flop down on the bed, take a look at the book I nicked from the greenhouse. The insect lands on the top of the spine. It’s another dragonfly. It sits there buzzing happily.