Green Jay and Crow

by D. J. Daniels

  “Yeah, Brom, you know it,” says Hair. “Though actually, I’m probably less like you than you think.”

  “Whereas I …” Scar holds up his hands and gives me a half grin half grimace of apology.

  “So you’re telling me I’ve got to come back here and do this shit again?” I say.

  “Maybe,” says Hair.

  “Maybe not,” says Scar.

  “It gets complicated,” Hair continues.

  “Better not to think about it,” suggests Scar. A sentiment I can support.

  We sit without talking for a while longer, finishing off our food. I’m trying to process the revelation and I’m trying to check them out. Scar is older than me, decades older, so I can forgive myself for not recognising him. And, in a sense, it’s comforting to know that I’m going to survive at least that far. Hair is older too, but not by that much. Yes, he’s got a different hairstyle, but there’s something not quite right, something about the face that don’t seem to belong to me.

  “We don’t look that much alike,” I say to him.

  Hair shrugs. “Whatever you say.”

  “Completely different upbringing,” says Scar. Whatever that’s meant to mean.

  We both take a good long look at each other. And then, pretty much at the same time, we both decide to let it go. I mean, what are we going to do? Argue about who is the most authentic version?

  “The thing is,” says Scar. “You could be me, back in the dim dark past, but you’re not the past him. On the other hand, we could be three entirely different people.”

  “Well, different realities,” says Hair.

  Scar shrugs. “I am you and you are me and we are none of us,” he says. That’s all very well for the old me to say, but it still don’t make a lot of sense.

  “Has anyone found the Tenties?” I ask.

  They both look at me curiously, but don’t reply.

  “Because I’m thinking maybe I could go back, change things,” I continue. A confession that surprises even me.

  “Don’t think you can do that,” says Hair. He drains the bottom of his mug, then goes into the kitchen, looking for more coffee.

  “Barleycorn King? That man knows shit,” says Scar. “Why do you think he’s become so crazy, trying to muck around with timelines and crap like that? Don’t work.”

  “But he’s Guerra, right?”

  “Korbin, Barleycorn King, Fool on the Hill,” says Scar.

  “Fool on the High Track,” calls out Hair from the kitchen.

  It’s hard not to laugh at your own bad jokes, and, quite frankly, none of us is making much of an effort to restrain ourselves.

  “So you got any wisdom from the future?” I ask after we all settle down.

  “What do you think?” asks Scar.

  “I think you’re about to say no, but there must be something,” I say.

  “Nothing you want to know,” says Hair.

  This is going nowhere.

  “Disappointments, surprises, but there’s no point trying to pre-experience it,” says Scar.

  “And, in any case,” says Hair as he sits back at the table, “how do we know that, one, you’re going to get the same future as we already got; and two, if we tell you to make different choices, it won’t work out even worse?”

  “Even worse,” I repeat.

  “Without as much felicity,” says Scar.

  “We’re still here,” says Hair. “That’s the best we can offer.”

  “Thanks,” I say.

  “Our pleasure.”

  “More coffee?” asks Hair. Which seems to me the best thing he’s had to say in a while.

  Scar leans forward. And, for the first time, he looks serious. “Just don’t get caught in the time nets,” he says. His voice is quiet. And he gives a small shake of his head as soon as he finishes speaking.

  “You get a sense after a while,” says Hair. “Places not to go. A feeling for borders. A feeling not to go in and explore.”

  He’s talking shit and we all know it, but we tacitly agree to allow him this bit of philosophical cant.

  “There was this one place,” he continues. “All I could see was birds. Big black things. Creepy.”

  “Yeah,” says Scar. “But not as bad as the place where the graffiti came alive, embedded with some surveillance shit.”

  And they’re off. Talking about all the Barlewins they’ve seen; all the weird and wonderful realities they’ve experienced. Which is interesting and all, but all I really want to do is get myself back to the Barlewin I know, complete with Tenties, complete even with Guerra if he insists. All I want is a bit of normality.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Green Jay

  KOLB DOES MOST of the talking, but Lona is happy to interrupt and clarify things if I look confused. Or sometimes, I think, because she feels he has not explained well. Not everything they say makes sense, but I don’t ask questions. I am content just to listen.

  As I watch them, I realise they are not completely human. There is something about their skin which is like mine, though the tinge of green is very slight. They are, if I understand them properly, something like my descendants. Something like, but also something new. A new kind of plant people. Humants, the Crow said, though they don’t use this word. And not truly male and female either, though Kolb is more male and Lona is more female. At least, it seems that way to me.

  “Because of you,” finishes Kolb. “Because of your courage.”

  “But also because people felt so bad about the Trocarn. When they left. And there was a little of them in you and so something of them stayed behind. A legacy.”

  “What happened to the Trocarn?” I ask.

  Kolb and Lona are quiet. “I forgot that you would not know,” says Kolb.

  “They… they were sent away. People felt…”

  “There was a lot of anger,” says Kolb. “People felt invaded, and they... They were an easy target.”

  “It was not their fault,” says Lona.

  “What do you mean, they were sent away?”

  “They were Time Locked,” says Lona. I can see her forcing herself to say it.

  “Forever?” I ask. Time Locked does not mean sent away, it means banished.

  “Oh, no,” says Kolb. “They have found another place now.”

  “They found a way to adapt. People hoped they might.”

  “How do you know that?” I ask. “How do you know they have found a place?”

  “They were monitored,” says Kolb.

  “So do you know where they are?”

  “No,” says Lona. “Not exactly another place; another way, another way to be.”

  “But it’s better,” says Kolb. “Better that they are safe.”

  “But you don’t know that,” I say. I am so loud that I shock them. I think of all the care T-Lily gave to me and the way Rose-Q released a screen to hide me from Guerra as I ran.

  “They were too much,” says Lona. “Too much for most people. Perhaps they are better off. Happier.” She says this quietly, as if testing, but I can see it is her own belief. A strange belief for someone like her.

  “And you?” I ask. “Are you too much? And me? What about me? Am I too much also? Should I prepare myself to be sent away?” I stand and walk away from them, because I don’t want to see their puzzled faces that look at me with love, but would look at T-Lily with fear.

  “You are honoured,” says Lona.

  I turn and close her off before she can say any more. “I would not be alive without them,” I say. “In the beginning, in the early days, T-Lily would come here to this room and keep me whole. Keep me alive. And then, when I was with Guerra, it was Rose-Q who helped me escape. I have parts of them in me. That is the way that they work. But every human who was ever touched by them also has parts of the Trocarn inside them. It’s impossible to send them away.”

  The two young ones are so quiet I feel ashamed. They cannot understand my anger.

  “I never met the Trocarn,
” says Kolb.

  I have forgotten. They are so young; they only know stories told by somebody else.

  “Can they be found?” I ask.

  Lona and Kolb move their hands, make small noises. They don’t know what to say. I know I am asking too much of them, being unfair. But I cannot leave my friends in limbo. I need Blue Jay, and all I have is these two. All I have is the Crow.

  Crow

  HAIR’S TAKING ME down to the shed. Echoes of Ed here, but Hair’s eager to show me something. I don’t like to tell him I’ve already been inside the shed, discovered its multiple boxes and Ed’s homemade protective gloves. In any case I’ve got nothing better to do, though I wouldn’t mind following the example of Scar, who’s stretched out on a couch having a kip.

  “Does no-one live here?” I ask as we wander through the polytunnels.

  “It’s all automated,” says Hair, though I get the feeling it’s something he’d been told rather than any particular insight into the workings of the farm.

  “What’s the point of the shed, then?”

  “Dunno,” says Hair. “It’s always here, though.”

  I don’t much like the implications of that answer so I decide to delve no further. It’s the kind of answer I’d give, though I’m still trying to weigh up the truth of Hair being an alternate me. A better-cared-for me, that’s a possibility I guess. With a back history that involved more happy home time and less being out and about away from the fighting. But if they were the same parents, then less fighting means... What? An easier life, for all concerned. Mum not finding out about Dad’s gambling ways? I give up. Too many possibilities and I’m not going to ask. Seems sorta like I should know, and also if I don’t, then I probably shouldn’t. And there’s the possibility that I buggered my own life up, succumbed once too often to Guerra’s offerings. Don’t want to think that through at all.

  Inside the shed’s much as I remember it, though it has the air of being unused, vacant for a while. It’s still as dark as, no modernisation of the lighting. In fact, no lighting at all, though the sun glinting through the cracks in the wall does its bit to help.

  The shelf over by the wall has nothing on it at all: no boxes, not even remnants of boxes. I’m buggered if I know what it is Hair wanted to show me.

  “It’s cleared out,” he says.

  I shrug. “So?”

  “So last time I saw it, there were at least four boxes here.”

  I’d shrug again, but I think my point’s already been made.

  “This stuff gives me the shits,” he says. “But it’s kind of like circles. Loops. Some things keep happening no matter what. Ed and Judith’s daughter—that’s Olwin Duilis, to you and me—goes mad scientist. Her double runs amuck and manages to stay alive with lots of help from various quarters. And Olwin, bless her, sends this bloody box, the contents of which will enable the double to live for longer, maybe become something new. Reasons for doing this are many and complicated. And Ed and Judith, being good people and loving parents, want to help but feel... let’s say ‘compromised.’ ’Cause people keep turning up and boxes keep appearing and nothing seems to get sorted out. Especially as, understandably, the double wants to be herself, not a copy of somebody else. And of course you, or me, or one of us, gets tangled up in it somehow. And the poor bloody Tenties, but that’s their own fault really.”

  “And Mac?” I ask.

  Hair looks uncomfortable. “Mac’s tangled up, yeah.”

  “But Mac knows what he’s doing?”

  “Yep,” says Hair.

  “So he’ll get us out of this?”

  “Maybe,” says Hair. “The old one told you to stay out of the time nets, didn’t he?”

  “Yeah.”

  “’Cause there’s nothing anybody can do if that happens.”

  “Where are Ed and Judith now?”

  “Dunno,” says Hair. “Maybe we’re too far forward, this time around. Maybe it’s all over and they’ve gone off and away.”

  “And they all lived happily ever after?”

  “Yeah, maybe,” says Hair. But neither of us believe that.

  There’s a knock on the door and Scar’s standing there, looking bemused. “Thought you might want to see this,” he says.

  We walk out into the sunshine and I see straight away what he’s talking about. There, by the water tower, under the faded bird graffiti, are three people: Eva and two others. They look a little like baby birds, although it’s not clear if the water tower bird wants to feed them or eat them.

  They’re clearly waiting for us.

  “They won’t come closer,” says Scar.

  We walk towards the three. Eva’s standing very still, and I wonder how she’s holding up. She must be doing okay to have gone out and found herself these two, but it’s possibly something she regrets.

  “You’ve got retainers now,” I say, when we’re close enough for her to hear.

  “As have you,” she says.

  “Eva, meet Brom,” I say and the three of us bow. Understandably, that cracks us up a little, but she don’t look amused.

  “This can’t be right,” she says.

  “Why not?” I ask.

  “It should be impossible.”

  So should you, I think.

  “You haven’t introduced us,” says Scar.

  “Kolb,” says one of them.

  “Lona,” says the other.

  They both smile and bob their heads, but make no attempt to reach out a hand or come closer. They’re pretty much peas in a pod. Same kind of clothes. A man and a woman, possibly, but I’m not totally sure.

  “Humants,” says Scar quietly. And then it all clicks. Eva’s found some worshippers at her greenhouse. I liked mine better; these ones seem a bit too malleable.

  “Will you come to the house?” asks Hair. “It’s better than standing outside, and it’s got to be better than the water tower.” Eva gives me a look that manages to convey her displeasure that I’ve revealed our hidey hole. But it’s not that good a secret. “All of you,” he says, obviously wanting to make sure Kolb and Lona know they’re included.

  “We only wanted to see Green Jay back safely,” says Lona.

  “You would be more comfortable in the house,” suggests Hair.

  Eva shakes her head. “What do you know about the Trocarn?” she asks my companions.

  “They’re gone,” says Hair.

  “There’s nothing to be done,” says Scar.

  “It’s your fault,” says Eva.

  “Why’s that?” I say, because I can’t help myself.

  “How well are you?” Hair asks Eva.

  And even I can see that she doesn’t know how to answer that question. That perhaps she thinks she is not well at all.

  “We will look after her,” interjects Lona, and I can’t see the two of them letting her run off on a doomed quest to save the Tenties.

  “Yes, I’m sure you will,” says Scar. “But she’s not complete as yet, are you, Eva?”

  “And whose fault is that?” she asks.

  Yours, is what I want to say, but Scar keeps speaking before I have a chance. “You need to concentrate on getting yourself looked after,” he reminds her.

  “What do you think?” asks Eva. Everyone looks my way, and that’s when I realise she’s asking me.

  “About the Tenties?”

  I see Kolb and Lona visibly flinch, but no-one comments.

  “I think,” I continue, “Time Locking them was a shitty thing to do. But if they’ve found a way to get out of it, they’re probably better off.”

  “And what if they haven’t found a way?”

  I spread my hands, because she’s asking me to prove the unprovable. And anyway, if they are Time Locked, how the fuck would we find them?

  “The lock was broken,” Kolb insists.

  “Have you ever seen them?” This time Eva’s asking Scar and Hair.

  Hair shakes his head. “No,” says Scar, “but then, we’re not likely to, are we?”


  “What does that mean?” asks Eva.

  “We’re in your fucking reality,” says Hair. If I can read anything into his tone—and God knows I ought to be able to—he’s putting the blame squarely at Eva’s feet.

  Scar makes an attempt at peace. “So we won’t find them, not while we’re with you, but that don’t mean they aren’t there.”

  “Aren’t you a little old to be still caught up in this?” asks Eva.

  “You tell me,” says Hair.

  It’s not so much the old comment that sinks in, but the fact that they’re old and they’re still here, farting around. Happy enough. But still.

  “And why this world?” asks Lona. Which, after all, is the most pertinent question.

  Scar shrugs. “Why not?”

  Hair is silent, and I think about him showing me the empty shed. It’s possible there’s something else going on here. Who am I kidding? It’s completely bloody obvious there’s something going else going on, but I can’t really be bothered figuring it out. What I want is a short cut home. And no-one here seems to have a way to help with that.

  Eva takes a step forward. “Let me have the phone,” she says.

  “I don’t want to be stuck here,” I say.

  “I just want to look for the Trocarn,” she replies

  “Then I’ll come too,” I say. And I can see that Eva had already figured I’d say that.

  “Now,” she says. And she gives me a look, that I might even interpret as let’s get away from these annoying sycophants and do something worthwhile for a change.

  I bring up the picture map on the phone and she grabs hold of my wrist and stabs at it as if she’d like to take a knife to someone. And straight away we’re Time Locked together and the others fade away.

  It’s possible she looks happy. Deranged, but happy.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Green Jay

  I AM SURPRISED that the Crow was persuaded as easily as he was, though I suspect that the presence of his other selves was disconcerting enough to make him leave. He is of no help; his body can barely cope with the Time Lock. He has his eyes closed and is bent over slightly. So it is up to me to observe, to look at the realities we pass through for hints. It is like looking at a strange movie, with continuous frames of the same place, but where the camera captures slight differences every time. The difficulty will be to jump off when we have the chance.