Black Feathers (37 page)

When Gordon placed his hands on her dusty head, the little red-headed girl, limp with crush-wounds, went rigid. The woman and the small crowd recoiled. Whatever had used his hands as conduits was gone in the same instant. On the ground, the little girl coughed and a puff of dust escaped her lips. Then she retched, her lungs and throat clogged with concrete and brick particles. The woman’s hands went to her mouth. Her head cocked to one side as though she now saw the little girl for the first time. Her face creased into a tight mask of weeping and shock. She didn’t seem to quite believe what had happened – in much the way she couldn’t believe the girl had been dead in the first place. Before she could recover herself, Gordon took water from his pack and offered it to the girl, who sipped and spat the gritty muck from her mouth before sipping and swallowing the rest.

Gordon stood up. Instinct told him he needed to move away fast. The crows rose up as one, hundreds of them calling and flapping, blurring the air. He felt the downdraught from their wings and it pushed him away from the woman and the little girl. He turned and walked through the small clot of onlookers. They parted for him to pass. Some of them watched the woman who now held the little girl so tightly in her arms, the woman who now wept tears of joy and didn’t care how or why the little girl had been returned to her, only that she had been restored. Others watched the murder of crows, rising in apparent chaos, their knowing caws a kind of tribute, a kind of celebration.

Gordon was already making progress towards what he hoped was the centre of the town. All along his path were strewn the sleek black feathers of crows – dropped in recognition? Dropped in respect? He didn’t know. Every few paces he knelt to gather a few up – soon there were more than he’d ever collected before. He filled his pockets with them.

Somewhere behind, the woman had regained herself enough to stand up and shout, “Thank you… Oh, thank you…” between each fresh spasm of tears.

“You’re welcome,” he whispered.

Though he was already far away, he still heard her voice when it dropped in volume and she said, in embarrassed tones, to those who stood around her:

“I don’t even know his name.”

What Gordon had done was beginning to sink into the minds of the already traumatised survivors.

“If he helped her, he can help us,” one of them said.

They spilled away from the site of the miracle and saw Gordon making good speed along the avenue formed by partially razed houses and shops. One of the men ran after him.

“Hey! Wait!”

Gordon looked back at the small crowd in the street. He broke into a trot.

Someone else shouted:

“Come back! Please!”

Gordon looked to the sky for guidance but the crows, wheeling above in such vast numbers only moments before, were gone. The sky was grey with cloud and the smoke pennants raised over a thousand ruins. Behind him, some of the people were running to catch up with him. Most of them were desperate but some of them were angry. His trot became a sprint, dodging cracks in the road and leaping piles of debris.

The trail of feathers disappeared.

Ahead Megan sees several of the largest buildings the city boasts towering up into the sky – wrists with the hands torn away. Among them other structures large enough to hold most of Beckby village within them have been reduced to jagged, spilled walls and jutting, rusted bones. Between these structures, the wide open spaces beckon to Megan. The farther she can be from the buildings, the better.

The ground underfoot softens. She kneels to touch the earth. Beneath the debris and dust, there is soil. Glancing around she sees stumps, some in rows, some scattered. There were trees here once. And grassland. All dead now. Dead forever. The land here is so damaged, she can sense no life in it at all. It may never regenerate. Yet, to know she has found something beneath all the destruction, something that once lived, is such a comfort that she is finally able to weep much of the fear and tension away.

When she is done, she brushes the dust from her fingers and stands, calmer now. Her eyes are drawn to something at the centre of the broad space, something circular. She approaches the structure cautiously. It is a low wall, about knee-high and, unlike everything else, it appears undamaged. At the centre of the circle is a large block. What once stood upon it, an effigy of some kind, lies smashed within the perimeter of the low wall. She places one foot over the wall, testing the ground on the other side with a gentle prod of her boot. It seems safe enough.

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.

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.

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.