All the Birds in the Sky(103)

And now Patricia was rushing, even though there was no place to go. She ran past dark distorted storefronts and naked flames, looters and volunteer firefighters, past people dragging their possessions in the street and two men beating each other with their fists. Part of Patricia felt like she had died, after all. Another part, though, felt like she’d gotten a brand-new life.

Laurence was giving Patricia the silent treatment, and it was creeping her out. Maybe he was pissed, or feeling guilty about his friends killing her friends, or freaking out about the Unraveling. But he refused to talk, no matter how many times she looked over her shoulder at him and told him she was scared or they were screwed, or just to keep up. He just gave her a weird look and some hand gestures.

The birds, meanwhile, would not shut the hell up. They were chorusing, “Too late! Too late!” over and over again, from every cantilevered tree and every sunken roof. They followed, flying right over her and behind her, chirping. “Too late!”

“Shut up!” she shouted in bird language at them. “I know, I screwed everything up. You don’t have to keep rubbing my face in it.”

At the place where Mission and Valencia converge, Patricia seized Laurence by the shoulders. “Look, I know a lot of stuff has happened, most of it today, and you’re just dealing with it in your own fashion. But goddamn it, I need to hear your voice. Right now. I need you to tell me there’s still hope. Lie, I don’t care. Please! Why are you being like this?”

She saw the look of misery and annoyance on Laurence’s face, and then she realized.

“Oh. You didn’t.”

He nodded.

“You stupid dumbass. What were you thinking? Why would you do that?” She was shaking his whole torso, with all her strength.

He finally slipped out of her grasp, got his Caddy out, and typed. “Saved yr life. Isobel was going to shoot u. She wanted/deserved an explanation.” His face was a different shape without words constantly coming out of it. Like his eyes were bigger and his mouth smaller.

“You…” She started to say “you stupid dumbass” again, but it turned into: “You gave up your voice for me.”

Laurence nodded.

She put her arms around him, tight enough to feel him breathing. Lungs inflating and deflating, no sound but airflow. She couldn’t make herself grasp that he had done this on purpose. For her. Nothing magical had ever confounded her so much.

A pigeon landed on her shoulder. “Too late!” it burbled in her ear.

Fucking interrupting pigeon. “Why is it too late?” she asked.

“Too late,” was all it said in response.

“It can’t be too late,” Patricia said, “or you wouldn’t be talking to me.”

Laurence looked at the pigeon on Patricia’s shoulder, pecking at the air and babbling, and his eyes narrowed like he really wanted to say something snarky.

“Almost too late,” the pigeon said. “Practically too late.”

She tried to ask, again, why it was too late, but the bird flew off—although maybe like it wanted her to follow. In any case, nothing would be worse than standing in front of the shuttered Bench Bar obsessing about everyone who had been silenced, one way or another. “We need to follow that bird,” she told Laurence, who shrugged, like why not? So we’re following a bird now.

She took off up the hill, away from Mission, keeping the pigeon in sight as it kept wheeling and then soaring uphill again. The pigeon led them up a tiny staircase, set in the hillside, and then to a tiny lane that zigzagged through trees. The street got smaller and smaller until it was just a pathway through a terrace clogged with willows and banyans, big low-slung branches putting their leaves in her face as she raced to keep the pigeon’s messy wings in sight.

The pigeon banked and went up another tiny outdoor staircase, rising into darkness. The trees collided over the stairs, their branches packed so tight Patricia kept losing sight of the bird they were chasing. She grabbed Laurence’s hand as the staircase turned into a loose dirt slope going upwards, and the trees became wider and even tighter-packed. Bark thick as tire treads, branches like barbed wire. They masked the sky. She spent all her concentration steering Laurence and herself on a clear path. The slope grew steeper and steeper until it was vertical, and then it flattened. Patricia glanced behind her and couldn’t even see the path they’d come from.

Patricia realized with a jolt that she hadn’t been this deep into a forest since the time she’d become a bird, back before Kanot had taken her away to Eltisley Maze.

“My GPS is having a meltdown,” Peregrine said.

Now that they had deep forest all around them, the pigeon seemed chattier. “So I’m not sure if I ought to be bringing your friend along,” it said. “My name is Kooboo, by the way.” At least, that’s what the name sounded like.

“My friends are very respectable,” said Patricia, including Peregrine in that. “And I’m guessing it’s too late to worry about bringing outsiders. Are we going to the Parliament? I’m Patricia, and this is Laurence. And that’s Peregrine that he’s holding.”

The trees thinned out a little, and Patricia had a feeling they were almost at the clearing with the great spread-eagled Tree. She paused and took Laurence’s free hand, the one not holding Peregrine, in both of her hands. “I have no clue what I’m doing here,” she said. “Nothing prepared me for this. But I’m really glad you’re here with me. I feel like I must have done something right sometime, if you’re still in my life after all the stuff that’s happened.”