Black Feathers: Dark Avian Tales: An Anthology(103)

A magpie deposits something on the crow palace, then starts to make a racket. Its blue-black-white colouring reveals its affinities for the living and the dead.

Only then does the sudden whirring motion draw my gaze down to the lawn. The cat’s bright pink collar contrasts with its grey fur. A second magpie is pinned by the cat’s paw on its spread wing. Its other wing is a blur as it struggles. The magpie’s mate flies down and the cat breaks its gaze with its prey and hisses.

I know it’s the natural order of things but I’m sickened and trembling. I open the patio door and clap my hands as if such a banal gesture can end this life-and-death struggle. Pippa’s more decisive, stumbling out and I hold her back for fear she’ll be scratched.

Flat black shapes with ragged wings darken the sky. Ravens. One swoops, catching the cat’s ear with its bill as fierce as pruning shears as it passes over. The cat contorts, blood on its fur, releasing the magpie which makes an attempt at broken flight.

The cat crouches, a growl in its throat. Its ears are flat to its head, its fur on end, doubling its size. The birds are coming down in black jets, from all directions. The cat raises a paw, claws unsheathed, to swipe at its assailants. The ravens take it by surprise with a group attack. One lands, talons clutching the nape of the cat’s neck. It writhes and screams. The sound cuts through me. The birds are like streaks of rain. I can’t see the cat anymore. It’s been mobbed by darkness.

Pippa and I clutch each other. The cat’s silent now. The ravens lift together into the sky and all that remains on the grass are steaks of blood and tufts of fur.


I remember later that the magpies left us a gift, a task that made them careless of their long collective memory of their past persecutions by gamekeepers and farmers.

The key they left on the crow palace shines as if calling to me. The metal’s so cold that it hurts to hold it, as if it’s just come out of a freezer.

I have the queasy feeling that I know what it’s for. It slides into the padlock on the steel box with ease and I feel its teeth catch as I turn it.

Everything I know about Mum is distilled from scant memories. I’m shaking at the prospect of something concrete. I open the lid. Here’s where Dad buried her significant remains.

It contains a random assortment. A lady’s dress watch. A pair of pearl earrings. A silk patterned scarf. An empty perfume bottle. I open it and the stale fragrance brings Mum back to me on a drift of bluebells. I wipe my eyes. I’d forgotten she always wore that. There’s a birthday card signed With more than love, Karen.

What is there that’s more than love?

We weren’t a photographed family. There aren’t any happy snaps that feature Pip and me. This pile of photographs are of Mum and Dad when they were young, before we were born. I shuffle through them. Mum and Dad at the beach, on bicycles, another in formal dress. Their happiness grates. Why couldn’t they saved some of it for us?

The last thing out of the box is a handkerchief. Whatever’s knotted within clinks as I lift it out. It’s a pair of eggs. They’re unnaturally heavy, as if made of stone. And they’re warm.

I can’t resist the impulse to crack one of them open. Fluid runs over my fingers. I sniff it. Fresh egg white.

A baby’s curled up within, foetal like, her tender soles and toes, her genitals displayed. She’s perfect. I don’t know what she’s made of. Something between rubber and wax that’s the colour of putty.

I break open the second one. Another girl. This one’s different. She has massive, dark eyes that are too wide set to be normal. There are sparse, matted feathers on her back. Faint scale cover her feet.

I carefully rewrap the pair, trying not to touch them, and put them back in the box.


My phone rings. Then stops. Starts again. There’s nothing for it. I answer it.

“Chris.” I try not to sound irritated.

“How are you?”

“Busy. You know.”

“No, I don’t. Tell me.”

“Stuff to sort out. Dad and for my sister.”

“You have a sister? What’s her name?”

“Phillipa. We call her Pippa.”

“What’s she like?”

Pippa? She likes birds, me, the colour turquoise, chocolate, having a routine, crow gifts, sunshine. She gets frustrated when she can’t make herself understood. Her eyes are hazel brown and she has eczema.

“She has cerebral palsy. My dad took care of her.”

“Will I meet her at the funeral?”

I’m about to say Of course she’ll be at the funeral but then I realise that Chris is assuming he’s invited.

“Why do you want to come? You never met him.”

“Not for him, for you. Tell me your address.”

“I don’t need you here.”

I don’t understand. It feels like an argument, full of unspoken baggage that I didn’t even know we were carrying.

“Julie, what are we doing?”

His tone sets off an alarm bell in my head.

“You must know that I—” Don’t say it. Don’t say I love you. He falters, “You must know how much I care about you.”

I feel sick. I thought we were alike. Just my luck to find a man who falls in love with the one woman who’s not chasing him.

“I’m not talking about marriage or children.”