Black Feathers: Dark Avian Tales: An Anthology(37)

He put the photograph back. The next one chosen by the book showed a whole crowd of people standing on the shore at Windermere. It had been a hot day then too. It had sapped the strength from the flock: faces were red, every bench was occupied, and some of them had flopped to the ground until it was coated in shorts, hats, swimming costumes in harsh primary colours. He made out a brother and sister, her sitting cross-legged, his arms slung casually about her shoulders. A group of children wearing tabards and school caps walked in a line towards the dock.

None of them was looking at the camera.

After a while, Arnold slipped the photographs back into the book and returned it to the shelf, lining up its spine with the others. It was all right again; he was calmer. He was ready to go to work.


Arnold drifted down through the layers, feeling the coldness seep under his wetsuit. His arms were outstretched, loose, and he stared up at the sky as he sank, the sun a diminishing white hole. Everything else was the deep green of rotting things, of liquid that was rich in nutrients, the soup of life. It was as dark as the water in the jar he used to rinse his brushes.

He was close to the farthest banking of the lake, where twisted trees bent their limbs down towards the water. The muddy drop beneath the surface was full of fallen and waterlogged branches where black grubs squirmed and wriggled. He thought of the drenched wood as loak, though he did not know why. It was not a word, at least not until he had named it. He gazed at it all through his mask without blinking. He did not flinch at the quick, silver dart of a fish. It was natural, and he was part of it. He turned lazily in the water as a stickleback swam by, and he ran his fingers through a gelatinous clump of frogspawn. A kick of his legs took him in towards the banking. Below the trees’ roots and the fallen wood were outcroppings of rock, greened with slimy weed. Among them was a dark, blank opening.

Arnold went toward it. The water held him, suspended; it accepted him. He stared into the hole. That was where the chicks were, he knew that. He came often to check on their progress. They were enveloped by the shade, where they liked it best, but he could just make out the suggestion of a form here and there: darkness that hinted at empty sockets, twined shapes not quite like branches, interlaced so that nothing could separate them.

The fish had found them. There were more of them here, twitching and circling in excitement. Arnold watched without touching them. He only needed to see.

After a time he let the water carry him away into the deeper cold. Then he began to kick back towards the day, savouring the moment of lightness. Soon his body would take on weight again. It would feel all the more leaden, knowing what he had lost.


“Bring him over here.”

Arnold leaned more closely over the paper. Usually, when he worked, he thought of nothing else. There were only the facts he had learned and the photographs and the paint. A new bittern was taking shape under his hands: the bird with the cry of a bull.

“Hold him down.”

He shook his head, the forms in front of him blurring as if seen through dark water. What was wrong with him?

“Give it here. There’s something wrong with you.”

He let the brush slip from his fingers and rubbed his eyes. It was like yesterday. Batty, he thought. Batty and Scott and Dale. He should have left them alone. He should always have left them alone. That was what people like him did.

He closed his eyes and remembered. He had been walking through the middle of the town he’d been sent to and had reached the river. Cars idled to a stop and roared away, their drivers irritated by the hump-backed bridge they had to cross in single file. Someone had told him this was where the trolls lived, but there were no trolls now. There were only Batty and Scott and Dale.

He must have been walking back to the home from school, because he could remember the weight of his backpack, and it must have been summer because wherever the backpack clung to him was running with sweat. He hadn’t intended to stop; he hadn’t wanted to see anything. But there they were, the three of them, playing with a kitten.

He knew at once that it wasn’t a nice game. He could tell from their voices, which were bright and sharp and cut through the air. “Give it here!”

He looked over the bridge. They were on the riverbank, clustered together. Batty broke away for a moment to take something from his schoolbag: a magnifying glass. Scott was holding the kitten. It was small and it only took one hand, wrapped tightly around its ginger fur to hold it still.

Batty held up the magnifying glass before focusing the sun’s heat on the kitten’s left eye.

The three boys closed around it. Arnold could not see it squirm but he heard a single plaintive mew. He did not think but climbed the stile set into one side of the bridge and he slithered down the banking towards them. He did not shout; he didn’t need to. The boys swivelled their heads towards him, as if drawn by his presence.

“Or what, dickhead?” Batty said, as if Arnold had spoken; as if he ever spoke. At least he had lowered the magnifying glass. Scott clutched the kitten tighter and Arnold stared at it. Too late, he realised that Batty had nodded a signal at Dale. The lad ran towards him. Arnold froze, like prey. He knew there was no use in running. The taller boy would only take him down. Instead Dale stopped when he reached him then just stood there, as if he didn’t know what to do.

“Bring him over here.”

Dale reached out, tentatively, then grabbed Arnold’s shoulder and dragged him over to Batty.