Black Feathers: Dark Avian Tales: An Anthology(53)
I confess I wasn’t entirely truthful with that policeman. I had in fact been in Glasfynydd Forest the day the boy went missing. Blyth and I had gone seeking fresh specimens for our research. He knew the trails that sectioned the forest as well as I ever did, and he had a good nose for the dead. After an hour I had a young crow and a tawny owl in my rucksack. About a mile or so southwest of the dam the trail curved to the right. I heard voices and then saw eight or nine children loping along the trail towards me, caught up in some game of war. As they drew near, one young boy saw me, pointed his wooden stick, and told me to drop the rucksack and stick my hands up. I did as he said while the others came closer. The boy, brown-haired and lightly freckled, asked what was in the rucksack. I undid the straps and tipped the dead birds out on the ground. “Did you kill ’em?” he asked, and when I told him no, he said, “What you got ’em for?”
The others crowded around, staring at the birds. “Are they really dead, mister?” a red-haired girl asked. When I nodded, she asked if she could touch them.
I picked up the crow, a young adult about eighteen inches from head to tail. Moving his head as though addressing them, I said, in a harsh, cawing voice, “How’d you like it if I touched you?”
She jumped back, startled. The others laughed.
“So, it’s a laughing matter, is it?” I cawed.
One boy, taller than the others, wanted to know what I was going to do with them. I put the crow down, picked up the owl, and made a hooting noise. “Don’t you mean what are we going to do with him?”
The boy stared at the owl. “Are you going to eat them?”
I shook the owl’s head. “We might eat him.”
The boy grinned. In my own voice I asked them if they wanted to meet a friend of mine. I made a clicking sound and Blyth dropped out of the canopy and settled on the ground a few feet away. Chyak-chyak, he cried, marching forward a few steps, then back, as though performing some avian waltz.
“That’s a crow,” said a young boy from beneath his red baseball cap.
I told them he was Jackdaw. “Say hello, Blyth.” He lowered his front, dipped his head, then raised it to the sky, crying Chyak-chyak.
They were smitten. He obliged with a few simple tricks and I told them the story about the king of birds, only I changed it so a jackdaw came out on top. Each took turns in touching the dead birds, and though they were keen to pet Blyth, he skipped away whenever they approached. The kids told me they staying at a campsite north of Trecastle. They were at the lake for the day with their parents. After a while the tall boy said it was time they headed back. They talked about it and seemed to disagree on which way to go. I pointed out the trail and told them not to get lost.
Alone again, I returned the birds to the rucksack. Blyth, who had a temperamental streak, suddenly cried out, kaaarr, kaaarr! I recognized his alarm call and watched as he took off after the kids, then veered sharply off to the left. Near the spot where he vanished into the trees, I saw movement, a glimpse of blue and a face that, just for a moment, I half-recognised. Then Blyth was silent and who, or whatever, I had seen, was gone.
I should tell you about Blyth. One morning, three months after my return, I decided to make a start on converting Wyn Blevins’s garage into a workshop. Carrying wheel rims out behind the building, I saw what I took for a crow atop an old Austin Cambridge, one of the half dozen eviscerated vehicles that had become homes to a variety of birds. I remembered the car. It had been two-tone blue with blue leather seats and round wing-mounted mirrors. It had served as a plane, a tank, and a spaceship, yet now it stood wheeless on concrete blocks at the rear of the yard, bereft of colour, oxidised by time and rain into something other than a car. The tangled undergrowth encroached from the rear and outlier weeds grew up out of the coverless boot. The wing mirrors were long since gone.
When the bird saw me it hopped from one foot to the other. It leaned forward, flattening its body and thrusting its purple-sheened head in my direction. Chyak-chyak, it called. As I approached it ruffled its feathers and raised its wings. I’d always been fascinated with birds. Unlike Wyn Blevins I didn’t hold them responsible for my mother’s death. On the contrary, in the following years I had increasingly associated them with curiosity and playfulness. The bird lowered its wings and stood, head tilted to the sky. The yard seemed unnaturally quiet. A dozen or more black-eyed rooks watched from the trees. I reached out to the bird, seeing something almost disdainful in the silver white eyes that marked it as a jackdaw. For a moment it held my gaze, then took off.
Intrigued, I opened the car door and looked inside. On the cracked leather seat was a nest constructed from twigs and scraps of card. Something shiny caught my eye. I reached in and picked up a coin. As it came out of the nest I saw that it was a number of coins threaded onto a piece of nylon line. I held it up to the afternoon light, seeing the peacocks, penguins, eagles, and other birds whose names I’d forgotten, depicted on the coins. Memories overwhelmed me. I’d made the chain of coins after my mother’s death. It was a talisman I’d kept hidden in a yellow cardboard box beneath my bed. Fifteen years had passed since I’d last seen it.
I got out of the car, the chain in one hand. The bird mobbed me feet first, scratching at my head until I managed to beat it away. It flew and tumbled around the yard, shrieking madly. Finally, it settled again on the roof of the car. Chyak-chyak, it cried, head bobbing downwards. After a moment or two I understood. It watched as I returned the chain to the nest. If what had once been mine was now his, then I figured that signalled a connection between us. In honour of his standing out from his fellow corvids, I named him Blyth after an eccentric ornithologist in whose discredited work on natural selection I had once taken an interest.