Black Feathers: Dark Avian Tales: An Anthology(91)
After careful study and consideration, it has been determined the most likely explanation for recent episodes of birds taking custody of souls postmortem—
Episodes, plural? This is news to me. Seriously, nobody tells me anything.
—is that a bargain has been struck between birds and humans. It seems unlikely that birds would initiate such a thing given their position with respect to humans in the food chain. It also seems unlikely that this could be a single overall bargain, as the resources required for such a thing are far beyond a single unit, even a unit containing thousands of members.
After careful review of the situation, it has been decided there must be an investigation, conducted by agents indigenous to the natural world but bound in service to the Continuous Realm of All Things.
So now I’m an agent. Am I working alone? I sneak a brief look around and spot a few people engrossed in something on their phones but that’s nothing out of the ordinary. Still, I wonder if they’re learning about the observant lifestyle or just checking email.
The next page comes up blank on the iPad screen. A faint circular animation twirls for a couple of seconds before the words fade in. Is Madame dictating this directly?
There’s a high probability of people in this facility being favourably disposed towards making a deal: overt bargaining is associated with their particular physical pathology. The roof garden is accessible to birds. Remain alert and aware to the possibility of hearing, or overhearing, something pertinent. Chance always favours the prepared mind.
I feel sleazy before I even get on the elevator. So much for “clean.”
For the next three days, I hang around the roof garden, moving casually from one seat to another. They aren’t that uncomfortable, not until after the second day, anyway. People come and go, a lot of them dragging IV poles with long bags dangling above them, liquid dripping through long plastic tubing into a cannula or an unwieldy-looking plastic port stuck in a place that must make getting dressed awkward. Most of them wear hats or scarves; some leave their bald heads bare. Many have a friend or relative with them; some come back later by themselves, obviously wanting to be alone. Almost all of them have phones they check at least briefly, although most spend a fair amount of time engrossed in whatever is on the screen. None of them notice me, of course, even when I’m looking over their shoulders to see what’s so fascinating. Usually it’s a cat video or a game, nothing that suggests they’re in the process of making a deal of any sort.
After a while, I can’t help feeling like all I’m doing is killing time with busy work, hoping for a result while running the clock out to zero, either mine in particular or everyone’s in general. I’ve been through the entire text of Twitching so many times that I can recite most of it from memory. (The term “twitcher” comes from the original guy who collected bird sightings, because he was twitchy; his name wasn’t Twitcher or anything like it. You’re welcome.) Of course, no other programs on the iPad will open because I can’t get distracted. Madame Quill and her ilk want me alert, with a prepared mind that chance will favour. I’m pretty sure they’re capable of embedding messages in any text or game or even video, but they won’t. It’s probably part of my punishment, just like the monotony of hanging around a roof garden on the off-chance that a bird looking to do some business might show up—excuse me, a talking bird.
If there really are feral parrots all over London, I think, they’ll be in places with lots of trees, like parks or Kew Gardens. They’ll be roosting in some big leafy oak, having a good laugh at the hapless drone stuck in a cancer clinic roof-garden. If jays have taught them to chuckle, they’ll really sound snide.
Halfway through the third day, a green bird swoops down, circles the garden, then lands on the bench beside me. It stares at me for a couple of seconds before it hops onto my thigh, digging its claws in.
I yelp and swat at it reflexively, almost dropping the iPad. The bird launches itself out of the way, then lands on me again, this time without the claw action. It’s pretty, like a feathered jewel, mostly bright green with a blue-grey head, orange beak, and pale yellow-green belly. On either wing is a patch of reddish brown that makes me think of military rank on epaulets.
“Sorry.” I hold the iPad against my front to hide what’s on the screen. Then I wonder if it can see a tablet screen at all. Its eyes are on either side of its head—not an arrangement for 3-D binocular vision. “That really hurt.”
The bird looks at me, tilting its head from one side to the other. How does it see? I wonder. It’s really bothering me now.
“So, what’s the story—is my hanging around all day putting a crimp in business?”
The bird continues to look at me silently. There’s nothing in its beady little eyes that indicates it understands what I’m saying. Maybe it doesn’t speak English. If it speaks at all—maybe it doesn’t. It’s smaller than the bird in the Croydon flat, not so much parrot as a parakeet. Do parakeets talk? I have no idea.
“I’m wasting my breath, aren’t I?” I say. “You are as you were made to be, a model denizen of the natural world. You’d never dream of flouting the protocols of human mortality. Would you?”
The bird cocks its head to one side. “That depends,” it says in a scratchy little voice, “on whether you can make it worth my while. Which I doubt you can.”