In the Shadow of Blackbirds(62)

“I met one of his friends at the Red Cross House today, a boy named Paul from Coronado. He said Stephen lost his mind over in France and the army sent him home before October. Julius lied—Stephen didn’t die heroically.”

She closed her gaping mouth. “Well … perhaps the family was embarrassed about the actual cause of death. The push to have a war hero might make people say things that aren’t true.”

“Why was he tortured, then?”

“You don’t know that he was. Maybe he caught the flu on the way home.”

“He probably came home before the flu even spread. He might not have lived long enough to know about the pandemic. And that doesn’t explain the birds and the burning air.”

“What birds?”

“He’s haunted by birds. They troubled the men in the trenches because they ate the dead.”

My aunt stepped back with terror in her eyes. “You need to let this morbid fascination go, Mary Shelley.”

“I told you, he’s coming to me—I’m not making it up. He needs my help.”

“Even if he does, how on earth is a sixteen-year-old girl supposed to help a dead young man who lost his mind in France? There’s nothing you can do for him.”

“That’s not good enough.” I stormed back into the living room to fetch the compass and accidentally knocked an elbow into Oberon’s cage, which sent the bird flapping and screeching. “Oh, be quiet, you awful bird.”

“Don’t take out your anger on Oberon.” Aunt Eva placed protective arms over the magpie’s cage. “Maybe you should speak to the minister at church. You’re starting to scare me.”

I hoisted the compass. “A minister would think I’m either crazy or possessed by the devil. I’m tempted to speak to Julius.”

“No.” She blocked my path to the stairs. “Don’t you dare speak to Julius after what he did to us yesterday.”

“I want him to tell me how Stephen died.”

“I told you, the family might be embarrassed and too upset to discuss it. Maybe that’s why Mrs. Embers lost her nerves. Sometimes the truth is too terrible to discuss. Do you truly believe I tell the girls at work the real reason why you came to live with me?”

The compass slipped in my sweaty hands, but I caught it before it fell.

“I tell my friends your father went to war,” she said, “just like Stephen’s family is saying he’s a hero. The world is an ugly place right now, and some things need to be hidden. Don’t go poking around in other people’s business.”

I sighed in disgust.

She squeezed my arms. “Will you promise me you won’t contact Julius?”

I gritted my teeth and nodded.

“Good.” She jutted out her chin. “Now let’s go eat our onions. Put Wilfred’s compass away and then come right back downstairs—but be careful with that. It’s been in his family for years.”

“I will.”

Oberon jabbered and screeched as I took the compass upstairs, and my mind replayed Paul’s conversation about the birds.

They ate us when we died. They hovered on the edges of the trenches and stared down at us, watching us, waiting for us to get shot or bombed.

You’ve got to keep them from getting at your eyes, Stephen had told me when he spoke from the shadows of my bed. They’ll take your beautiful eyes.

At the top of the stairs, I murmured under my breath, “‘And strewn in bloody fragments, to be the carrion of rats and crows.’ No wonder they haunt you so much, Stephen. But did they really kill you?”

I set the compass on the end table next to my bed, and the needle jerked away.

“What … ?” My blood sped through my veins. “Are you … ?” I turned and searched the room for signs of Stephen, but saw only furniture and his crate of books.

“Are you here?” I asked. “Are you with me right now?”

The arrow swayed and shifted in every direction. Pressure mounted in the air like a kettle about to boil. Smoke engulfed my nose.

I clutched the compass’s case. “I’m sorry if I scared you with that poem. Please don’t be upset. Please come back and talk to me.”

Something whacked against the floor.

I jumped and turned again.

At first I didn’t see anything out of place. Nothing moved. Nothing rustled in the quieting, rapidly cooling atmosphere.

I poked around the room and discovered the source of the sound—Stephen’s lightning bolt photograph lay facedown on the braided rug, stiff and motionless, like the dark blue bodies on the sidewalk when Julius drove us to the séance. I held my unsettled stomach and picked up the frame. The fall had cracked the wood, but the glass remained intact, as did the photograph beneath. I hung the picture back on its nail, and the anagram Stephen had written between the golden waves caught my attention:

I DO LOSE INK




“Link,” I whispered, picking out the verbs. “Soil. Lend. Nod. Sink. Don. Die—”

A headache flared between my eyes. I rubbed my forehead above my nose.

“Mary Shelley,” called Aunt Eva from downstairs. “Are you all right? Did something fall up there?”

“Everything’s fine. I’m coming.” I straightened the lightning bolt’s frame and whispered, “I’ll figure it out, Stephen. I’ll figure everything out. I just need to think. I’m sure the answers will come.”