Songbirds(45)

‘That Sunday, when Nisha went missing,’ I began, and he nodded, still staring at the olives on the stick that he held over the fire. ‘Did she come to meet you?’

Seraphim looked at me now. ‘Why would you ask me that?’

‘I was chatting to someone, a friend, and they thought Nisha was on her way to meet you that evening. Around ten thirty.’ ‘Why would Nisha be coming to meet me?’

‘I was hoping you would be able to answer that question.’

Seraphim was silent for a while. The darkness was thick behind him.

‘Whoever told you that was not telling you the truth.’

‘Why would they lie?’

‘They might not be lying. They are just not telling truth. They may have had their wires crossed. If, on the other hand, they did lie deliberately, I assume they have their reasons for doing so, but I cannot possibly begin to speculate because I have no idea who this person is.’

Then Seraphim lay back with his hands behind his head, signalling that our conversation was over. He told me to stay alert and closed his eyes to nap. He fell asleep quickly, his mouth hanging open and emanating a faint snore.

The land stretched for miles all around, dark, with shivers of silver where the moon caught the water. I watched as a sliver of light emerged on the horizon, darkness becoming less opaque. At this first sign of day, the caged birds began to sing. Their voices rose in a swelling, melodic chorus – a burst of music after so much time in silence.

And that’s when I heard it again: the voice of a woman, calling. Calling something which I could not understand, her voice mixed with the song of the birds

I stood up. Looked around. I shouldn’t have left Seraphim alone, sleeping like that, but I instinctively followed the voice to the mist nets. When I got to the water’s edge, it ceased abruptly. There didn’t seem to be anyone there. In every direction, the land was open and empty.

Then the birds filled the sky – their music filled the sky. They swooped down in their thousands, their wings alight in the sunrise – gold and red and blue. They veered down sharply, diving towards the calling birds, to the song that was luring them to their death, down, down, down to the water’s edge.

I stood frozen, watching them as their journeys ended, the mist net suddenly enveloping them. So many wings tangled, so many birds suspended mid-flight. Their song changed – from trills to shrieks, or so it seemed to me. But some, I thought, continued their melodic song, as if the sky might just open up again and release them.

‘What are you playing at?’ a voice said behind me. I turned. Seraphim was there, fire in his eyes.

‘I thought I heard something,’ I said.

‘So you leave me sleeping on my own? What if somebody had come? I would have been done for!’

‘I made a mistake.’

He stared at me without blinking. ‘A mistake? A mistake is forgetting to bring the gas canister or the olives.’ His eyes narrowed. The birds’ cries filled the air around us. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘let’s not dwell on it now. We’ve caught enough.’ He glanced at the net, sizing up the success of the hunt. ‘Let’s just take down what we have and head home.’

We brought the nets down and began pulling the birds from it, killing them one by one as we did so. We did this without speaking, in synchronicity with one another. I was freeing the birds from the net, passing each one to Seraphim so that he could bite its neck and put it into the black bin-liner. I could feel each one trembling in my hands, tiny heart racing, wings twitching and beating in my palms. The soft touch of feathers on my skin. There must have been twenty different species. But I was careful not to hesitate – I didn’t want Seraphim to notice anything was amiss. The birds were still singing, though. That was what disturbed me the most. They sang until their last breath.

*

I got home around 9 a.m., fed the bird, and lay down. I was so tired. The conversation with Seraphim had been unsatisfying. Was he lying? Had Spyros been mistaken about what Nisha had said? Or was Seraphim trying to throw me off the scent of something else? I missed Nisha keenly.

I fell asleep with dreams of her in the wetlands. She stood in the water, which came to her ankles. A clear blue sky behind her. She was wearing her nightdress of beeralu lace with the garden of white flowers, the one Chaturi had made her. She was saying something to me, her lips moving, but I heard nothing.

‘What is it Nisha?’ I asked.

She pointed at something behind me, up in the sky. When I turned to look, the sky became black, it was suddenly night. When I looked back at Nisha, she was gone. In her place, the moon hung over the horizon, so big I thought I could reach out and touch it. I noticed its reflection in the water, painfully bright; a silver pool of light in the middle of black water. I took my shoes off and walked in: I wanted to find her, but when I got there, I saw that what I thought had been the moon’s refection was in fact a deep well. A well that seemed endless. It was not a dark well. A bright white light glowed from within, illuminating its cobbled walls, spilling out onto the water. From it came immense heat.

I woke up drenched in sweat, a bright winter sun shining through the window, bathing me in its light. The little bird was sitting on my chest, chirping gently to itself. I stroked its soft feathers. Winter was coming. October had passed and Nisha was still missing. The bird sang to the sun and for the first time in many years, I began to cry.