Black Feathers

9

June 21st ’13

My eyes only

When I woke up I thought I’d pissed myself. But the dampness was everywhere and I realised it was sweat. Then I remembered the dream. Replaying it, it felt like the first time I’ve had this dream but while I’m dreaming it, it’s all so familiar. As though I’ve seen it a thousand times. Like I’ve lived it a thousand times.

There’s a dead tree. Its branches are like blackened arm bones and blackened finger bones reaching up into the sky. The trunk of the tree twists up from the ground, its black bark spiralling as though the wood is contracted and taut. There’s a bend in the trunk like an old man’s back, the sky crushing it. Among the topmost of its dead branches sit three watchful crows. One faces north, another south. The third looks up into the sky. The sun is behind the tree, just above the horizon. Terrible pain or total ecstasy seems to hinge on whether the sun is rising or setting.

I hear people’s voices, some crying as if they’ve lost everything in the world. Others weep more softly but the wound that caused their tears seems deeper. I hear the tramping of feet. Not marching but the sound of people on the move. The road they travel is treacherous – behind the black tree I can see the snipped ribbon of tarmac stretching away over the low hills. In many places, the road is broken by huge cracks in the earth. There’s a smell too, like overcooked steak. Smoke blows across the landscape. The crows caw, flap and settle, ever vigilant.

At the foot of the tree there is a single feather. The feather is long and thin, black at first glance. Then I’m holding the feather in my hand and it has a shimmer of deep blue-green. In the tree there’s a rattled cackle and I look up to see a magpie bobbing its head and flicking up its tail in a lower branch.

That’s all I can remember. Why would that make me soak the sheets with sweat?

Megan walks in almost total darkness along the track through the village. She wears lambswool underwear her mother has made beneath her roughest outdoor clothes. Over that she has wrapped a thick woollen blanket which doubles as a winter coat. She has never been up at this hour before and, with October’s days running short, it is chilly before the sun rises. Despite all her layers she is cold inside and shivers as she hurries along. Dawn is still some time away as she reaches the edge of the village and leaves the main track. She hopes she has allowed enough time to reach Mr Keeper’s place before the sun clears the horizon.

Amu and Apa have always been early risers, up at first light. Apa to go and work in the fields and Amu to make sure he has a good breakfast before he leaves. Both of them stand outside the back door each morning. They drop flour and barley onto the soil and make their prayers of thanks and ask for strong crops, a good harvest and peace between all creatures. Megan has always spent those few extra minutes in bed because children are not expected to pray formally until the time of their coming of age. Of course, the children are encouraged to talk to the Great Spirit in their own way and also to be thankful to and respectful of the Earth Amu. Maybe that was her parents’ reason for allowing her to go to Mr Keeper in the end, knowing it was for the good of all and not just for her or them. But consent did not come easily.

“It’s not the Crowman that worries me, Fulton,” her mother had said the day after their talk by the river. “It’s that Mr Keeper. How can we trust him?”

“What do you mean, trust him? What are you suggesting?”

“You know right well. What if he… hurts her?”

This had made her father angry. Whenever his voice dropped to a whisper following a venomous silence both Megan and her mother knew it was time to give ground.

“I’m disappointed in you today, Heather Maurice. I won’t allow such words to be spoken in this house. If we can’t trust our Keeper, we can’t trust anyone or anything. You know that. Everything would fall apart like it did before. The seeds of another Black Dawn will not take root here. Do you understand me, woman?”

Her mother had nodded, weeping silently.

“The issue is, can we all live with the changes this will bring? Megan, you’re going to leave childhood behind in a flurry of dust. That’ll crack my heart a little, even if it doesn’t yours. It will set you apart. Even from your friends. And if Mr Keeper decides you’re not the one he’s been waiting for, he’ll set you free again to be neither one thing nor another. That’s no life for anyone.”

Amu’s tears flowed ever more freely as Apa spoke.

“I’m sorry, Fulton,” said her mother. “It’s my fear for her that makes me say such things. I know Mr Keeper is a good man. I do trust him. I just can’t bear the thought… can’t bear the idea that…”

Megan had never seen Amu so upset. Her own tears came in response.

“…we’re losing our little girl. Our beautiful little Megan.”

Both Megan and her mother broke down then and clung to each other.

Fulton Maurice, tested to the edge of his own emotions at the sight of it, went in search of baccy and papers. It was a very rare thing that he smoked unless the occasion was special. He rolled a fat, crooked fag and lit it with an ember from the stove before returning to his wife and daughter.

“Listen to me, both of you. It’s right to be upset and it’s right to be a little frit. But we’re not losing Megan if she goes. She’s moving into a new phase, that’s all. That was always going to happen. Maybe, if this is really what she wants to do, maybe she couldn’t be in better hands.” The smoke made his eyes water and he coughed, grimacing at the neglected, over-dry baccy. “Let it settle for now. It’ll seem different tomorrow and then we can talk again.”

And they had talked about it every day, with much the same intensity, until the night before when Apa, who had deflected all Amu’s concerns and objections as they came up and who had needed to buy another ounce of baccy, said:

“I think we’ve made our feelings plain. Megan, you know we love you and hold you precious, more precious than anything else in our lives. Because of that we only want to see you happy and walking the right road. That’s all any parents want for their children. But I think Amu and I have realised that Mr Keeper is right. This is your decision to make and whatever you decide, we’ll stand by you. We’ll do our best to help you see it through.”

He rolled a slim, neat fag and lit it, blowing smoke with no small amount of satisfaction.

“So, it’s up to you. Tomorrow you can have a lie in like you always do or you can rise while it’s still night and walk that night road out to Mr Keeper’s place. What do you want to do?”

Megan smiles now as she remembers that moment and pulls her woollen wrap tighter around her shoulders to pass through New Wood without catching her clothes on the pines. A lot of tears have been shed over the course of seven days. She even saw Apa cry once. But each night she dreamed of a small boy with moon-silver skin, tar-black hair and eyes of polished granite. A boy who held out his hand to her. A boy who always smiled.

New Wood is dense with trees, and despite her attempts to shrink, the branches of the pines snag and catch at her along the narrow path. The chill here is different. It breathes all around her and the silence is muffled by a frosty mist and a hundred thousand green needles absorbing all sound. The ground is soft and peaty beneath her brown leather boots and her way is defined more by touch than by sight in the darkness. And then, quite unexpectedly, the trees end and the path opens out. Above is a circle of lightening sky in which the stars still observe her. She can smell smoke on the air and up ahead, near the opposite edge of the clearing, she can see a large, squat shadow from which a flicker of light escapes. This is the source of the smoke and possibly the source of the stillness in New Wood.

She has reached Mr Keeper’s roundhouse.

August 10th ’13

My eyes only

I’m such a saddo.

Even though I know I’m welcome in the world and even though I know my family loves me, I feel like a stranger.

At school I’ve never done well in any subjects except art, which doesn’t count. Never made any really good mates. Never had a proper girlfriend. Never been in the football team. Never really been in trouble either. I’m just like this big… nothing. A loser. Even at home I feel like it’s me who doesn’t belong.

Why?

If I knew the answer to that I wouldn’t be sitting here writing this stupid diary. I’d be out there doing something. Doing anything other than thinking. Thinking is all I do. And nothing ever comes of it.

There is still time to change her mind, even as she stands here on the threshold of the clearing where Mr Keeper lives. She could turn and walk back the way she came, back to the safety of her family and their small comfortable cottage. She knows there will be nothing comfortable about the work which lies ahead with Mr Keeper. It would be better, surely, to allow knowledge and adulthood to arrive in their own natural time. Even in her ignorance of the future and of where Mr Keeper may lead her, she understands that she will look back on these times and wonder, no matter what she does, whether she made the right decision. She already regrets the loss of a carefree mind. How much more of herself will she lose by walking forwards into this moment when she could so easily step back into the past? She thinks about this for several chilly moments, each out-breath unravelling in the still air. Her thoughts seem no more permanent than those same spent breaths.

But there’s no undoing her visions from the night country, is there? No sending away the gentle boy with the black hair and grey eyes. And there’s no unseeing of the thing in Covey Wood. If she turns away now these new presences in her life will never be fully addressed and she feels their import so very strongly. They are like parts of her already. Parts she neither wants to, nor is even sure she is able to, live without.

Before she realises what is happening she is walking towards the roundhouse, confidently despite the darkness, and her thoughts and fears only catch up with her just at the moment she rings the tiny bell beside Mr Keeper’s squat doorway. Cracks of flickering yellow and orange are visible through the sticks and mud which form the walls, and between the doorway and its ill-fitting wooden frame, but she cannot see Mr Keeper. She is about to ring a second time when she hears a rumble from inside. She almost steps away until she realises the rumble has a voice – Mr Keeper clearing his early-morning throat. The noise goes on for some time and Megan finds herself willing the phlegm upwards so that the poor man can finally speak to her. The noisy proceedings end with a throaty hoik followed by a massive-sounding wad of mucus leaving Mr Keeper’s mouth at high velocity and landing somewhere impressively distant.

After a few more coughs and grumbles a croaky voice says:

“You’d better come in, little thing.”