Black Feathers

25

My Dearest Gordon,

I don’t have much time, but someone sympathetic to the future of the land, to your future, has offered to pass you a message from me. There are two things you must know. First, your father and I love you so very dearly. If you ever have your own children, you’ll know such love or something close to it. You are different, though, Gordon. You’re precious in a way other children aren’t. It makes our love for you all the stronger. We’ve always protected you and will always do so in any way we can, no matter where we are. Remember that, won’t you? The second thing is that you must not try to find us. That is what the Ward want and expect you to do. They’re using us as bait. Don’t give in, Gordon. You run, my beautiful boy. You run until you have become a man. Then, maybe, you can look for us. But never, ever let the Ward catch up with you. Never let them find you. If you do, not only will your life end, but so will the life of the land. Everything will perish and time itself will be cut. I know you don’t understand any of this yet, but you will. You have a journey to make, Gordon. It will be long and it will be difficult, but you must never stop.

I know you have begun to awaken to your destiny. I know about your collection of feathers. The Ward ask us about them in every interview and we say you’ve always collected useless things – bottle caps, labels, rubber bands, football cards. They don’t believe us, of course. Right now, the Ward know more about you than you do. So you must learn about yourself. Those feelings, the ones that made you keep your first feather, those are the feelings to trust, always. The tiny voices and prompts that seem like whimsy. For now, they are the only marker on your path. In time those voices will be stronger and so will you. One day, Gordon, you will discover a force no one can oppose. The Ward know this and that is why they are trying to stop you. They will make your life troublesome and lonely, Gordon, because you can trust no one who cannot prove their loyalty to you. Spies will be everywhere. Trust only the voices that make no sense, the ones inside you, and that way you’ll always be able to spot friends and avoid enemies.

I said there were two things, didn’t I? Silly me, Gordon. There are three. One, we love you more than any parent has ever loved a child. Two, never let the Ward take you or that will be the end. Three, find the Crowman. Who is he? I can’t tell you that. None of us knows. But you must find him, Gordon. When you do, the future of everything will be secure. He will leave you signs and clues. Follow them. Listen well to those tiny inner voices, Gordon, and I promise you will find your way to the Crowman and to glory. Creation itself will be in your debt. It’s a burden, I know. But you were born to carry it, whether you believe that yet or not, and no one else can do it.

So run now, Gordon! Fly away! We will see you again, I’m quite certain of that. But for now you must travel alone. Seek the Crowman and never give up until you find him. Here’s a strong hug and a strong kiss for you, my beautiful boy.

With all my deepest love always, Mum.

Gordon hated himself for sobbing.

It echoed far away into the tunnel, far in both directions. He didn’t have the strength to hold the tears back, though. Nor did he have the will to stand up. It was so good to read his mother’s words and feel the love that came with them. He hadn’t realised how much he craved that love in only this short time of separation, and now he missed her like a piece of himself. The rest of her letter worried him very much. Perhaps her capture and treatment by the Ward had weakened her mind so much that she had nothing left to cling to but fantasy.

Please let her be OK, he thought. Please let them not have hurt her.

And this was swiftly followed by:

I’ll kill anyone who touches her.

She really believed what she’d written; that was clear. It was a deep conviction, something she was willing to risk her life over by keeping it secret. Wasn’t that the price the Ward would exact if she refused to talk? He prayed not. So confusing, though, all this talk of the Crowman.

Dear Gordon,

I never told you this enough – it’s a failing between all men, I think, but too often of fathers to their sons – I love you. When you came into the world, you brought me a new purpose and a new drive. Suddenly, I was not just a parent, I was a guardian too. It took me a lot longer to accept the truth about you than it did your mother. She knew something was extraordinary about you right from the moment you were conceived. I hope you can forgive me for being so slow to recognise you, Gordon. I hope you can forgive me for not telling you I love you more often. One thing about parenthood, it’s filled with guilt and regrets. You have to be very strong to be a good parent and I doubt many people manage it. But I promise you this, Gordon, we’ve done the best we can and it was never your fault we struggled as parents, it was our own.

What a dreadful start to a letter!

Listen to me carefully, son. What I’m going to tell you is incredibly important. Over the years, things have happened, odd little things that would have been easy to overlook if they hadn’t occurred so often. Those things point to the fact that there was something a little different about you. Not only that, from time to time we had letters and visits, even phone calls sometimes from complete strangers, and these communications were always about a dark-haired boy who’d been born in an October snowstorm. These strangers knew things about you no one outside the family could have known. Many of them said they’d seen you in dreams. Others said they’d met you when they were out walking in quiet natural places – impossible, I know. I had to accept that there was something unique, something precious about our own little Gordon. And, about the time you were born, the world we’d known for thirty-odd years, a world with its share of problems and tragedies, became suddenly very bleak indeed. You know what it’s been like with the shortages and unemployment. The people freezing to death in their own homes in the winter, being flooded out or drowned after rainstorms, the people dying of heatstroke in the summer. And then the diseases and viruses came and everything we’d taken for granted began to fall apart. To you it will seem quite normal that people starve to death homeless on the street and that the hospitals can’t cope with the sick or that the police can’t control the violence of a country that has lost its wealth and its rudder, a country whose land and weather are slowly killing its inhabitants.

And it’s not just here, Gordon, it’s everywhere. The world is descending into chaos and there’s a simple reason for it. We’ve abused it. We’ve drained it. We’ve mined it. We’ve cut down its forests. We’ve over-farmed its land and turned it into a desert. There’s no part of the world untainted by the touch of humanity. And the sad thing is, it wasn’t always like that. It’s only in the past couple of hundred years that our behaviour towards the world really got out of hand. Before that, most people lived in harmony with it and gave back to it rather than just taking from it all the time. And there are too many of us now for the world to sustain. She can’t keep up. So there’s only one solution and that is to rid herself of a giant swathe of humanity, like a dog shaking off fleas. And that’s what she’s doing, Gordon, she’s purifying herself. Only those people who respect and look after her, who give back something for everything they take, only those people will have the smallest chance of surviving these times.

We’ve tried, Gordon. We’ve tried hard to live that way these last few years, but I’m not sure it wasn’t too little too late. The main thing is that you are still out there, out of the hands of the Ward. If there is one agency that wishes to continue the pursuit of power at the expense of the Earth, it is the Ward. It has branches now in every country. They believe in subjugation. They believe in profit no matter what the cost. And they believe that when they die, none of their actions will matter. They’re wrong, Gordon. They could not be more wrong. You have an opportunity to keep the world alive and you must take it. It’s your duty and your destiny to do so. But the Ward know about you and they’re coming for you. Listen to me now, Gordon. You must never, NEVER let them catch you. I can barely allow myself to think about what it will mean if they do.

I’ve seen your mum’s letter and I must reiterate what she says. You go out and you find the Crowman. Find him at all costs. Become the man you were born to be, Gordon, and it will mean there’s some kind of future. If you don’t or if you can’t, it’ll be the end for everyone. But you can do it. I know you can and I’ve always known it. I love you, Gordon! Did I say that already? Here it is again: I love you! Take that with you, take strength from it if you’re able, and go out into the country. Stay away from the cities if it’s possible. And keep your head down. What your mum says is true: there will be spies and treachery everywhere. Our thoughts are with you, Gordon.

Fly, my boy! Fly to the Crowman!

Your ever-loving and very proud father.

This was too hard. He wanted to do the loyal thing, the brave thing. To turn himself in at the Monmouth substation. To run away was easy. Surely there was no power in that.

He folded up the letters and this time stowed them in the inside pocket of his jacket, safe and close. There would be time to read the letters again when he reached the daylight at the other end of the tunnel. It was as though the earth had swallowed him. Still weary but partially renewed by the wishes and blessing of his parents, Gordon gathered his few possessions, loaded up and stood. Putting weight on his right leg was more painful now than it had been when he’d first cut himself. The wound seemed to radiate heat into the cool of the tunnel. But there was no choice: if he wanted to move, he had to walk.

Every now and again, when he could stand the tension of walking in darkness no longer and feared there might be some obstacle – or even some foe – waiting for him, he flicked on the torch for a few seconds. The tunnel had begun to make gentle turns first to the right and then to the left and it had developed a slight downward gradient. Down into the guts of the Earth. Into hell. Each time he turned the torch off, the darkness rushed back in and closed like a black sea over his head. It felt as though the stagnated, tarry air was drowning him and, as he trudged, the thumping ache in his right leg became an agonised tattoo. Thoughts of hell and of its denizens became more frequent and lurid. The Ward were in league with the legions of the underworld and they waited around every long, slow bend in the tunnel. Red-skinned demons with teeth like broken needles wore long grey raincoats and grey brimmed hats. Their twisted horns poked through the felt of their fedoras and their bony, spike-tipped tails protruded from beneath the backs of their macs. Slung over their shoulders were sets of chains and manacles or weighted nets, the mesh fashioned from barbed wire. A flick of the torch would send them scurrying farther into the darkness just beyond sight in the curvature of the tunnel, black hooves and snatches of grey fabric disappearing each time he used his light.

Gordon became thirsty and his face hot. He stopped and took several swallows of water. The heat in the tunnel surprised him. He had the beginnings of a sweat at his hairline but the rest of his face was dry and flushed. He took a few more sips and put the water bottle away.

Every step now sent a jolt of pain into the right of his groin, no matter how carefully he trod. Sometimes the jolt extended into every joint, sending a shiver along the skin of his back. Swirling images began to form in the blackness in front of his face, and blinking did nothing to dispel them. His fatigue settled heavier and heavier upon him. His pack might as well have been full of wet sand and his shoes soled with lead. His pace slowed to a shuffle.

Gone were the demons of the Ward now. In their place came sepia-coloured scenes played out against the screen of the tunnel’s darkness. He flew over lakes and mountains, slow when he was soaring high, fast as he passed close to the land and the water. From a great distance he saw a volcano erupt, the earth roaring through the cone of a mountain and burning red phlegm spewing forth. The black vapours of the world’s diseased lungs belched upwards, miles into the sky.

Every part of him was hot now. Images formed again from cream-coloured smoke so real he could almost touch its fibrous currents. He flew over the ruins of cities and the places where cities had once stood, now swallowed by the land – nothing but a scar upon the Earth’s surface to show where a metropolis had been. But down below that scar, Gordon knew, millions of people lay, buried alive.

He flew over flooded fields and drowned forests. He flew over broken roads beside which the bodies of refugees rotted where they’d dropped, too sick or starved to keep walking. He saw armies of people fighting in the streets: a rabble of ill-equipped citizens on the one side, armed men in uniform on the other. Even without colours he recognised the force he was seeing, beating and shooting down civilians without mercy. The Ward. Men who believed the world and its people were there to be exploited, that power existed to make slaves of everyone who did not possess it. Not a government but a corporate army.

The visions kept him from thinking about the pain in his leg and the ache in his joints. He became aware that his hand had fallen to his side and he no longer touched the wall of the tunnel. How long had he walked this way? He had no idea. He was adrift on the night. And even then he did not put out his hand for the comfort of the wall. He merely stumbled onwards.

He kicked something hard and almost fell over. He took another few steps and kicked another object, heavier than the first. This time he switched on the torch and played its beam over what was in front of him. A hill of rubble rose from the ground to the roof of the tunnel, filling it from wall to wall. Thin bars of rusted steel fixing rose like dead stems from the debris. Keeping the torch on, he negotiated his way up the slope, careful not to stand on anything loose or trip over the larger obstacles.

As he neared the roof, he was obliged to crouch and then to crawl on his hands and knees. It would have been painful enough under the best of circumstances, but with his right leg so sore and every joint complaining, his greatest desire was to just roll over right there on the broken stone and sleep.

When his pack began to scrape the roof, he removed it and placed it and the tent beside him. Shining his light ahead, he could see the gap between roof and rubble extended into blackness on the other side.

There was a way through.