Black Feathers

57

The transition from woodland to open grassland is abrupt. The trees stretch out to Megan’s left and right in a long slow curve, meeting on the other side of the clearing, perhaps a mile away. The sudden sense of space is welcome but dizzying. She sets off with renewed speed and a lighter step towards the centre of the clearing where a single tree, impressive even from this distance, rises and spreads in solitude and splendour.

Looking back at where she’s come from, Megan thinks she sees movement among the darkened trees. She stops and turns to look properly. The wood is silent and still. She hurries on her way. The sooner she can reach the tree and make her camp, the better. Every few steps, Megan glances over her shoulder.

Soon, though, the majesty of the tree is enough to take all her attention. How a tree ever grew to this size is a beautiful mystery. She stops, still some distance from the tree, and sees how mightily it fills its space here at the heart of the clearing. Though leafless and ready to sleep for the winter, it is like the ruler of all trees: ancient, strong and wise. A true sense of majesty exudes from the tree. Megan quiets herself and asks permission to approach. She feels an almost jolly acquiescence from the tree and hopes she isn’t misinterpreting it.

Respectfully, she moves closer.

Between the ground and the lower branches there is an almost uniform space making the outline of the tree look like a giant, dark mushroom. These lower branches are twenty feet or more above her head, and once she is under them she feels like she has walked inside some kind of spiritual interior, a place to worship the land and all creation. The air under the branches is charged. This is not her imagination. She feels a kind of vibration on the skin of her face and along every hair on her head. When she holds her hands out, the buzz is in her fingertips.

Astonished by this palpable power, she covers the last few paces to the tree’s trunk. There’s nothing she can compare this to. It is the largest living thing she has ever seen. Still uncertain about touching the tree, she walks the circumference of its trunk, counting her paces. As near as she can get without touching the bark, the tree is twenty-five paces around. She makes the circuit three times: one extra time to be certain and another just to appreciate again its vastness. The smile returns to her face, a smile of awe.

Finally, she allows her fingertips to penetrate the buzzing aura of the tree, which seems somehow thicker the nearer her hand gets. Her fingertips make contact with the hard, gnarled bark and the buzzing stops. She lets her palm sink flat against the surface and what she feels now is no longer a vibration but a flow, a tide beneath her hand. The sap of the tree in motion, like blood, only far more slow-moving and beating a rhythm in time with the heart of the seasons. This flow pulls her into the time of the tree, which is a time existing long before Megan began, long before the coming of the Crowman, a time which will continue in this slow beat long after Megan has gone.

When she finally pulls away from the tree, she finds her initial touch has become an embrace, her whole body pressed against the body of the quiet giant.

Darkness isn’t far away.

Megan is fortunate there is no wind. With no other way to secure her muslin-fine tarpaulin, she makes a simple framework of heavy fallen branches, propping them against the trunk of the tree and wrapping the light sheet over them. What she ends up with is a tiny lean-to. Fallen branches also make the fuel for her fire. While it gives her a sense of security and gives off essential heat, a fire at the centre of a huge clearing like this can be seen from every direction. It is also conspicuous because of its noise. Splits, pops and hisses echo back to her from the distant wall of trees all around. If she had a drum she doubts she could make more noise. She is relieved when the high, bright flames reduce to a glow.

Neither star nor moonlight penetrates the cloud-choked sky. Once the fire burns low, it is a marbled orange eye staring into total darkness, fading, dying. Sitting inside the lean-to, wrapped in the poncho, Megan follows its closing: into sleep, into the night country.

Grimwold. Even in the dark, Gordon was almost certain of it.

The thin man’s knife hand was empty. Gordon knew because Grimwold had used it to find his crotch. The man now squeezed what he found there, hard between his palm and fingers, twisting Gordon’s developing genitals into his fist and making him scream.

Laughter was loud in Gordon’s ear now, the gravel spinning and clattering in Grimwold’s food-processor throat. Now he knew what Grimwold’s gaze had meant, the oily stares and sneering, greasy appraisals: the man despised himself but not enough to change. A man like Grimwold would never change.

The mashing of his penis and testicles worsened. Grimwold put all his hate into it and Gordon, rising out of himself and seeing the whole attack unfolding, knew that it could only get worse. When Grimwold was finished with him, he would kill him.

With calm objectivity, Gordon realised this rising up from his own body was probably due to oxygen starvation. He felt his pain but he saw himself feel it too. He did not have the strength to fight Grimwold off.

His mind screamed: I’m just a boy.

Still a boy after all that he’d witnessed. Still not man enough to save himself, let alone his family. Gordon didn’t believe in God – at least, not the way other people seemed to. He hadn’t prayed much in his life but he prayed now. There were forces greater than himself. That little he was certain of. There were creative powers at work in the world, the intelligence and influence of which he could only guess at. He called upon them then and there:

In the name of all that’s good and right in this world, help me. I’m not meant to die here. There are people depending on me. I must survive. I ask the land. I ask the trees. I ask the sky. Give me strength. Send me your power.

Gordon felt a wind on his face as he dropped back into his body and back into his pain. Grimwold still laughed like a maniac, his saliva dripping onto Gordon’s face. He was shaking his clenched fist now, wrenching Gordon’s genitals, crushing them as though wringing water from a sponge. Agony expanded in every direction from his groin and a sick ache filled his guts. The wind increased and, over Grimwold’s sadistic braying, Gordon heard the whine and swoosh of huge wings.

The darkness turned bright. Gordon’s fear and pain became a white rage. The criminality of his family’s arrest, the shame of his running away, his failure at every turn to fully respond to what was happening, to deal with it, to alter it; all this rose up within him, blinding him with fury.

Enough!

He didn’t know if he screamed the word or merely pronounced it in his head, but Grimwold’s grip loosened for a moment and in that fractured instant, Gordon became an animal. He twisted, bucked and writhed so hard that his neck came free of Grimwold’s headlock. Gordon beat the hand that had tormented him with his own hammer of a fist. The clench withered under his pummelling and Grimwold snatched his hand away. Free now, Gordon sprang to his knees in the dark of the tent and reached for Grimwold’s neck. He screamed in fury, his voice becoming the screech of a thousand crows. It filled the tent and Grimwold stopped fighting.

Suddenly, Gordon could see as though it were noon daylight in the middle of a field. Grimwold lay on his back, his knees drawn up, his hands outstretched blindly against the noise and frenzy. It was obvious he could not see as his eyes flickered, trying to focus on anything at all.

Gordon saw Grimwold’s abandoned blade on the floor beside his sleeping bag and his own knife, its handle peeking from beneath the jumper he’d used as a pillow. He ignored them both and leapt onto Grimwold. It felt as though he flew. He battered the man on both sides of his head. His blows came so quickly they looked like the fluttering of wings. His arms moved like fronds of black silk, whipping Grimwold wherever he was exposed – his upper arms, his ribs, his ears. Very soon the strength went out of Grimwold’s upheld legs and his knees dropped. Gordon now kicked at Grimwold’s legs and groin. Each time Grimwold tried to roll to one side or another, attempting a foetal ball, Gordon flipped him easily onto his back. Soon Grimwold’s arms were held up without any strength and his head lolled to each blow. His heels scrabbled on the floor of the tent but he had no strength left to raise his knees.

Only when Grimwold no longer moved did Gordon cease.