Black Feathers

60

Megan is aware of movement in the darkness. Stealthy, cautious creeping. Deliberate, purposeful sliding. The blackness of the night is complete and all-encompassing. Someone or something is close by and they’ve approached this near without waking her. She feels the heat of anger and embarrassment rush to her cheeks. This is the second time in as many days that she has been caught napping. She lies still.

Can they see me?

There’s certainly more than one of them. The sounds come from all around her.

She thinks; tries to control her breathing and quiet her heart.

What can be out here, in a clearing, under a tree in the middle of the night?

Badgers. Foraging badgers.

The thought calms her respiration and eases her fluttering heart. With it come other answers: rabbits grazing. Foxes on the prowl. Mice nosing through stems of grass. Deer moving across the wide open space, safe under cover of the night. Hedgehogs hunting slugs. Moles pushing up the earth. These are the sounds of the animal night country, the natural world she never sees or hears during the hours of light. She has never been this close to them before, never experienced them alone like this.

In her sleep she has slid to her right a little, and now she sits up straight so that she can listen more comfortably to the night symphony of the animal.

Except there’s a problem. In trying to sit straighter, she finds it difficult to move. She knows this feeling, a kind of numbness that comes over her when her mind is awake but her body is still sleeping. Usually it happens around dawn. It used to frighten her until she asked Mr Keeper about it.

“Get control of your breathing first,” he’d said. “When you have that, move a finger. Then the rest of your body will come back into your control and you can wake up properly.”

She does this now and gains swift control of her breath, slowing it down, deepening it. Then she moves the little finger of her right hand. It’s easy. She wiggles all her fingers on both sides. No problem. She goes for the final push, pressing both palms down on the rough ground to right herself.

She can’t move. Something is wrapped around her body, pinning her to the tree. When she tries to push, she feels this thing, like a layer of cheesecloth, resisting her efforts. All she can think is that in her sleep she has knocked the branches of her lean-to and they’ve collapsed, trapping her.

Her rationality vanishes when she feels something curl around her ankle. Something thin and muscular. Something alive and intelligent. Her mouth dries.

She tries to pull her leg up to her chest, but it is stuck to the ground as tightly as her body is stuck to the tree. She moves her other leg, already expecting what she discovers: her whole body is bound fast. Other things touch her body, heavy things with too many legs. They crawl onto her hair. Something prickly touches her cheek and she turns away. Her head is free and she shakes it now with all her strength, tossing her hair from side to side to dislodge whatever is on her.

From above, unseen creatures catch hold of her hair, a few strands at a time, and pull it up. She nods her head now, trying to free it from these tiny thieves, but each time she brings her head up, more strands are taken until she can nod no longer. She feels her hair bound tightly to the tree, and this time, when sharp things touch her face, she is unable to shake them off. Tiny determined limbs take hold of her eyelashes, above and below, and these too are secured somehow, leaving her eyes staring, unblinking and blind into the night.

The thing spiralling her ankle has reached her thigh. Another has begun its upward journey along her left leg. Still more of them entwine around her arms. Another, much thicker tendril insinuates itself around her waist, curling and curling more times than she can count. Megan wants to scream now, louder and harder than ever, the loudest sound she can make. But she dare not open her mouth for fear of what might try to invade it. All over her body, things crawl and slide, exploring her landscape. Making themselves comfortable there.

They settle, become quiescent.

From somewhere, there is light. Out of the corner of her left eye she see this light, the deep orange and white of huge forest fires, spilling from the trunk of the tree. She hears a tearing, the sound of a thousand saplings bent until they snap. Beside her is a bulge in the bark of the trunk. The giant tree rips open. Something steps from the heart of it and Megan feels the bark shudder against her back as the dark form passes into the night. In her head the tree is screaming. Light floods the clearing and something takes its place in front of her. She cannot look away, cannot even close her eyes.

Before her stands Black Jack in all his wicked finery. He raises his hands, and behind her Megan hears the tree tearing open in a dozen other places. Firelight spills forth, igniting the clearing, igniting her vision, and she sees all.