It’s been three years since I returned to Cray. After my discharge from Redlands, I lived with my sister in Cardiff for six months. Sara was three years older than me, married with two children. It was a new experience, spending time with Molly and Rhodri, my young niece and nephew. Being around them helped me rediscover the curiosity and drive I thought I’d lost. As time passed I began to feel a need to reconnect with my own childhood and the place that shaped who I had become.
In the years since my father had left Cray to shack up with a woman half his age in Llandovery, the house had fallen into some disrepair. While I continued my recovery, Sara organised a local contractor to carry out the necessary remedial work. By the time it was completed, I was excited about going back home. Yet, when the day came and we drove north through Powys, I felt a sudden apprehension about returning to the place I’d spent most of my youth trying to escape. It rained that morning, but as the road wound up into the higher country the sky cleared and sunlight sparkled off the hills and trees. After she’d helped me unpack and we were stood in the yard saying our good-byes, a black Land Rover turned in from the lane. A man I didn’t know got out.
Sara waved. “Edward,” she said. “This is my brother, Wil.”
The man came to us and shook my hand. He wore a blue baseball cap over shoulder-length brown hair. His eyes were blue and his grip was strong. “How do, Wil,” he said. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”
Sara said, “This is Edward. He did the work on the house.”
“I hope it’s up to scratch,” he said.
“I’m grateful to you,” I said.
“I save my best work for your sister.” He gave her a grin. “I’ve come to fetch my ladders.” He walked off around the side of the garage.
“You don’t remember him, do you?” Sara said.
I shrugged.
“Edward Owens. He was in my class in school. We went out for a bit. He lives over in Llanddeusant now.” She kissed me on the cheek and got into her Volvo. She spoke through the open window. “He said you can call him if you need anything doing. I’ve left his number in the kitchen.”
“I’ll be okay.”
Sara reached through the window and squeezed my hand. “Listen, Wil—he could be a friend to you.”
The man came back into sight carrying an aluminum extension ladder on one shoulder. He hoisted it up on the roof rack of his vehicle and tied it down. I watched as Sara drove out of the yard. A minute later, the man got in the Land Rover. As he pulled away he turned and raised a hand, giving me a thumbs-up.
It took time to get used to being home, in the shadow of the Black Mountain. I was twenty-four and hadn’t lived in the house for nearly six years. Leaving for university I was sure I’d never return. I’d stayed on in York at the end of each academic year taking whatever work I could find. After my masters’ I’d applied and failed to obtain funding for a PhD. It was this that had, in part, precipitated my breakdown. That, and my landlord’s discovery that eight crows shared the flat with me. I tried to explain that they were essential for my research. He found it unacceptable, and when I refused to remove the birds, he called the police. Consequently, I was sectioned for the third time and spent four months in Redlands.
I’d had episodes of mental instability before. At seventeen, Wyn Blevins accused me of trying to murder him in his bed. I don’t recall what happened, though I believe that if I had harmed him, there must have been some provocation on his part. I argued my case when they came for me, but, as a consequence of previous episodes, when it came down to his word or mine, his lies won the day. The first incident occurred when I was fourteen and had attacked a classmate I’d witness kill a magpie with an air rifle. In the ensuing fight I’d bitten off half his right ear. I spent three weeks in the children’s wing of a mental hospital for observation and assessment.
Every one of the clinicians and therapists I have spoken to over the years has assumed that my episodes of mental fragility stem from the discovery of my mother’s body. This was a reasonable assumption but it wasn’t right. Though saddened at the loss of my mother, it would be a lie to say I was greatly stricken or traumatised. Following her suicide, I had to endure months of counselling that served only to keep the sight of her body fresh in my mind. The sessions continued until it dawned on me that what was needed were expressions of sorrow and pain. After acting out these emotions over two or three sessions, I was deemed to have finally processed my grief.
The thing I never talked about in those sessions was what had happened the night after Mother’s funeral. Disturbed by some noise, I’d crept downstairs, bleary-eyed and half-conscious, and walked into the living room where Wyn Blevins, drunk as hell, sat on the floor with Mickey in one fist and Icarus in the other. Their eyes were black with fear. I tried to speak but my tongue was paralysed. He told me he knew what they’d done to her. Said there’d be no more birds in his house. I stood and heard the crack of bones as he crushed the life out of my canaries.
I confess I wasn’t entirely truthful with that policeman. I had in fact been in Glasfynydd Forest the day the boy went missing. Blyth and I had gone seeking fresh specimens for our research. He knew the trails that sectioned the forest as well as I ever did, and he had a good nose for the dead. After an hour I had a young crow and a tawny owl in my rucksack. About a mile or so southwest of the dam the trail curved to the right. I heard voices and then saw eight or nine children loping along the trail towards me, caught up in some game of war. As they drew near, one young boy saw me, pointed his wooden stick, and told me to drop the rucksack and stick my hands up. I did as he said while the others came closer. The boy, brown-haired and lightly freckled, asked what was in the rucksack. I undid the straps and tipped the dead birds out on the ground. “Did you kill ’em?” he asked, and when I told him no, he said, “What you got ’em for?”
The others crowded around, staring at the birds. “Are they really dead, mister?” a red-haired girl asked. When I nodded, she asked if she could touch them.
I picked up the crow, a young adult about eighteen inches from head to tail. Moving his head as though addressing them, I said, in a harsh, cawing voice, “How’d you like it if I touched you?”
She jumped back, startled. The others laughed.
“So, it’s a laughing matter, is it?” I cawed.
One boy, taller than the others, wanted to know what I was going to do with them. I put the crow down, picked up the owl, and made a hooting noise. “Don’t you mean what are we going to do with him?”
The boy stared at the owl. “Are you going to eat them?”
I shook the owl’s head. “We might eat him.”
The boy grinned. In my own voice I asked them if they wanted to meet a friend of mine. I made a clicking sound and Blyth dropped out of the canopy and settled on the ground a few feet away. Chyak-chyak, he cried, marching forward a few steps, then back, as though performing some avian waltz.
“That’s a crow,” said a young boy from beneath his red baseball cap.
I told them he was Jackdaw. “Say hello, Blyth.” He lowered his front, dipped his head, then raised it to the sky, crying Chyak-chyak.
They were smitten. He obliged with a few simple tricks and I told them the story about the king of birds, only I changed it so a jackdaw came out on top. Each took turns in touching the dead birds, and though they were keen to pet Blyth, he skipped away whenever they approached. The kids told me they staying at a campsite north of Trecastle. They were at the lake for the day with their parents. After a while the tall boy said it was time they headed back. They talked about it and seemed to disagree on which way to go. I pointed out the trail and told them not to get lost.
Alone again, I returned the birds to the rucksack. Blyth, who had a temperamental streak, suddenly cried out, kaaarr, kaaarr! I recognized his alarm call and watched as he took off after the kids, then veered sharply off to the left. Near the spot where he vanished into the trees, I saw movement, a glimpse of blue and a face that, just for a moment, I half-recognised. Then Blyth was silent and who, or whatever, I had seen, was gone.
I should tell you about Blyth. One morning, three months after my return, I decided to make a start on converting Wyn Blevins’s garage into a workshop. Carrying wheel rims out behind the building, I saw what I took for a crow atop an old Austin Cambridge, one of the half dozen eviscerated vehicles that had become homes to a variety of birds. I remembered the car. It had been two-tone blue with blue leather seats and round wing-mounted mirrors. It had served as a plane, a tank, and a spaceship, yet now it stood wheeless on concrete blocks at the rear of the yard, bereft of colour, oxidised by time and rain into something other than a car. The tangled undergrowth encroached from the rear and outlier weeds grew up out of the coverless boot. The wing mirrors were long since gone.
When the bird saw me it hopped from one foot to the other. It leaned forward, flattening its body and thrusting its purple-sheened head in my direction. Chyak-chyak, it called. As I approached it ruffled its feathers and raised its wings. I’d always been fascinated with birds. Unlike Wyn Blevins I didn’t hold them responsible for my mother’s death. On the contrary, in the following years I had increasingly associated them with curiosity and playfulness. The bird lowered its wings and stood, head tilted to the sky. The yard seemed unnaturally quiet. A dozen or more black-eyed rooks watched from the trees. I reached out to the bird, seeing something almost disdainful in the silver white eyes that marked it as a jackdaw. For a moment it held my gaze, then took off.
Intrigued, I opened the car door and looked inside. On the cracked leather seat was a nest constructed from twigs and scraps of card. Something shiny caught my eye. I reached in and picked up a coin. As it came out of the nest I saw that it was a number of coins threaded onto a piece of nylon line. I held it up to the afternoon light, seeing the peacocks, penguins, eagles, and other birds whose names I’d forgotten, depicted on the coins. Memories overwhelmed me. I’d made the chain of coins after my mother’s death. It was a talisman I’d kept hidden in a yellow cardboard box beneath my bed. Fifteen years had passed since I’d last seen it.
I got out of the car, the chain in one hand. The bird mobbed me feet first, scratching at my head until I managed to beat it away. It flew and tumbled around the yard, shrieking madly. Finally, it settled again on the roof of the car. Chyak-chyak, it cried, head bobbing downwards. After a moment or two I understood. It watched as I returned the chain to the nest. If what had once been mine was now his, then I figured that signalled a connection between us. In honour of his standing out from his fellow corvids, I named him Blyth after an eccentric ornithologist in whose discredited work on natural selection I had once taken an interest.
The boy’s disappearance troubled me. Inevitably, it called to mind the fate of my mother. As then, police were out searching Glasfynydd and the wild country to the south, around the Black Mountain. His face was on the news and in the papers. When my sister called, she spoke about how awful it was. After four days, he hadn’t been found. I thought about his parents and tried to imagine how they felt. I wondered if he’d been one of those I’d met in the forest. Had I spoken to him? After they’d gone, I remembered Blyth had alerted me to the presence of someone else in the woods.
I found him on the roof of the Austin. I asked him if he recalled the day we met the kids, how he had seen someone or something after they had left. Chyak-chyak, he cried. I asked him to tell me what it was. Blyth tilted forward, half-turning to show me his nape. He ruffled his head feathers, as though he wanted me to groom him. I pleaded with him to tell me what he knew.
He ignored me and began to preen.
Although it wasn’t uncommon for him to behave that way, his diffidence angered me. It seemed deliberate, an affectation meant to provoke me. I decided not to rise to his bait. “All right, Blyth,” I told him. “Have it your way.”
I went to the workshop and began assembling the newly bleached bones of a raven. Since returning to Cray, I had taught myself the art of skeletal articulation. My knowledge of avian physiology helped, and the rudiments of maceration were not hard to grasp. The process was absorbing and helped take my mind off the theoretical aspects of my real work. While still an undergraduate, I had begun to focus on birds, particularly on avian intelligence. An investigation into the language of Corvids formed the basis of my masters thesis and would, so I had planned, go on to provide the platform for further research. Although those plans had stalled in York, I had come to see that the isolation of Cray and its abundant birdlife, offered an opportunity for a radical new approach. Blyth’s friendship served only to increase my hopes of success.
I worked on the raven late into the evening, feeling an odd detachment from my surroundings. I was aware of the maceration vessels beneath the worktop and the half dozen bird skeletons I’d successfully articulated. Two rooks hung from the roof beam as though suspended in flight; a magpie and a crow were perched on separate shelves. They seemed to be watching, waiting for their fellow corvids to be reborn. My thoughts loosened, became abstract and indecipherable. I felt separated from my body, hovering in the air above, looking down on someone with whom I felt only a tenuous connection. Disoriented and vertiginous, I sought for something to hold onto, something around which my sense of being could coalesce. Abruptly, I became aware of another presence seeping into my consciousness, allowing me to see the world through different eyes. The night opened up and waves of electromagnetic energy streamed across the sky, through a body that was no longer earthbound. I tumbled and soared, riding currents of air. Around me, the sky teemed with a great clattering of rooks and crows, their calls echoing across the night. We flew over forests and mountains, over landscapes I had never seen, and I felt as though I could fly to the edge of the world.
I woke at dawn, in an old sycamore. The branches were heavy with birds cawing to greet the day. My head was fuzzy, my throat raw. I had no idea how I had got up there. Scraps of memory drifted through my mind, elusive as dreams. Had I spent the night roosting with these birds? It wouldn’t be the first time. I looked for Blyth, struck by a sense of weightlessness, of having been outside myself. Leaning forward to ease the stiffness in my back, I lost my balance and nearly fell out of the tree. I grabbed the branch in time and hung on. After a while, I clambered down to the lowest branch and dropped to the ground.
I’d been having such dreams for two years. I’d come to believe that Blyth was the stimulus. I reasoned that just as migratory birds could detect magnetic fields and use them for navigation, Blyth drew on similar electromagnetic tools that allowed him to project his consciousness into my dreams. Thus I saw the world through his eyes, and as exhilarating and profound as that was, at the dream’s end I was left only with nebulous impressions that could not be transcribed in the rational world of human consciousness. That failure ate at my soul.
I stumbled across the yard, searching for Blyth. I needed him to decode the dream for me. I staggered towards the Austin and pulled the door open. Inside I found a red baseball cap with a cartoon logo on the front such as a child might wear.
A week ago I watched a young kite die among the rocks in the pass below Fan Brycheiniog. We were hiking along Fan Hir when Blyth heard its cries. He took off over the ridge and disappeared from view. Minutes later he came back, sounding his alarm. I found the kite about halfway down the bwlch. One wing was badly broken, and her breast was torn and bleeding. I held her until she was dead. Afterwards, I put her in my rucksack and headed northwest along the ridge. The sky was clear and the sun shone bright on the Black Mountain. Though I regretted the kite’s demise, I was pleased to have such a specimen to investigate.
Soon, we descended to Llyn y Fan Fach below the north face of the ridge. Children played and swam in the clear, blue water. I watched them awhile, Blyth circling overhead before settling at the water’s edge. While he drank I took out the kite and began to wash the blood from her plumage. A boy who had been wading nearby came closer. He asked if the bird was dead. I told him it was. He asked what had happened to it.
“Got in a fight with another bird, I guess. Probably over carrion.”
“What’s carrion?” He was nine or ten, tall and skinny. His arms and legs were red from the sun.
“Dead animals. Rabbits, sheep, other birds.”
“They eat dead animals?”
“Sure.”
“Why?”
“They have to eat and something dead is food to them.”
Blyth hopped closer and cried out, startling the boy who took a couple of steps back. “Don’t mind Blyth,” I said. “He’s just curious.”
The boy stared at Blyth. “How do you know that?”
“Blyth and I, we’re friends.”
A voice called out. Blyth flew off. A man waved to the boy from thirty yards away. “It’s my dad,” the boy said.
I nodded. “Okay.” I watched as he walked towards his father. The man spoke to the boy. I stood up and put the kite into the rucksack. The man came over. He stared at me, his eyes squinting in the afternoon sun.
“That was my boy you were taking to,” he said.
“Yes?”
“What business did you have with him?”
“We were just talking.”
“About what?”
“Birds.”
“Birds?” He stepped closer. “Well, how about you stay the fuck away from my boy? You think you could do that for me?”
I wondered how a corvid would react. How they perceived anger or fear. Did they understand what it was to be irrational? Did they even have a concept for reason? “I’m sorry,” I said, after a while. “I meant no harm.”
The man nodded and walked away.
Ten minutes later I reached the high ground east of the lake. I stopped to look back and saw the children playing in the water. Blyth flew above them. He banked to the right and dropped towards the ground north of the lake. Something caught my eye. I saw a man crouched behind a rock. He was looking out over the lake and when I followed his line of sight, I saw that he was watching the kids. When I looked back, he seemed to be staring right at the spot where I stood. A second later he had slipped out of sight behind the rock.