THIRTY-ONE
The glen has changed since November. Its winter-bare branches are now hidden behind a patchwork of greens, and the reddish leaves that littered the ground have given way to long grass and wildflowers. Birds flit through the trees. I spot a grey wagtail, followed by a black-headed bunting. Neither of those would have been here in winter. I wouldn’t have known their names back then, either.
It’s beautiful. But that doesn’t still the tight, fluttery feeling in my chest as Dad pulls the car up by the gate.
‘Are you sure about this?’ Allie stifles a yawn.
It’s just past five in the morning – early enough that we won’t bump into any dog walkers or birdwatchers.
I nod. ‘This is the place. It has to be here.’
It’s been six days since we rescued Teacake from the power station. Each one has given me bizarre and beautiful memories. There was seeing Allie finally finish stitching the last feathers to her wing, and watching Teacake’s face light up when she took to the sky afterwards. There was Calum teaching Rani and Teacake how to play chess, and the way his jaw dropped when Teacake eventually beat him. There was the stormy night we stayed in and watched Les Mis (she was singing ‘One Day More’ for hours on end), and the boiling-hot afternoon we introduced her to ice lollies. There was hearing her hum along to Nina Simone, one of Mum’s favourites, and seeing Dad’s ears prick up when a bulletin about another Fall in Tunisia came on the radio – only to watch him switch it off and turn his attention back to Rani, laughing in a way he hadn’t done in months.
After that, there were our exam results. Allie got a full house of As, of course, and Calum got what he needed to get into his photography course. Even my own cluster of Cs and Ds, plus a B in French, was better than I could have hoped for. I actually found myself wondering what I might do with my results, and realized that I cared. That I still had things to look forward to.
More time with Allie, for one thing. We haven’t talked about what’s going to happen when she goes back home yet, but we’ve done more kissing. Quite a lot of it, actually. Calum’s started hurrying out of the room every time she and I come within less than a metre radius of each other (not that he has an issue with her being bi; he’d do the same no matter who she was making out with), but I don’t care who sees. I’ve had my fill of secrets for one summer.
There’s still one left. But I won’t have to keep it for much longer.
Now that Allie’s finished repairing her wing, Teacake’s flights have steadily grown longer. Last night, she disappeared for so long that I started to think maybe she had left for good, without saying goodbye – or, worse, that she’d been caught, shot down over the fields like a game bird. When she finally reappeared, something had changed. Her eyes were bright, and she was chattering in her own language, fast and high-pitched. I couldn’t understand the words, but the excitement was obvious. She’d seen something up there.
A streak of sadness tainted my relief. It was time.
I half expected to find her gone when I woke at half past four this morning, but she was curled up on the roof where we left her – she’d taken to sleeping up there on dry nights, tucked behind the chimney. This morning, though, she was wide awake and watching the sky, its stars hidden behind a layer of thick blue-grey clouds.
‘I know,’ I said, as she twitched her wings in greeting. ‘I’m ready when you are.’
I got Rani and Calum up to say their bleary-eyed goodbyes, then asked Dad to drive Teacake, Allie and me over to the glen. The short journey passed in sleepy silence. Dad kept glancing at Teacake in the rear-view mirror, a question – the question – forming on his lips. Now, as he parks the car by the gate leading to the glen, he turns around to face her.
‘Well, then,’ he says. ‘This is it.’
He opens his mouth: I can see almost see the words spilling on to his tongue, but he swallows them back. Instead, he takes out his phone and pulls up a map of the country to show Teacake.
‘Fly north if you can,’ he says, suddenly business-like. ‘It won’t hurt if a few people spot you, as long as you’re high enough, but best to avoid large towns or cities just in case. Fewer plane routes up there too.’
He says goodbye and leaves the three of us to take the path towards the waterfall. Morning dew brushes against my ankles; the weak sunlight leaves glints of gold in Teacake’s hair and feathers. After a few minutes, we enter a small, leafy clearing and the waterfall comes into view. My breath catches at the splash of red in the pool below. It’s just the sunrise spilling its colours into the water, but it sends painful images flickering in front of my eyes.
Allie puts her hand on the small of my back. ‘Are you sure this is what you want? Teacake can leave from anywhere –’
I shake my head. ‘I’m fine. It has to be here.’
This place is where everything began to go wrong, where my own apocalypse began, even before the sky started to cave in. But so much has changed since then. It feels like I’m coming full circle.
Teacake flies low across the pool, dipping her toes below the surface of the water. My heart is hammering. The closer she comes to leaving, the more impossible it seems that we’ve got this far. I flinch every time something rustles in the hedgerow, half expecting Damien and a dozen Standing Fallen members to pop up from behind the bushes. The fear that crept up my spine the first few times I heard a car in the distance has lessened with each day that passes, but it hasn’t quite disappeared.
Allie says her goodbyes first. She hugs Teacake (who shoots me a bewildered look and gingerly pats Allie’s back – hugs are obviously something they don’t do where Beings come from), then takes both of her hands. I linger by the bushes, letting them have their moment. Afterwards Allie walks back to me, wiping the corners of her eyes with her sleeve. Her hand brushes my side as she moves back on to the path, leaving me alone with Teacake.
She sits down on a rock, the lower edge of her wings falling into the water. I watch her, trying to memorize all the things I know will eventually fade from my mind: the musical swell of her voice, the impossible lightness of her skin, the dreamlike feel to the world when she’s around.
A sparrow alights on a rock just by her foot. It dips its beak into the pool, ruffles its feathers, then takes off again. I watch it flit above the trees with another jolt of nerves. The sky is so vast, endless. It seems impossible that Teacake could ever find her way home again.
‘It’s not your fault.’
My heart stops. Everything stops. Teacake is looking at me, her eyes solemn.
‘What did you say?’
‘Maybe you feel guilty that you survived and they didn’t,’ she says slowly. ‘But don’t feel guilty, OK? Don’t blame yourself.’
A lump comes to my throat. She’s just repeating my own words – the things I said to her back in McEwan Hall after she saw the videos of the Falls. But the tears spill over, and I let out a sob. She still doesn’t know what she’s saying. To her they’re just sounds, without meaning.
Only . . . they’re not. I meant them. I meant them when I said them to her. If I could tell Teacake she’s not to blame, surely I can tell myself that too.
I look up to the edge of the waterfall. The stream keeps rushing over the rocks, oblivious to all it robbed me of that morning. The same pain throbs beneath my ribcage, no duller than the day Mum fell. But something else has gone: the restless creature wriggling in my stomach and squeezing at my windpipe; the thing telling me it was all my fault.