Birds of Paradise by Oliver Langmead (read any book .TXT) 📗

of his especially angular body, and there is a golden pince-nez perched across his nose. His tousled black hair wavers in the breeze, and even though he is sitting perfectly still, he seems in motion, somehow. Half of his smile is white, and the other half is silver.

“What happened to your teeth?” Adam asks.

“A boy with a rock,” says Magpie. “I was tired after a long flight and decided to roost in an old oak at the back of a long garden, imagining I was safe there. I was wrong.” Throwing his head back, he drains his glass. “I must say,” he says. “I knew that someone would show up eventually, but I didn’t expect it to be you. How are you, Adam?”

“I’ve been better. Whose wedding is this?”

“No idea. But I do like a good wedding. A pleasant way to pass the time.”

Adam examines Magpie’s expression, but there’s no trace of irony in it. “Rook wants to know what you’re spending his money on.”

Magpie’s smile flashes. “I expect he does.”

“Ran into your friends, too. The Sinclairs.”

This seems to take Magpie by surprise. His smile fades. “You did?”

“They took me on a tour of their greenhouse.”

“You must be kidding. They actually let you inside?”

“Showed me a rose. Told me they wanted to sell it to you.”

Magpie laughs hard enough that his pince-nez tumbles from his nose.

“Is it real?”

“Is what real?”

“The rose.”

“Yes,” says Magpie, carefully. “It’s real. As real as you and me.” Magpie leans down and snatches his pince-nez from the ground, brushing the grass from it as he regains his composure. “Tell you what,” he says. “You help me break into the Sinclairs’ greenhouse and recover the rose, and I’ll do better than telling you what I’ve been spending all my brother’s money on. I’ll show it to you. How does that sound?”

“Are you serious?”

Magpie’s semi-silver grin somehow makes him look as if he is holding a dagger. “Perfectly.”

Adam observes the wedding: the dancers as they move among the dry leaves gently tumbling from the trees, trampling the green lawn with their heels. Then he studies his hands and the scars that run across them, white on black. If the rose is real, he thinks he would like to see it again, more than anything.

A part of Eden he never expected to survive.

“Sure…” he says, at last.

“Wonderful.” Magpie throws Adam a set of rusted car keys. “I’m parked beside my hotel, just a little further along. I’ll finish up here and meet you there in, say, half an hour. My car is the green one.”

Wandering towards the far entrance to the Botanics, Adam pauses beneath a yellowing grove of trees where the noise of the wedding party is muffled. He turns on the spot until he locates Owl, those intense eyes following Adam’s every movement. “You should go find Crow,” Adam tells him. “Let her know we’ve got Magpie. I’ll keep an eye on him.”

There is the softest hoot of what might be acknowledgement.

As Adam exits the Botanics, he hears the beating of wings behind him.

It takes him longer than he thought it would to locate Magpie’s car. The problem is that none of the vehicles parked outside the hotel are green. There are plenty of silver cars, and black cars, and blue cars, and even one abandoned hulk covered in a layer of moss, but nothing painted green. Adam turns the keys over in his hands, searching for the button to unlock the car’s door and make its lights flash, but the keys are so old that they lack electronic components.

When he tries the keys on the door of the overgrown wreck, they work.

Moss covers the chassis in enormous patches, and a few errant roots dangle through the cracked sunroof. Adam circles the car, and is surprised to find that it still has one remaining hubcap, held in place by a single bolt.

Magpie arrives looking ruffled, cheeks ruddy.

“Think you need a new car,” says Adam.

“Nonsense,” says Magpie, brandishing the bridal bouquet. “It still works fine.”

As Magpie slips in behind the wheel of the car, he hands the bouquet to Adam. The tightly arranged set of flowers are already crisping slightly at the edges, and as Adam turns it over in his hands, searching the petals for their colours, he considers the rose – the memories that might still cling on to it like errant particles of Eden’s soil. When he’s recovered the rose, he’ll take to it to Eve, he thinks; he’ll present her with it again, the same way he did all that time ago in the garden, so proud to have found something so gorgeous to show her.

* * *

At the outskirts of Glasgow, Magpie pulls in to an enormous but mostly empty car park. A concrete complex stands ahead, gleaming glass reflecting the grey sky. As Adam crunches across discarded receipts and flyers towards it, he realises that he is surrounded on all sides by highways. The highways curve like waves, and the cars upon them seem to rise and fall like ships, making this place an island.

Adam remembers the white harbour of Kos.

The ships arrived from mainland Greece and far beyond, white sails flying against the shining white sea. The sands were white, and so were the stones of the harbour, and Adam worked as a labourer, hauling cargo to and from ships and helping to make repairs. Sometimes, when the harbour was quiet, he would wade into the sea just to feel the weeds writhe around his legs and crustaceans scuttle across his feet. Eve worked further inland, at a new school devoted to the study of health. Ever since they left the garden, she had been troubled by the idea of death, and here, on this island, were people claiming that diseases and illnesses might not be divine judgement at all, and that there may even be rational ways of curing them – of prolonging life. Of course, Eve, as a woman, was not allowed to join in the debates, but she