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

black eyes, and queues form around Adam and his bird as tourists demand pictures. For each, Magpie strikes a pose, spreading his wings, or puffing his white chest, or nimbly landing on an outstretched arm. Near the edge of the Meadows, Adam orders a cup of coffee, and by the time he reaches the Royal Mile his cup has been refilled with coins and notes.

Through a series of sharp pecks at Adam’s shoulder, Magpie directs him to a richly decorated shopfront. Adam gives his cup of money to the homeless man sitting outside, and enters into the close gloom of the antiques dealership, which is filled from floor to ceiling with bits of furniture, paintings and cabinets of memorabilia.

“No dogs or guide dogs,” says the man behind the counter, who has a moustache so magnificent that it’s difficult to tell if his lips are moving when he speaks. The ends of his moustache have been waxed into points, and he wears a pair of braces over a white shirt and pinstripe waistcoat, as if he is an old-fashioned barber.

“He’s a bird,” says Adam. Magpie leans down and lifts a small piece of paper from Adam’s breast pocket. Taking the paper, Adam hands it over to the antiques dealer. “I think this is for you.”

Whatever doubts the dealer might have had melt away as he observes the paper. “Ah, of course. This way, sir.” Shifting a glass table aside, he leads them through a pair of curtains and into a warm back room, which is filled with significantly more elegant pieces than the front of the shop. “I followed your client’s instructions as best I can,” says the man, “but if you’ll excuse me a moment, I still have to finish wrapping the last article.” And with that, he vanishes in a cloud of musty aftershave, leaving Adam surrounded by pieces of extraordinarily valuable and extraordinarily delicate memorabilia.

Magpie flaps across the room and lands behind an ancient wooden screen. Cracked vases and thin mirrors tremble in his wake. There’s a rustling noise from behind the screen, but Adam pays it little attention; he distracts himself from all the valuable antiques he might accidentally break by glancing at the paintings on the walls. There are faded landscapes, and peeling portraits, and all manner of presumably extremely expensive pieces which Adam has no idea how to value.

One of the paintings startles him.

When Adam thinks about Eve, it’s like trying to stare into a light that’s too bright. It’s impossible for him to contain the whole of her at once in his mind, so he has to think about a bit of her at a time. Sometimes, he thinks about her hands; the lines across her palms in patterns like roots, and the gentleness of her touch. Sometimes, he thinks about her lips; the fullness of them, and the softness of them against his skin. And sometimes he thinks about her eyes; the way they are the colour of earth after rain, and the way her pupils dilate almost imperceptibly when she looks at him.

There’s a painting here featuring three washerwomen, wearing heavy, practical clothes, their hair wrapped up in long lengths of white cloth. They are of different ethnicities, and the artist has somehow managed to capture details in each that remind Adam of Eve. In the young girl, bent over a washboard and scrubbing, it’s in the tension of her forearms. In the middle-aged woman wringing clothes out, it’s in the curve of her neck, and the way the light plays across her collarbones. And in the grey-haired woman hanging up washing to dry, it’s in the way her smile lines complement the sharpness of her jaw.

“What do you see in it?” asks Magpie, emerging from behind the wooden screen. Without his silver crowns, his smile seems to have been disarmed. The right side of his face is slightly sunken in, there is a spiderweb network of white scars across his cheek, and when he speaks he slurs his words slightly. He’s wearing a dusty tweed suit, and straightening the collar.

“Reminds me of Eve.”

Magpie pauses before the painting, and smiles a lopsided smile. “Yes. I can see it.” He then stands before a long mirror and turns back and forth, brushing the dust from the shoulders and admiring his new suit. “What do you think?” he asks.

“I think it’s tweed.”

“What’s wrong with tweed?”

“It’s tweed.”

“Well, I like it.”

The dealer with the magnificent moustache returns, hefting a heavy package wrapped in brown paper. “This is for you,” he says, handing it over to Adam. “Ah, and welcome back, sir,” he says, to Magpie. “I didn’t notice you come in. How does the suit fit?”

“Very well, thank you. My friend doesn’t like it.”

“Tweed is an acquired taste, I find.”

“My friend has no taste.”

The dealer observes Adam. “What happened to your bird?”

Adam turns the package over in his hands. There’s something familiar about the weight of it, but it’s neatly taped shut. “He flew away.”

With the package under his arm, Adam follows Magpie back out into the festival, and the two of them elbow their way through the crowds. They stop at a pub filled from doorway to doorway with tourists listening to a comedian. The comedian isn’t very good, and the room is quiet except for his rambling voice, nervous coughs, and crackle of the speakers. Adam finds a bench outside and Magpie smokes the latter half of a cigarette, recently abandoned and left to burn down in the table’s ashtray. “Unwrap your present, then,” he says.

Carefully peeling back the uppermost layer of the brown paper package, Adam reveals an antique gun. It’s an old, well-decorated powder duelling pistol, and it fits well in his hand. Beneath it, he can see the shapes of the other seven guns, and their corresponding thick leather belts. “How did you find these?”

“I’ve set up alerts with most of the antique dealerships in the city. They let me know if anything unusual comes in. More than a few flags