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

Eve’s heart beat in his chest, half expecting it to stop. But it doesn’t. When he opens his eyes again, her heart is still beating. That’s okay, though, he thinks. Today, he doesn’t mind living a bit longer.

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One of Adam’s favourite lives was the life he lived as a postman in Dorset. He had a cottage between two small farming villages, and was responsible for the mail of both. In the morning he would walk from one village to the other, his satchel heavy with packages and letters to deliver, and in the afternoon visitors would arrive at his cottage with mail for the delivery van, and more often than not those visitors would stay for a cup of tea and to enquire after his garden.

Adam’s garden was the talk of both villages. It was twice the size of his modest cottage, and he took care of it year round, cultivating it with a careful eye. On his days off he would take trains to flower shows across Britain and abroad, seeking out the finest complementary shades and shapes to improve his garden; and when at home he would peruse newspapers and gardening journals for the rarest seeds and the means of making them grow in such a county as Dorset. Adam’s garden was a place of wonder, no matter the time of year. Even in the depths of winter, the shape of it was remarkable, and the potential of it was overwhelmingly apparent – the majesty of what it would be come spring. As the years progressed, Adam’s garden grew taller and ever more brilliant, featuring exotic flowers otherwise unseen in Britain, and it became bright with birds and insects.

Then, Adam was drafted. It was a sudden thing. He was aware of the formal letters he was delivering to the men of the villages, which he knew had something to do with the European tensions disrupting his supply of rare seeds, and he knew that those men were leaving for the towns and cities, but the full realisation of the draft and the war only reached him when he received one of those letters for himself. Adam was to fight, he was told, for the good of the country, leaving him in a precarious position.

Usually, Adam preferred to avoid war where possible. Usually, he would simply retreat; vanish to a corner of the world free of conflict. This time, however, he was not ready to leave his current life behind. He had put too much time and effort and love into his cottage garden. If he ignored the draft and stayed, it would not take long for the authorities to notice and forcefully dislocate him from his life anyway. Which left him with one option: go along with the draft, play the good soldier, wait out the war, and come back afterwards.

Given no more than a handful of days before he must go, Adam did his best for his garden, leaving it in such a state that the girls and the old men of the villages could maintain it, given simple instruction.

Then, reluctantly, he left for war.

The trains were full of men like himself: men not entirely sure what they were fighting for. The newspapers were all loud with patriotism. Adam’s uniform had to be custom made to fit him, his rifle was small in his hands, and he was never entirely comfortable in his new boots, which fit too tightly. He was ferried to France, there to join a unit of men drafted like himself, and the country was much changed from his last visit. Everyone seemed frightened, and the streets and the fields seemed darker. Only the sky was still bright, and even then never quite often enough. Adam’s unit was shuffled from deployment to deployment: from city to town to field to trench. Sometimes he spoke with the locals, and they laughed at his archaic French, and corrected him, and taught him the new words. Men died around him – shot and stabbed and diseased – and as Adam fought, he filled his pockets with seeds: all the flowers of France for his Dorset garden.

More men died. Sometimes Adam killed them with his rifle, and sometimes Adam killed them with his hands, and he was never certain who he was killing them for, or why. Then his last day at war came, stood in a trench so sodden that the mud came up to his ankles. There was a profound silence as a yellow cloud drifted along the trench and the men around him died. Adam choked, of course, and his eyes watered, but the gas had little other effect on him. He sat down in the mud and watched the men of his unit die, sifting through the seeds in his pocket and wondering at his own indifference. And when the gas dispersed he returned, alone, to the medical tents far behind the front lines. The doctor in charge checked Adam over despite his apparent fortitude, and when it was found that Adam had been shot no less than six times, his wounds in varying states of decay, it was decided, at last, that he should be sent home.

The ferries and trains were filled with wheezing men missing limbs, their eyes wide and glassy. By the time Adam made it back to Dorset, he was told that the war had come to an end. With his pockets still full of seeds, Adam returned to his cottage, eager to resume the life he had left behind. There were stacks of mail for him to deliver, his cottage was thick with vines, and one of the local farm cats was there to greet him along with her new kittens. All seemed pleasant enough until Adam came to his garden. It was utterly transformed. Gone were all the plants he had cultivated: the unusual and exotic and complementary species he had brought together. Gone were the birds and insects giving it so much movement