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

singular cities of America that the plurality takes him by surprise. He observes dozens of Manchesters occupying the same space, like a photograph taken using multiple exposures. The city wears its eras all together at once, and everywhere Adam goes he is confronted by dead ends and ruins muddled with brand-new blocks of buildings. There are so many Manchesters that he finds himself getting lost, not only in the labyrinth of constant deconstruction and reconstruction, but in his own memories of Manchesters past.

By contrast, the stadium garden is a place fixed in time. Around it, the city clamours: gulls roost and cry, planes groan low overhead, and passing trains rattle its plastic bucket seats constantly. Adam is often awoken by sirens. But the patchwork garden is a jewel that reflects itself in its brilliant facets. As Adam tends to the garden, he finds himself lost in it, but in an entirely different way to his disorientation in the city. In the hidden garden, Adam loses himself to precious, tender memories. He’s never entirely certain about the authenticity of the memories, and often identifies the flaws and impossibilities in them, but he enjoys them nonetheless: remembering Eden through its remnants.

One day, Adam decides to dig a shallow canal from the river through the garden, in order to irrigate the eastern reaches better. It begins to rain as he digs, so that he finds himself hauling up clumps of mud, but he doesn’t mind. He likes the sound of the rain on the leaves of Eden’s trees, and the way that droplets splash across the back of his neck, keeping him cool, and he especially likes the way that the pigeons roosting in the trees coo gently, and rustle their feathers as they huddle together. Later, he thinks, he will go and buy some seeds, and feed those pigeons, and maybe they will fly over Manchester and sow them in high places, and in years to come the city will be ever so slightly greener than it was before.

There is the crunching of footsteps falling across the grasses.

Adam rises to see men approaching through the rain. They are wearing hunting gear in shattered green-and-brown patterns, and carrying old rifles with bayonets, which they raise as he turns to face them.

The rain is making the black streaks they have painted across their faces run, and their hair is clinging to their scalps, but Adam recognises them. They are from the garden party at the Sinclair’s house; the same men who he last saw on horseback, stampeding across Crow’s funeral.

The whites of their eyes are bright in the gloom.

One of them underestimates the length of Adam’s reach. The strike is quick enough that none of them react; their eyes simply turn, in horror, to the man who has had his throat gouged through with the blade of Adam’s shovel. That man drops his rifle and grips his ruined neck with both hands, gurgling as blood pours through his fingers.

His blood will be absorbed by the soil, Adam thinks. It will feed the roots of Eden’s trees.

The bayonets waver. Adam grips his shovel in both hands, watching for the next opportunity.

The next man to approach is Frank Sinclair, who is almost a head shorter than his friends. White strands of hair cling wetly to his pockmarked head. He is carrying an especially large antique rifle, and emitting a low growl as he advances, with Eden’s tall grasses almost up to his shoulders.

There is the crack of a shot, and Adam is thrown backwards.

He comes to a rest at the base of a tree, his vision reeling and focusing only on the pigeons as they take flight in a startled flock. This is the moment before the pain, Adam knows; the moment he has to respond before he is immobilised. Only, he finds he has no strength to stand. In fact, he realises he is unable to draw breath. Focusing on his chest, he notices that it is a bloody ruin, and that two of his ribs have been exposed. The cage keeping Eve’s heart safe has been broken.

There is a loud ringing in his ears. The shovel is too slippery for him to keep his grip on.

Frank Sinclair’s rain-streaked face comes into view, and the pain of the shot hits Adam all at once. It is a fiery agony, pouring outwards from his chest and making his limbs shudder. “You’re even more of a fool than I thought,” he says. “My cherry tree has a tracking device embedded in it.”

Frank Sinclair crouches. “This belonged to my grandfather,” he says, showing Adam his rifle. “He used it to hunt elephants in India. Their heads are still hung in my house, you know. Beautiful even after all this time.”

The other riflemen have dispersed, their shapes fleeting. There is a rumbling, audible beneath the rain, and Adam spies the blurred red and white lights of trucks being backed into the stadium. “Don’t worry about all that,” says Frank. “Concentrate on me. I’m telling you about my grandfather.”

Adam tries to raise his shovel, but his arms won’t obey him.

“My grandfather was cursed,” continues the small man. “From the time he was a boy, everything went wrong in his life. At school, he was ridiculed for breaking slates and wearing ragged clothes. His every childish secret found its way into the hands of his enemies. His progress was slow, and what few friends he had were driven away from him. And as a young man, he fared no better. Girls would shun him, his fellows would mock him, and his teachers would punish him constantly for wrongdoings falsely attributed to him. The curse followed him beyond his schooling, as well. In society, he was an outcast. Rumours went abroad of terrible secrets having nothing to do with him. His relatives began to disinherit him, and soon, he had nothing. No friends and no happiness. Misfortune followed him even into the gutter, where he was trodden upon, spat upon by the