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

ragged. A few black-feathered bodies fall away, cawing their coarse anger at Crow as she beats them back, but enough are still chasing Butterfly. All it would take is the strike of a single beak to kill her, Adam knows.

Hauling the stowage box open, Adam grabs a pistol.

It’s a glinting wood-and-metal affair, ornately carved and finely tempered. His hand knows the curve of its hilt, and his finger knows the press of its trigger. He lets himself load it, watching as his fingers find the powder and bearings, and use the gun’s ramrod to push them into place. He feels himself strike the duellist’s pose, chest burning as he straightens, free hand at the small of his back, gun hand outstretched. He sights along the barrel, and though Crow is up there, and though Butterfly is up there, he knows with absolute clarity that he will hit neither; his body is too long learned in the art of gunfire, his aim too perfect. Adam pulls the hammer back with his thumb.

Then, a moment of indecision. Adam does not want to kill any of those birds.

He raises the pistol at the sky. There is a sound like thunder, and the gun bucks.

The flock scatters. Every bird in the village takes flight all at once: the pigeons, and herons, and ducks, feathers falling as they rush away from the sound. Adam lowers the gun, hating the smell of the powder, and the ringing in his ears, and the dull ache in his arm from the power of the blast. He chucks the spent pistol back into the stowage box, kicks it shut and raises his hands to receive the ragged insect that falls gently towards him.

There are brilliant colours as she shifts. Then Adam is holding Butterfly in the shape of a girl. She is small, and cold, and her skin is covered in scratches and cuts. Adam holds her close as she sobs, throwing her arms around his neck. “I found you,” she whispers, breathless. “I didn’t think I would. I flew for so long with the wind. Like a kite. I’ve never flown so far before.”

“You’re safe,” says Adam, because it seems like the right thing to say.

“I had to find you.”

Another thump as Crow lands, perched upon the boat’s fore. Limbs shift as she too changes, naked and unafraid, with the blood of birds still wet upon her foot. “Give her your coat, Adam. She’ll freeze.” Before pulling any of her clothes back on, she grabs her prosthetic leg and fastens it into place, rubbing at her stump. “That was a very stupid thing to do, Butterfly.”

“I had to find you,” she repeats. Shrugging his heavy coat from his shoulders, Adam wraps her in it and sits her down. She nestles into his side, sipping at a plastic bottle of water. “You don’t understand. They took him. They took Pig.”

Crow rinses the blood from her toes. “Who took Pig?”

“I don’t know.” Butterfly tugs at strands of her rainbow hair, running them behind her ears. Her eyes are wide, and she is still breathless from her flight. “I told you we went sailing along the canal, in his boat. We weren’t expecting the rains to be as bad as they were, so we shored up for a few days, tying ourselves to a little jetty while the canal became a lake. It just kept coming down. I couldn’t believe it. But it was fine, because he was there. He was wearing his hat – you know, that special hat he has, the peaked cap with the anchor on it – and he was in control, and everything was fine. We had plenty of supplies, so we sat inside and ate tins of beans and drank glasses of wine while the rain thumped at the roof of the long boat. We were going to weather it out.”

Crow pulls her dress down over herself. “What happened?”

“We were up on the roof. It was silly, really. We had a picnic in the rain, because it didn’t matter if we got wet because it was warm inside, and we had towels. We sat there and snacked on bits and pieces and watched as the waters slowly rose higher and higher. It’s pretty, the way that water is so chaotic in heavy rain. All those droplets smashing and breaking the surface. We both got completely soaked through, and it was heavy enough that you could tilt your face to the sky and drink from it, but we just laughed and laughed at each other. And maybe that’s what got their attention. Maybe that’s how they found us.”

“Who found you?” Crow rolls her sock back on.

“Remember I told you that the canal was a lake? It’s really bad up there. As bad as it is down here. There’s just water, everywhere. Enough water for bigger boats. They had a yacht. I couldn’t believe it at first. To see that great big shiny white yacht cutting through the water towards us was surreal. It was all lit up and warm, and there were people up on the foredeck, and I stood up and waved at them, thinking they were friendly and just coming over to say hello.”

“A yacht?” says Adam.

“I swear, I’m telling the truth. It was a yacht in the canal, which wasn’t really even a canal any more. There was shouting. I remember the shouting. And there was a sound like a firework going off. But it wasn’t a firework. Pig jerked back. And there was blood. Then there were more firework sounds, and I realised that the people in the yacht were shooting at us.” Butterfly clings to Adam’s shirt. “I didn’t know what to do. What are you meant to do in a situation like that? Pig almost fell off the top of his boat. But he stood strong, even when there were more shots, and he bore his tusks at them, and when the yacht drew up close, he pushed me backwards,