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

As they descend, Adam expects to hear the clamouring of gunfire. It seems inevitable at this point. Yet, as they reach the base of the hill, there is nothing but the yelled exchanges of drivers trying to coordinate their parking, and the slow quietening of engines as they are switched off. Doors are rolled back and thrown wide, to reveal the greenery contained in every truck. There are trees tied up on flat-beds, and flowers carefully wrapped up in individual pots, and whole expanses of wild grasses cut up into careful squares. The men and women of the convoy are wearing thick gloves, and some of them carry shovels and trowels and heavier pieces of gardening equipment.

“Are you Mister Corvid?” A woman with a clipboard approaches.

“Pardon?” Rook frowns. Then, “Oh, yes. Of course.”

“You need to sign here.” She offers the clipboard.

Rook scrawls his signature reflexively. “What is all this?”

“You weren’t told?”

“The phone lines have been down.”

“Delivery,” says the woman, “From…” She checks. “… another Mister Corvid.”

“Mister Corvid?”

“Magpie,” says Adam.

The army of gardeners unloading plants from the convoy are handling pieces of Eden. Hundreds of them. Thousands of them. So many that Adam feels dizzy, overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of it all. He had thought that the stadium garden was the extent of Magpie’s collection – that all in his possession now stood in the greenhouse vault. But there is so much more here. Enough pieces of paradise to fill several stadiums – enough to fill the greenhouse from pane to distant pane.

“These are…” says Rook, as realisation reaches him at last.

“Yes,” says Adam.

“All of it?”

“All of it.” Adam remembers the hidden greenhouse in the basement of Owl’s house, and wonders how many more secret greenhouses Magpie must have, hidden everywhere. The sheer scale of the operation is dazzling.

“This is what my brother has been doing all this time?”

“He only showed me the stuff in the vault. But yes, I think so. Collecting it all together.”

Rook runs his hand through a patch of grass, feeling the blades. “It’s… magnificent.” Then, frowning, he withdraws his hand. “He has a lot to answer for.”

It would be easy to grab a trowel, Adam knows; to haul trees and flowers and all of Eden’s greenery into the vault. There is nothing Adam wants more, in fact, than to lose himself in the reconstruction of the garden. But there is something he knows he must do first. Rook is right: Magpie has a lot to answer for. Pulling his torn and stained coat around him, Adam takes one last look at the convoy. It is a magnificent sight, he thinks: all those pieces of Eden, reunited again. Then he turns and starts to make his way up the track, crunching through frozen puddles. It’s time to find Magpie.

* * *

Adam stops at a garden centre.

The car park is so full that the queue of cars vying for space is preventing anyone from leaving. Vehicles are laden with so much wood that it sticks out of their windows, and doors idle at awkward angles, drivers gesturing uselessly at the unmoving traffic. Adam manoeuvres around it all, shuffling past overburdened trolleys. He saw the garden centre from the side of the motorway and felt drawn to it, distracted from his initial destination. It would be worth picking up some new tools, he thinks, for when he returns to the greenhouse.

The garden centre is cavernous, and echoes with the voices and footfalls of its busy occupants. They haul planks of timber, and trellises, and enormous bags of nails onto trolleys. The aisles devoted to wood seem to be mostly depleted of stock, so a few enterprising folk are purchasing entire sheds and carrying them in small teams. With all this wood, Adam imagines they will try and repair the damage done by the flood.

As he skirts the queues at the tills, Adam considers the forest of trees that died for all this wood. He wonders how long ago those trees were felled; how long ago they sprouted from acorns and seeds; how long ago the trees that dropped those acorns and seeds took root themselves. He considers the forest back through the generations, all the way back to those first trees, the progenitors that dropped the acorns that would grow through centuries and centuries to become these planks and sheds, converted from a living forest into unliving human structures.

There are no hammers, but there are plenty of shovels. There is quite the selection, in fact, and while each shovel has a metal blade, the hafts vary from plastic to wood to metal. There are long shovels, and short shovels, and spare parts – blades and handles and sharpening kits. Adam decides to avoid plastic because it warps too easily, which leaves him with a choice between metal and wood. Taking a metal shovel in one hand, and a wooden shovel in the other, he weighs them. Metal bends, he thinks, and wood splinters.

As he considers the shovels, Adam realises that for the first time in a long time he feels happy. No, not happy – content. The kind of contentment that comes with being completely absorbed in a pleasant activity. He remains standing there for a while longer, a shovel in each hand, letting the noise of the garden centre rush around him. He can still feel the wreath of grief gripping his thoughts, but today it feels like the sun is shining down upon the rich green leaves of the thorny tangle.

“If you ask me, you should just buy both.” Magpie is stood at the end of the aisle, hands buried deep in the pockets of his enormous brown shearling jacket, with a grin that makes him look as if he has a mouth full of pearls. Gone is his deadly silver smile; the crowns he wears are the same white as the rest of his teeth, making him seem symmetrical. “Hello, Adam,” he says.

“What are you doing here?”

“I figured