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

“I didn’t mean…” The problem is that he doesn’t consider Crow’s leg to be missing, as such. The fact that she only has one leg is as much a part of her as the colour of her eyes, or the way she smiles.

“It’s okay, Adam. I know what you mean.” Crow touches his shoulder. “When was the last time you visited Eve?”

Her name, again – like a candle lit. “A long time,” he says, because he honestly can’t remember the last time he saw her. Lifetimes ago. Too long ago.

“Well, we are going to be in Scotland. So why don’t we go together, after the job’s done? I imagine Magpie would want to see her, as well.”

“That sounds good,” says Adam, but he finds that he is hesitant – afraid that he might disappoint her, somehow. These days, he feels as if he has more in common with his shadow than the man he used to be. Still – he has to admit that it would be good to see Eve again. “Thanks, Crow.”

“Your turn to drive,” she says, handing him the keys.

* * *

Hours and days pass behind the rumble of the muscle car’s engine.

Eventually, Crow turns into a long driveway, through rows of bent-backed trees and overgrown shrubbery. The muscle car rumbles down the rough track, and ploughs a route through the long grasses hiding the way.

All at once, the house is revealed.

It looks wrong. The ivy-wreathed pillars supporting the balcony look as if they are of different lengths, and each heavily cracked window seems unevenly spaced, and the very foundations appear off balance, as if the house has subsided slightly.

“Ugly place,” says Adam. Black birds take flight from the balcony all in a rush as he and Crow step out. Together, they take a moment to breathe in the humid swampy air, and listen to the eerie tomb-like silence engulfing the remote house. There are big planks of wood barring the enormous front doors shut. “Doesn’t look like anybody’s been here in a while.”

“Magpie won’t have used the front door.” Lightly, Crow pulls at a plank, and part of it comes free – a sodden, rotten pulp. She drops it and rubs at her palms. “Open this up for me.”

It takes little effort to clear the doors of the remaining planks. That done, Adam finds the doors locked, so he wrenches at a handle until something snaps, forcing them open. A waft of stinking, moist air assails them as the doors grate along the cracked stone floor, as if Adam has peeled back the skin of a fruit to find it rotten inside. The interior is wretched; though once grand, most of it looks as if it long ago ripened in the humid Louisiana air – the wallpaper is peeling, the bannisters are warped, and the carpets are brown instead of red.

A pair of fierce eyes peer at them from an enormous ruined portrait. “Owl,” says Adam, and he stops before it, trying to decipher the scene. There are all manner of folk around him, some wearing the clothes of servants, others wearing the clothes of the wealthy, and everyone is smiling before a colourful backdrop of drooping bright trees. Only Owl is sincere – he’s tall, and broad at the centre of the painting, wearing a brocade coat that already seems out of date.

There’s something familiar about the style of the painting: the once-vivid colours, and the way that each subject is so vibrant, as if the portrait is a doctored photograph with the saturation turned up not on the colours, but on the people. At the corner of the painting is a faded signature, which Adam peers at, deciphering the flourishes and curls into a name that might be ‘Butterfly’.

“How long has Owl been on sabbatical?” Adam asks.

“Oh, uh…” Crow considers the question. “When was the Boer War?”

“Not sure.”

“Since then, anyway. A while now. I’m surprised he still remembers language, honestly.” She peers up at the painting, with a frown. “I need a bath,” says Crow. “And so do you. You still stink of the river.”

“Reckon the plumbing still works?”

“I’ll go stoke the boiler, you go run the taps, and we can find out.”

Adam tests each step as he lumbers upstairs, but the wood doesn’t give. Whatever damage there is to the house, it seems only skin deep – the foundations are holding. Opening doors at random, he eventually comes to a long bathroom; white tiles stained by years of neglect. The bath is enormous, and has clawed feet. Turning the taps, he waits for the water to run clear, and then plugs the bath.

Wiping at the mirror with a ruined rag of a towel, Adam sees an unfamiliar face staring back at him. It is, of course, his own face, but there’s something wrong with the eyes. There’s a deep weariness in them. Searching through a cupboard, he locates a pair of rusty tweezers and uses them to pull at the pieces of shrapnel embedded in his forehead. Blood drips from the open wounds, and he wonders if the long lines scratched into him from the shotgun blast will leave scars.

The pipes groan, and steam rises from the bath; the plumbing is working, after all.

Crow arrives and throws the windows open, so that all the noise of the forest encroaching on the house drifts inside: birds, and insects, and the distant sound of traffic. Then, removing her clothes and her prosthetic leg, she sinks into the bath with a sigh. “Let me know if you find any soap.”

Adam opens a few more cupboards, finds a crusty amber lump and hands it across. Then, peeling off his own sweaty layers, he lowers himself into the tub opposite Crow. The water level rises and splashes over the edge, and Crow uses his knees to prop her legs up, so that she can scrub at them each in turn.

“Surprised the plumbing still works,” says Adam.

“We tried to maintain the place for a long time after Owl left,