The Book of the Crowman

by Joseph D'lacey

  She frowned a little but it passed.

  “No. I like it here.” Her eyes flicked to the shelter. “It’s comfortable. It’s warm and,” she grinned, “the food is great.”

  Gordon clenched his teeth and looked away again when her gaze sought his. As he stared out across the quiet, almost comatose land, he thought of the night before. What they’d done. The things she’d shown him. Already he wanted her again but what about afterwards? Would it always feel this forced, this untrue?

  “We can’t stay here. We’ll lose what little advantage we have.”

  “I know. But don’t spoil it, Gordon. One more night won’t hurt.” She reached out and took his hand. Gordon flinched but managed not to snatch his hand away. “It’ll do us good,” she said.

  He swallowed down his frustration and stood up. He wasn’t sure he could delay another twenty-four hours to be on the move again; the Crowman wasn’t going to wait for him. Yet neither was he sure he could wait until nightfall to touch Denise again.

  “One more night, then. But we leave at daybreak.”

  “What’s the matter, Gordon? You seem really… tense. I haven’t upset you, have I?”

  “No. No, of course not. I’m just… I can’t help thinking about this ‘war’ everyone’s on about.” It wasn’t a lie. Not exactly. But the thought had also crossed his mind that he could grab his pack and leave Denise here; a thought followed swiftly by the shame that he could think such a thing after everything that had happened. He tried to concentrate on his wider concerns. “I can’t help feeling like everything’s coming to a head. That this will be the final clash between the Green Men and the Ward. I don’t think it’s going to go well.”

  “How can you say that? Look at the numbers of people ready to fight.”

  “It’ll never be enough, Denise. They’re not an army. They’re a rabble. They’re lit up by passion and desperation. When they meet the Ward in battle, those lights will go out like that.” He clicked his fingers. “They’ll falter.”

  “They will not. How can you say that? These people would die to end the Ward’s choke on them.”

  “And die they will, Denise. I promise you that. They will die by the tens of thousands. There has to be a better way.”

  “What way?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Then you shouldn’t criticise.”

  “I don’t know yet, Denise. But I will. They need a figurehead. They need the Crowman. If he could lead them into battle, I think they’ll have a chance. But most of them don’t even think he’s real. Some people even believe he was invented by the Ward as an ideological enemy; that if they could get everyone to believe the Crowman will bring the end of the world, they’d be as good as allies to the Ward. I’ve got to find him. I’ve got to prove he’s real and powerful, that he’s not just an idea.” He looked at Denise and managed to smile for the first time that morning. Everything had been so different in the darkness, so magical and correct. Physically, their union had been perfect but out here in daylight, the two of them just didn’t fit together. “Sorry if I’ve been a bit distant,” he said. “It’s really worrying me.”

  “It’s OK,” she said. “It really is. You’ll find him before this war begins. I know you will.”

  “Thanks.”

  He leaned down to grab his pack. In his haste to be away he knocked it over. From the top spilled out his carefully wrapped sheaf of feathers. He scrambled to replace them but Denise was too quick.

  “What are these?”

  “Nothing. Just some old crow feathers.”

  “Like the ones in your hair.”

  “Yes. Like those.”

  “Why have you got so many of them?”

  “Listen, Denise, give them back. I really need to go and check the traps so we can eat.”

  Her voice hardened off.

  “No. You’re not going yet. Tell me about this.”

  Now, finally, he could hold her gaze. No one challenged him like this. Who did she think she was? What right did she have to know so much about him? Without any warning his bubble of defiance burst and all his indignation went with it. He felt weak. Of course, this woman whose child he’d allowed to die, the woman he now led across the dying land, of course she had a right to know about the man she was travelling with.

  He slumped back down to the ground.

  “Open it up,” he said.

  “No. It’s OK, Gordon. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t pry.”

  “Open it.”

  Denise unrolled the cloth wrapping and the breeze agitated its contents.

  “Don’t let them blow away.”

  She laid a stick over them.

  “How many are there?”

  “I don’t know. Hundreds.”

  “Why do you keep them?”

  “I’ve been collecting them most of my life. When I see a black feather, I always pick it up. It’s like a sign that I’m on the right track. It makes me feel… God, I don’t know… supported somehow. Does that just sound totally crazy?”

  Denise stared at the feathers in silence for long moments. She touched them with her fingertips as though they were sacred objects. When she didn’t speak, he began to regret giving in to her demands. Then he saw Denise was crying.

  “What’s wrong?”

  She looked up, liquid crystal spilling over her cheeks.

  “Flora had these.” She tried to wipe her tears away but they kept coming. “Not as many as you, but she had plenty. I never understood where they came from because she never went outside. She said the Crowman left them for her and I didn’t argue. It didn’t seem fair to take away what little joy she had. But I always thought she’d discovered an old nest up in the attic and pretended the feathers were gifts.”

  “What do you think now?”

  “I think he gave them to her.” She overrode her tears and wiped her face again. “I’ll tell you what else I think, Gordon Black. It was no mistake that you came to us. I think you’re destined to find him. I think that’s what you’re here to do.”

  Gordon found his own cheeks wet with tears.

  “You have no idea how good it feels to hear that. I used to think finding these was a curse, you know. Because never in my life have I found a single white feather. But the longer all this has gone on, the more I came to realise that I was walking the right path.” He laughed without much humour. “A black-feathered path.”

  “It’s no curse. It’s a blessing. It gives your life meaning and purpose. I don’t know anyone else who has that. You should be thankful.”

  Gordon sighed, shamed by her words.

  “Yes. I think you’re right.”

  Silence gathered between them. Gordon didn’t know how to prevent it; hadn’t he already shared more with Denise than was safe or wise? The sudden sense of exposure, knowing something below his surface had been revealed, caused a ripple of vulnerability and dread through his solar plexus. He squatted by the feathers, laid the stick aside and gathered them back into their bundle. Denise’s voice breaking the wall of hush between them did little to resolve his misgivings.

  “I’ll look after them,” she said, placing her hand over his.

  Gordon froze, unable to look at her.

  “Don’t you trust me?”

  No.

  But Denise had trusted him first, hadn’t she? With her attic hideout and her daughter’s life? Even with her own. If he couldn’t show a little faith now, in another human being in the harshest times, perhaps he had no faith left.

  “Of course I do,” he heard himself say.

  Denise smiled and he was able to look at her then, to let her see his eyes.

  “Good,” she said, taking the wrapped feathers and giving him a soft, lingering kiss.

  When he stood up, she stayed where she was, wrapped her arms around herself and shivered.

  “Cold?”

  “I’m fine,” she said.

  “I could get the fire going again.”

  “I’m OK. Really,
Gordon. Anyway, I wouldn’t want anyone to see the smoke when I’m here on my own.”

  She was right, of course.

  He shrugged off his coat and gave it to her before pulling on his pack. She hugged the material but didn’t put it on.

  “Thanks. Now, go on,” she said, grinning. “Off you go. And don’t come back without a sackful of meat. I’m already starving.”

  Gordon spent the day out of camp.

  Checking the traps and snares only took minutes. He spent the rest of the time wandering the landscape and staying clear of Denise. Here and there the land had been torn open by tremors and quakes but there were no rifts as great as the one he’d first seen on leaving the sandstone cave. The earthquakes that had torn England open had quietened over the last few months.

  At the crest of a small hill a couple of miles from their camp he surveyed the terrain around them, planning the first part of their continued route north. They were far enough from major roads to remain unnoticed but it was always a good idea to stay away from the smaller towns and villages. People still trying to survive in those places had fallen very far from civilisation and Gordon didn’t want any extra conflict. What was coming would be bad enough.

  He’d told the truth to Denise. If they’d had a head start over the Ward, it would have been eroded by now. They needed to move soon. The Ward would know he was travelling across country too – they knew his modus operandi well enough by now. With this alleged war coming, avoiding the Green Men would be impossible too; not without being hunted down as a coward. The simplest thing would be to go to one of the Green Men’s strongholds and act like he was part of the uprising until he could get back to London.

  From the top of the hill he could see a few miles in every direction. The grey swatches of dust where nothing grew and no animal had any reason to forage were like streaks of leprous tissue, spreading across the body of the world. He could see the long black rends left by earthquakes. They passed through land both living and dead, resembling claw marks, as though some vast bird had swooped and dragged its talons across the earth, trying to tear pieces of it away. The wires carried by pylons no longer crackled and hummed with power. In the villages and hamlets visible from his vantage, houses and cars still burned; whether from a Ward attack or because of looters, he couldn’t tell. It seemed as though destruction begat destruction, no matter what the cause. People – the kind of people he wanted to avoid – burned things because they could now, just to see another piece of the world laid waste. When there was no law, when nothing beyond survival seemed to matter any more, there was a savage logic in violence and ruination. He half understood their feelings:

  If this is the end, then bring it on…

  But what if, as Gordon still believed, it wasn’t the end? Wasn’t it worth trying to keep the world alive, to maintain the simple trust that one person would neither harm another nor take from them just because there was no one to punish their actions. Surely, such trust was a natural law, part of the order of the universe.

  He couldn’t even be sure of that. Perhaps a handful of the folk he’d met on the road had remembered that trust in spite of everything, put kindness and care before hunger and rage. Most had not. It was as though the entire population had been waiting for a time when lawlessness would give them freedom from morality. If such a motive existed in just one person, it existed in all of them. It existed in him. But if that was true, and he was sure it was, then the capacity for honour and trust existed in equal measure. Humans were demons and angels, and everything in between. They were free to decide how they behaved. The trouble was that Gordon had learned one indisputable thing in all his searching, trusting people was the riskiest thing anyone could do. Sometimes he wondered if he even trusted himself.

  He returned with more meat than the previous evening. Three rabbits and a similar number of crayfish. Denise sat with her back against a tree, facing the river. His coat was in her lap.

  He allowed his footsteps to announce his approach and she looked up.

  “I was beginning to think you’d left me here to fend for myself.”

  It was so close to the truth he didn’t know how to respond at first. In the end he shrugged as though time was the last thing on his mind.

  “I found a high place to look out from and thought about where we’ll go next. I also did a full circuit of this area, just to be sure there’s no one else out here.” He held up his catch. “And there was nothing in the snares for most of the day. These guys all got caught within the last hour or so.”

  Denise looked at Gordon with his bounty of food and any tension that had been in her face disappeared.

  “You’re the ultimate hunter-gatherer, aren’t you?”

  “You said you were starving.”

  “I’m even starvinger now.”

  Something in her smile tugged at him. His groin warmed and swelled. He tried to ignore the sensations and moved between the trees to gut and skin the rabbits. When he’d buried their offal, he returned to wash his hands in the river.

  “I’ve been working hard too,” said Denise. “I found your needle and thread.”

  When he turned she was standing up, holding out his coat. It was unrecognisable.

  “What do you think?”

  The coat was almost invisible beneath a layer of black feathers. She’d sewn them in from the end of the coattails and from the ends of the sleeves so that they lay over each other as they would on the body and wings of a bird. She’d put a lot of thought into which size of feather went where and at the lapels, cuffs and tails, feathers hung and fluttered from frayed strips of black cloth. A breeze moved the coat in her hands and it shimmered blue-black in the evening light.

  “I cut up my best top for the ribbons but it’ll turn some heads next time we’re on a major road,” she said, grinning. “This’ll be the new fashion. I was thinking about what you said. Something like this could be a uniform for the Green Men; something to bring them together.”

  He stood and shook his head.

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Don’t say anything yet. Come and try it on.”

  “I’m not sure I can.”

  “Please, Gordon. I’ve worked on it all day. I’m glad you’ve only just come back or I wouldn’t have had time to finish. Just put it on and see how it feels.”

  Gordon was paralysed.

  “Look, if you hate it, I’ll unpick it all and you can keep the feathers wrapped in their old bit of rag. I haven’t damaged them, I promise you.”

  He didn’t move, couldn’t even swallow.

  “Oh, come on, Gordon. You’ve done so much for me. All I wanted was to give something back to you.”

  …give something back…

  The phrase went right to his heart. That was all anyone had to do to make the world better. He couldn’t refuse such a sentiment.

  He stepped forward knowing he would never forget Denise’s smile of gratitude and relief. He put both arms out behind him and she place the armholes over his hands. In one movement, he shrugged into the coat. The sensation that the coat had leapt onto him would have been disturbing if it didn’t feel so good to wear it. It was a new skin and it felt right.

  “Turn around then.”

  Slowly, arms out to either side, feathers dancing at his wrists, he faced her.

  “Wow. That’s looks even better than I thought it would. It suits you so well. How does it feel?”

  “It feels amazing.”

  “You know what, Gordon?”

  “What?”

  “It looks like a bit like armour. Maybe it’ll protect you.” She put her face up to his and kissed his lips. “But not from me.”

  She stroked her hand down his arm, enjoying the silky bounce of the feathers. Then she looked away.

  “What is it?” asked Gordon.

  “I put Flora’s feathers in with yours. I wish she was here to see it. She’d have loved you like this.” She turned to face him again, her eyes shining with tear
s. “She loved you anyway. As soon as you left the attic that first time she told me how special you were. It was like she knew all along that you were going to come into our lives. Like she’d been passing the time until you got there.”

  Without much confidence, Gordon put his arms out and around Denise. The fierceness of her returned embrace set him off balance and he stumbled backwards a step. She didn’t let go. He knew this hug. He’d seen it many times in his childhood. The hug of a daughter seeking solace in the strength of her father; Jude hugging Dad.

  Gordon held Denise as tightly and fully as he could and they stood rooted that way beside the river as darkness took the shine away from his feathers. She was the one to pull away and he sensed a sudden hardness in the movement, a severance. Whether she’d had what she needed now or had simply found no answer in his arms, he couldn’t tell. When she looked at him, her eyes seemed once more as guarded as when he’d first met her.

  “I need some poor man’s surf and turf,” she said.

  It could have been the failing light, but to Gordon, Denise’s smile looked grim.

  As night fell, Gordon grilled everything he’d caught. Leftover rabbit meat would last a day or two longer and keep their strength up as they walked. Sitting beside each other, they spoke very little as they ate. Denise went into the shelter as soon as she’d finished her food. He listened to her rustling as she moved around, preparing the bed and covers.

  There was no reason for him to remain outside. Even though he wasn’t tired, he followed her into the shelter and covered the entrance with their bags. Denise’s hand was on his shoulder as soon as he scooted onto the bed; she pulled him down towards her and kissed him hard. He reached out in the dark to find her already naked and she stripped him with frantic, insistent tugs. Once again the night brought forth their animal spirits; a dark fire in the blood. They mounted each other again and again, sometimes sleeping in between, sometimes only resting. Gordon thought about the burning houses and cars he’d seen from the top of the hill. Maybe their frank, uninhibited unions were nothing more than acts of destruction inspired by the brevity of their future. Though each coupling was ecstatic, for Gordon the loneliness that followed was crushing. It was easy to believe that the world was out of hope and out of time.