Birds of Paradise by Oliver Langmead (top ebook reader TXT) 📕

main hall, Owl is waiting. He is perched on the bannister at the top of the stairs in his native shape – all bird – beneath an open crack in the roof, through which sunlight pours. The feathers of pigeons drift around him, and he flicks his golden wings, and for a moment, just for a moment, he is the lord of his house again.

* * *

The closer she drives to the coast, the smaller Crow seems.

She’s foregone her summer dress and put on some shapeless practical clothes, and she hides behind her sunglasses. Passing cars reflect across the black lenses, and she is silent, even as Owl makes soft noises and tears up the back seats with his claws.

In his native shape, Owl is still regal. He paces from claw to claw restlessly, and his head revolves, peering with enormous yellow eyes at the trees and the overcast sky. Adam finds it difficult to resolve the bird with the man or the monster. They seem like discrete things – like individual elements of a trinity with nothing but a name to join them.

Eventually, the Gulf of Mexico comes into view.

Adam has always preferred the West Coast to the South Coast. Here, there are no impressive cliffs or beaches. The land simply seems to come to a gentle end. Crow shivers in her seat at the sight, driving with her hands gripping the wheel too tight, and directing it down a disused slip road into an abandoned fishing town. They pass ancient, crumbling brick buildings being reclaimed by the sea. The skeletons of fishing boats lay out like beached whales. “It’s funny,” says Crow, quietly. “How quickly things fall apart.”

Parking up beside a broken pier, they exit the car. Adam opens the back door and Owl flutters out, coming to rest on his shoulder. The feathers of his wings are soft across Adam’s skull, but his claws are sharp and dig into Adam’s skin. Together, they make their way to the edge of the pier and admire the cold, grey Gulf.

Crow folds her arms and tries to hide in her hoodie.

“You okay?”

“Yeah,” she says. “I just… I really don’t like flying. I mean, I don’t like planes. They put me on edge. I don’t get how you do it. I don’t get how you can just sit there cramped up in a big tin can, all strapped up in neat little rows, blind to the sky, flying too fast. I keep thinking: it’s going to fall; it’s too heavy; I’m trapped and when it goes down we’re all going to sink into the sea and I’m going to drown because I can’t get free.”

“You’ll be fine. Nothing’s going to happen.”

“You’ve got to make sure I don’t do anything stupid on the plane, okay?”

“Sure. But what about me? I’m still a fugitive.”

“Oh,” she says, smiling bitterly. “Don’t worry. They’re usually too busy bullying brown people to look for anybody who’s actually dangerous these days.”

With a soft thump, Owl lands at the edge of the pier. His feathered head turns to and fro as if he might take in the whole sea. Then, with one great heave of his brilliant shimmering wings, he takes flight. Adam watches him until he becomes a copper glinting, and then no more than a black dot, soaring away over the Gulf in the direction of the Atlantic.

“He’s going to meet us in Edinburgh,” Crow says.

“Why don’t you fly with him?”

“Well. I’ve done it a couple of times, but I’m not really built for that kind of flight. I get too exhausted, and then I’m useless for weeks afterwards. Besides, someone’s gotta look after you.” She removes her sunglasses, and the face behind them is timid, as if she left her confidence behind at Owl’s house. “You’re not yourself, Adam.”

Crow places a hand on Adam’s arm, and the touch seems tender, meaningful in a way that feels strange. Adam remembers a time when it was his job to watch over the animals of Eden. It was his honour. But here, in this strange, cold, bitter world, everything is backwards.

* * *

The departures lounge at New Orleans International is bustling.

Adam is fond of airports. Over the last few years, he’s spent a lot of time ferrying celebrities to and from LAX, and waiting in various terminals for them to arrive. Today, he sits at the heart of the departures lounge, among the rows of benches, and listens to everyone speaking, letting their voices flow into him unfiltered. Adam likes all the languages he hears mingled together at airports, some of which he understands, but most of which he does not. If languages were a tree, he thinks, then small fruits would be rolling from their mouths, and the roots of the language tree would be the language he spoke in Eden. Adam doesn’t remember any of the words he spoke in Eden. He’s not even sure his name was Adam, back then. He does remember how easy it was to speak, though, as if every word came not from his head, but from some other organ deep inside him, as essential as his liver or lungs. And when he named something, which was his great honour, the name gave that thing more meaning than a simple utterance: it gave that thing an identity. He supposes that Edenic might not much resemble any of the languages he can hear here at all; that the languages being spoken all around him are likely to be as far removed from the first language as their speakers are from their distant progenitor.

Crow is somewhere else in the airport, awaiting the boarding announcement. They are to be aboard the same plane, but they’ve had their tickets booked separately, to smooth Adam’s escape. Soon their plane will be called, and Adam knows he will have to face security. So far, however, he has attracted no attention at all.

At last, the announcement comes.

There is a queue for security, and Adam is made to remove his