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

shapes smash through the trees. Horses stamping hard, their riders wearing red coats and black caps, carrying hunting rifles. The one with the horn sounds it again and again, signalling the charge, and the terrified hunting dogs surge and snarl, more frightened by the thundering of the hooves at their backs than by any quarry at the funeral.

At the head of the hunting party, his terrier teeth bared in a snarl, wisps of white hair sticking out from his red scalp, is Frank Sinclair, and hanging from the end of his rifle is a tail the colours of sunset, tipped with white. Fox’s brush swishes with the movement of Frank’s horse, and he yells at the top of his lungs.

“You murdered my wife!”

Knuckles white, he brings his rifle to bear. The shot skims Adam’s neck, and he is sent tumbling, knocked aside by a horse. More dogs rush to snap at him, and he bashes them away, trying to roll himself upright.

Petals and leaves mask the sky, but there is a shape up there, the silhouette of something huge with wings. Above the horn, and the stampeding horses, and gunshots, and screaming, there is an avian screech. With a wet crunch, Owl scythes through a horse, carrying it and its rider bodily for several yards before dropping them dead. When he lands, he sends petals and leaves scattering, clearing space with his colossal copper and bronze wings.

The charge breaks; horses and riders lose their momentum, made uncertain by the monster among them. Owl takes flight, screeching, and dogs scatter before him. Shots ring out as red-coat hunters turn, and there are red bursts from between his feathers.

Throwing dogs aside, Adam hauls himself to his knees.

Before the riders can regroup, an enormous shape smashes through the pews towards them. Covered in bristling coarse black hair, Pig squeals – a primal, animal warning. The dogs find a new fear and scatter before him, falling over each other in their efforts to flee. The horses roll their eyes, desperate to avoid him, but they are not quick enough. Pig gores into the flank of the first and it shrieks, throwing its red-coat rider. He crashes through, trampling both, unstoppable with momentum. More fall, bloody and ragged, sliced apart upon his mighty tusks.

The last of the dogs rush away from Adam, and he stands. Nearby, a fallen rider squirms beneath his horse, and Adam takes the rifle from him.

Adam takes aim. The rifle bucks. A rider falls from his horse.

Pull the bolt back. Load the next round.

Among the petals and leaves, a black bird is visible, flapping in the faces of the horses and making them buck precariously.

Adam takes aim. The rifle bucks. A dog dies.

Pull the bolt back. Load the next round.

Overhead, avoiding the fight, caught in a beam of sunlight, a butterfly flutters, its wings the colours of summer.

Adam takes aim. The rifle bucks. A rider dies.

Pull the bolt back. Load the next round.

There, at the edge of the forest, his teeth open in a snarl of futile defiance, Frank Sinclair turns about. He knows he is being routed. Yet he still raises his rifle up, towards the enormous silhouette of Owl. The rifle cracks, and Owl falls.

Adam takes aim. The rifle bucks. Frank Sinclair’s horse rears and the shot goes wide.

Pull the bolt back. Load the next round.

Frank’s horse bolts, taking him back into the trees along with the survivors of the hunting party. Injured dogs mill in their wake. Adam takes aim. The rifle bucks. But he isn’t quick enough. The shot hits a tree, and Frank Sinclair is gone. The rest of his hunting party is gone. There are only a few dogs still moving, and Pig charging at them, ripping them apart with his gleaming, bloody tusks.

Adam lowers the rifle.

There, among the dying mourners and dying riders and dying horses, is Owl in the shape of a man. Rook is beside him, naked, trying to stop the flow of blood. Striding across, Adam helps. It looks as if Owl has been shot several times, mostly through his arms, but there is one shot through his gut: Frank Sinclair’s bullet, punching a horrible hole through his flesh. Owl’s eyes roll; he is delirious. Adam and Rook staunch the bleeding as best they can, together.

When there is nothing else for Adam to do, he stands and takes his rifle.

Mourners are helping other mourners, weeping and frightened. Among them lies Pig, still in his native shape, exhausted and covered from tusk to tail in blood, his chest rising and falling. Yet he seems uninjured. None of that blood is his own. As Adam examines him, Butterfly lands on Pig’s nose, her bright wings fluttering as if she is a collection of petals come to life. Pig grunts gently, his wet nose snuffling, his dark eye fixed upon her.

There is a horse with two broken legs, whinnying, panicking and still trying to move. Adam loads his rifle and shoots it dead. Nearby is another horse, its guts spilled from its open belly, gored and dying, whimpering in pain. Adam loads his rifle, and puts it out of its misery. And further along, trapped beneath the weight of a dead horse, a red-coat rider lays weeping. “Please,” he begs. “Adam, please. I implore you. I can tell you anything. I can pay you. Please.” Adam pulls the bolt back on the rifle, but the magazine is empty. So he staves the man’s head in with the butt of it.

“You need to leave.” Rook is taking charge at last, shouting at Adam. “You need to leave before the ambulances arrive. You can’t be here. The authorities can’t see you.”

“What about Owl?”

Rook clenches and unclenches his bloody hands. “I think he’ll live.”

Throwing his rifle aside, Adam makes his way over to the edge of the forest – the place he saw Frank Sinclair go. There are deep hoofprints everywhere, but he has hunted men through worse. Adam plunges into the dripping yellow forest, chasing after