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

and sound. In their place lay dark furrowed rows of earth, sprouting the green leaves of root vegetables. Adam’s garden had been ploughed over, made into a place for food to be grown. For a while he simply sat among the ruins of his garden. Then Adam left, in search of a new life elsewhere.

* * *

Magpie leaves a trail of pink petals as he drives down the M1. His window is rolled down, and the breeze coming through it shivers the sequins of his jacket. Adam turns to see the stolen cherry tree through the back window of the van’s cab. Its branches tremble in the wind, and its cherries gleam like jewels as they swing.

The motorway is mostly empty, and it only takes a few hours to reach Manchester. Magpie weaves a route through the busy streets, and the rainbow banners attached to the van stream in its wake. The bright colours attract the attention of pedestrians and drivers alike; they wave in delight, or honk in disgust, and everybody seems caught up in the politics of the rainbows instead of the spectacle of the tree being transported. It looks as if there was a Pride celebration in Manchester today, as well as London; there are pockets of people wearing rainbow face paints, who wave small rainbow flags enthusiastically at the van as it passes them by.

At the stadium, Magpie backs the van through a gate.

The hidden garden is vivid in the sunshine, and for Adam returning to it feels like coming home. He spends a while sat in the shade of the trees and listening to the late insects buzzing, enjoying the feel of the place and recuperating from his time away. Eventually, he makes his way over to the van to check the stolen cherry tree. It seems to have weathered its turbulent journey north well enough, even if it has lost the majority of its petals. Those petals will return, he knows. The tree will recover, and within weeks it will be in full bloom again. He loosens the straps holding it down, and rubs at the clods of earth gripping its roots to keep them compact a little longer.

Magpie joins him, admiring the tree. He has changed out of his sequinned jacket, and is wearing a long black coat. “I’m sorry that I’m not going to be around to help you plant it,” he says, reaching up to pluck a cherry from a low branch.

“You’re not?”

“I have a flight to catch in…” Magpie checks his watch as he munches. “…a few hours.”

“Where are you going?”

“Beijing.” Spitting the stone into his hand, Magpie throws it among the long grasses. “Frankly, I’m not a fan of Beijing. The markets are shameful. Kittens in hamster cages, and turtles in keyrings. I’m hoping to be back before the new year, if I can manage it.”

“Why Beijing?”

“One of Eden’s orchids has shown up, and I need to get hold of it before anybody realises that it doesn’t die.” Plucking a few more cherries from the tree, he pockets them. “My work never ends,” he says.

“How many more pieces are out there?”

“I’m not sure, Adam. Eden was a big place.”

Eden was a big place, Adam remembers. Bigger than this small stadium. Bigger than Manchester. “How often do pieces show up?”

“Regularly enough to keep me busy. There are plenty of rumours to follow up on. And sometimes I get lucky. You see this carnation?” Magpie crouches, and runs his fingers across its delicate scarlet petals. “I was in Paris for Fashion Week, idling away some time at a show, when a gentleman in a sumptuous sea-green suit strode onto the catwalk with it in his lapel.”

Adam glances around at all the gathered pieces of the garden. Each with their own small story. There must be hundreds, here. “What should I do?”

“Plant the tree. And then whatever you like, really.” Magpie shrugs. “Stay a while. Do some gardening. Relax. You’ve earned it.”

Adam peers up into the network of the tree’s branches. He knows that it will take him days to plant it alone, but he finds himself relishing the work. This is something that he knows how to do. Better yet is the prospect of remaining here and working. Right now, it resembles a patchwork collection of plants instead of a garden, with its flowers and trees and grasses arranged haphazardly. But he knows, given time, he can rearrange it into something cohesive; something even better than the sum of its parts. He can restore some of the lost majesty of Eden to this place. And then, when he’s ready, he’ll tell Rook about it: about his idea to offer it as a kind of sanctuary to Eden’s scattered animals. And then, last of all, and best of all, he’ll show the hidden garden to Eve. “Okay,” he says. “I can do that.”

Rubbing remnants of dirt from his hands, Adam gets to work.

It takes a while to haul the tree down from the bed of the truck. Its roots are clenched like a fist, and its branches scratch at his skin. The sun rises to its zenith, and then starts to sink, and by the time Adam has the tree propped up at the edge of the stadium garden, he realises that he is alone. Magpie is gone. The only remnant of him is his silver jacket, which he has left draped over the back of a plastic chair. In the last light of day, it shimmers like the surface of a river.

Adam retrieves it and, using a spar of wood, plants it like a flag at the edge of the garden.

* * *

Adam goes to a flower show.

The flower show is in the middle of Derbyshire, and is set up on the grounds of a regal estate. An enormous mansion overlooks the tents and show gardens, nestled among the green and yellow mixed evergreen and deciduous trees of the surrounding woodlands, and its windows are framed with gold. Adam’s not sure