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

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Crab steers his little motorboat east, through the flooded ruins of Yorkshire. In the distance is dry ground where higher land emerges, and there are islands everywhere, and from time to time he navigates around sections of railway or motorway protruding from the water. There are a lot of people on the high ground – camps in the hills, and parties huddled in tents, and queues of cars going nowhere. The people often wave, and call out to Crab’s boat for aid.

Butterfly rummages around in the boat’s lockbox, and retrieves an ancient binder of maps. The maps are yellow and brown, and the lines across them, meant to denote rivers and hills and roads, look, to Adam, more like folds of skin. Extracting maps from the binder, one by one, Butterfly makes them into paper boats. Each time she completes one she sets it in the water, giving it a little push towards the shore, leaving a steady trail of paper boats in their wake.

“What are you doing?” asks Crow, after a while.

“Sending them help.”

“They can help themselves well enough,” rumbles Crab, and indeed, helicopters hum overhead, and all manner of boats weave back and forth. Adam even spots a swan-shaped pedal boat going south, with a Union Jack dangling from its neck. None of this seems to deter Butterfly, however; she folds a whole armada of paper boats for the refugees, and when she runs out of maps, she uses whatever other bits of paper she can find: receipts, and bookmarks, and banknotes, retrieved from pockets and wallets.

Sometimes there are bodies in the water. They bob lifelessly, bloated and staring at the great blue sky with wide white eyes, and Adam finds himself watching them and searching for some kind of connection. Yet every time he thinks he comes close to sympathy – at the sight of a lone child, or a family trapped in a car beneath the waterline – the thorns growing through his thoughts tighten, and he remains as indifferent as the floods that killed them.

When Crab’s motor runs low on fuel, he steers to a sunken petrol station and dives down with an empty red canister. Beneath the water he is nimble – a dark shape moving as easily as a quick darting fish – and Adam observes him grabbing chocolate bars and cans of drinks from the petrol station shop. Crab slides a ruined credit card through the broken till’s slot, and laughs so hard that streams of bubbles rise from his nostrils. He returns with a rocky grin and a full canister, and Adam is given to believe that Crab would be perfectly happy were the country to remain submerged.

At night, the sky is so clear that the stars are dazzling. Butterfly watches them with wide eyes, wrapped up in Crab’s mackintosh and huddled against Crow for warmth. When a shooting star streaks overhead, she mumbles beneath her breath. “I know it’s probably a piece of a satellite burning up in the atmosphere,” she says, afterwards, “but I made a wish anyway.”

Crow has been checking her phone hourly, with the glow of it gleaming in her tired eyes. “We’ve got to get reception eventually, surely?” But as the boat churns steadily across a broad lake of flooding, glinting with stars, she flings it into the water. “Out of battery.” Removing her prosthetic leg, she rubs at her stump. “I’m going to fly south and find Rook. Somebody needs to tell him what’s happening.”

“I’ll come with you,” says Butterfly, stretching her arms. “I’ll just get in the way here.”

“You can barely fly.”

“I can fly fine. The sky is clear, and you’ll be with me.”

Crow removes her dress and folds it neatly. “Fine. Will you be okay, Adam?”

“I’ll be okay.”

“I’ll look after him,” rumbles Crab, with a wink.

“I’ll fly fast, and we’ll bring help.” There is a shift, and Crow’s limbs become wings. She grips hold of the boat’s fore with her single claw, and croaks hoarsely.

Butterfly unfastens Crab’s coat and shivers in the chill night air. “You need to look after Pig when you find him,” she says. “He’s lost without me.” There is a whirl of colour, and her wings shimmer in the moonlight – all the shifting shades of summer captured in them. Butterfly lands on Adam’s outstretched hand. Her tiny legs tickle at his skin, and her long tongue unspools, tasting the salt flecked across him, and her bright red antennae twitch. She takes flight, drifting upwards and into the open sky. There is the rustling of feathers as Crow joins her, and then they fly away south: a great dark bird with a vividly coloured insect fluttering beneath her wing, vanishing into the night.

By the time the sun begins to rise, Crab has finally steered into the sea, where he brings his boat to speed. The nose of the little tub skims the waves, and white flecks of water splash across Adam, and Crab holds onto his yellow hat with one hand to stop it from flying away with the wind, grinning a grin so wide it almost splits his head in two. Before long, England becomes Scotland. The rocky edges of the cliffs rush by, and so do various river mouths, until Crab finds the right one, whereupon he slows the boat and navigates upstream, fighting against the churning brown current inland. “Nearly there,” he says. “How you doing, lad? Maybe you should try and get a few winks of sleep before we arrive.”

“I don’t think I could sleep if I wanted to.”

“That’s fair enough.”

Crab steers his boat deeper inland, and gently around the ruins of a cottage, where the waters are thick with yellow leaves. The branches of drowned trees scratch at the tub’s hull. Ahead, the hills form a yellow crown around a broad glen, encrusted with forests.

“Not long now,” he rumbles. “What’s your plan?”

Unfastening the boat’s stowage box, Adam hauls his gun belts onto his lap. “We’re going to find Pig,” he says,