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

at her skin, and with each gush of wind it seemed as if the guttering fires should consume her, but they did not. At the hill’s summit she stooped, and there she grabbed the untouched end of a burning branch, turning and raising it over her head.

When Eve descended the hill, the eyes of all of Eden’s creatures followed her. At the base of the hill, she took Adam’s hand and smiled up at him, a smile that assured him that whatever happened she would always be there, and they would face it together. Eden’s creatures gathered before them, and so too did their children, and by the light of the burning trees, and the burning branch in Eve’s hand, they weathered the long night and the storm. By morning, the trees were ashes.

* * *

Adam buries Pig. It is a bright day, and a cold winter sun pierces the panes of the grand greenhouse, warming nothing. He digs a deep ditch at the foot of the cherry tree, so close to its base that he has to spend a while gently untangling its roots from the earth. When Pig lies among those roots, Adam makes certain that he is settled into a comfortable position before covering him. That night, Adam slumbers atop the grave with his back against the tree, and in the morning he wakes to find that someone has placed a patchwork blanket over his shoulders.

It takes weeks for the floods to subside. Frost grips the ground instead, freezing what remains of the waters. Adam often wanders through the ruins of the valley during the day, crunching through the wreckage of the estate. He sits on rocky outcroppings between the frozen bodies of dead sheep, watching the soft glow of the clouds. Sometimes, he sifts through the rotting fruit fallen from the trees of the ruined orchards in search of viable seeds, and when he finds them he digs holes in the hard earth and plants them. Most won’t take, he knows, but there is a chance that a few will.

Butterfly is the first to take residence in the greenhouse. Adam watches her for hours – the way she flutters among Eden’s flowers. Sometimes he kneels down beside the artificial stream, cupping his hands and offering her a still surface to drink from. Her tongue is long, and scarlet, and her feet tickle his scarred skin, and when she is satisfied she stays a while, gently opening and closing her brilliant wings before flitting away.

Crow, too, begins to roost in the greenhouse. Adam hears her long before he sees her, her voice echoing over the rolling hills. One day he notices her circling high above, close enough to the panes of the ceiling that the tips of her wings brush against the glass, and he follows her back to her nest – a half-finished thatch-work high among the branches of Eden’s silver birch. From then on, whenever he notices a fallen twig he takes it to her, leaving it like an offering at the base of her birch. From time to time she peers out over the edge of her nest and croaks at him, beady black eye agleam.

Owl takes up residence near the doorways between the inside and the outside. Adam spies him preening himself among the branches of the cherry tree, overlooking the airlock that leads into the house. There aren’t many good perches beside the torn section of metal frame, so he soars around it, wings shimmering copper and brass as he patrols. Mostly, however, Adam notices him standing sentinel beside the greenhouse’s loading doors – an enormous, glass-panelled airlock hidden at the very rear of the vault, large enough that trees might be hauled through them. Those doors have been broken open from the inside, and cold winter winds gust through them, so that Owl puffs up his chest as he perches over them. His wide eyes spy every twitch of movement – every errant leaf that dares to cross the boundary from outside.

Crab, meanwhile, remains in the house. Having cleared the greenhouse of corpses, he seems to be demolishing all that remains of the estate. There is a clattering and hammering, and the splintering sound of sawing, and the whine of machine drilling at all hours, accompanied by noisy whistling and singing. The house shudders, and rocks, and seems to get smaller every day. Sometimes there is a crash, and an entire wing collapses, revealing ever-greater expanses of sky.

Rook remains in the shape of a man, and Adam often notices him rambling the high hills that surround the estate. Wrapped up in a long black coat, and with his hair swept back across his head, he seems to have regained some of his stature. He is wearing a new pair of spectacles – spares recovered from his briefcase, perhaps. One day, when the overcast clouds are so thin that they make for a remarkable display, Adam joins Rook on one of his walks, ascending the steepest of hills as if they might somehow draw closer to that dramatic sky.

“How’s business?” Adam asks.

“Oh, I’m taking a small break,” he says. “Corvid & Corvid basically runs itself these days, anyway. All I do is put out fires.”

Adam glances back at the greenhouse, resplendent at the heart of the valley. “Do you think you’ll join them?”

Rook’s smile is gentle. “It’s tempting, isn’t it?”

“I thought it could be a kind of safe place.”

“A sanctuary. Yes. I had the same thought.”

At the top of the hill they stop and rest a while. Soon, the distant rumbling of engines becomes apparent, followed not long after by the sight of white trucks on the road that leads up the house. An entire convoy.

“What do you think this is?” asks Rook, hands buried deep in the pockets of his coat.

“More trouble, maybe.”

“Perhaps.” Rook frowns. “I’m not sure what it could be, though. All of Frank Sinclair’s friends are dead, and I have Scotland Yard chasing their ghosts across the world.