A blanket of heat shrouds thorn bush and scrub, sucking moisture from soil.
The haze thickens, but before a drop of rain falls, a breeze blows it to sea.
Parched earth cracks and hardens. Woodland and forest wither. Rivers shrivel and die, even as mansions spring up to touch the sky. The sun scorches until a moment comes when tinder sparks.
Flames crackle, torching trees while embers whipped by wind spill over canyons, bounding from hill to hill on to the roofs of houses. Buildings ablaze, those covered in skin, feather or fur burn.
Turkey vultures, hyenas of the heavens, hover, their hisses smothered by the rumble of thunderclouds. The sea swells, the earth sizzles on fire.
In a faraway forest a leopard dances to the moon. While on the moor, as soon as the plume of a bird tumbles into a girl’s hand, an invisible wing flexes.
*
‘No one said life would be easy, did they?’ This is what Nana Merrimore has taken to saying.
She said it when I told her about Zula’s grandma, how devastated Zula is by her death, how unhappy I am at losing a teacher.
‘Nana, Zula almost died in that explosion!’
I got the usual response.
Only last night when we’d talked about the carnage at Adoma’s forest haven and I described how the sacred river running through it is now bloated with floating fish, Nana faithfully repeated those words. ‘No one said life would be easy, did they?’
It’s her method of conveying that not only is she as hard as Cornish rock cake, she’s mighty tough as well. Merrimore tough: a proud descendant of the first woman in our parish to be drowned in the lake, a woman whose gift of a purple stone, I now wear around my neck.
And so what if I’ve seen Old Hester’s ghost and have made her token my talisman? Is Nana Merrimore spooked? Of course not! She’s already put it behind her. She’s as wiry and resilient as an old bristle hairbrush is Nana. Or so she pretends to be. And me? I’m old enough to play along with her, see. To look the other way when she touches my charm and says: ‘Old Hester’s telling me it’s time I went home, Linet. Time for the blossom to give way to the fruit and return to the womb I came from.’
I look somewhere else as she pulls out her Tarot cards, and after the Hanged Man crops up again and again, she turns to the I Ching.
I pretend not to notice when she can’t catch her breath, and wonders if breathlessness is a sign of a dreadful something growing inside her. I’ve learned to pander to her pride by averting my eyes. Nana knows this. Even so, now my mother’s tears no longer frighten me, she hasn’t been able to be honest with me.
While I wait for Nana to unburden herself, I’ve taken to truth telling by the lake, Bracken curled on my lap. In drizzle-mist and wolf-light, I fondle the stone and ask the lake and those she shelters for help in teasing out my thoughts. Thoughts I’m wary of because of what’s inside me. I feel it, hear it: a beak snipping at the cage of thorns around my heart, a bird eager to fly. It wriggles, tickling as it pecks a way out. There’s the bird; then there’s Lance.
This morning my cheeks flush as Old Hester reaches me in a voice soggy with peat and water: ‘First you must learn to trust what’s inside you,’ she says. ‘Learn how to talk to it and own it. Then sheath the mischief at the tip of your tongue and talk to your Lancelot. You can’t stay scrumped up like a hedgehog for ever.’ She laughs and a gurgling of bubbles surges from the depth of the lake. ‘Give your gift a try, petal. You’ve nothing to lose!’
Later that afternoon I make my way across the heath. High on the moor are Cairns, stone burial grounds from long ago. A zephyr wind blows from them, reminding me as I walk below of the mumbling of ghosts and the rustling of trees that once stood there. Warm flurries spin about me whipping my hair with the remnants of leaves and twigs.
Between one step and the next, there’s a chill in the air. The wind bites in a cold snap. I shiver. Feathers. I need a cloak of feathers to shield me from gusts meaner than winter on the moor. The thought seizes me and straight away I feel them: feathers down the length of my back, feathers around and about me until I’m swaddled warm.
I make my way, the squelch of peat underfoot, to a woodland grove in the dip of the valley by Crow’s Nest. There, from bushes sheltered by trees, I pick blackberries, eating some before storing what’s left in a blue bowl in my basket, a bowl pale as a bird’s egg. Tongue stained purple, I follow the route I took days before.
‘How be my sister-friend?’ Adoma murmurs, tickling my mind.
‘I’m fine,’ I tell her. ‘Just fine, see.’
‘Are you on your way to see him?’
I nod, smiling.
‘Aba! Your lips and tongue are stained black, my sister. Go home and wash! Brush your teeth. Is that a cloak of feathers you’re wearing?’
‘Can you see it?’
‘Of course, I see it.’
‘I wonder if Lance can…’
Adoma laughs: ‘If he spies those feathers on your back, he’ll run away faster than a flea from a slap!’
‘That isn’t funny, Adoma!’
Adoma chuckles, then disappears.
A swoop of swallows trawling in the wind’s caul streams overhead. They hail me at the start of their crossing to Africa, or so it seems, for my heart quickens as I hear cries of: ‘Linet-girl! Linet-girl! Help us travel faster!’
My right hand in the air, I assist them with the beginnings of a gale that rushes from my fingers. My hand wafts in the direction they’re heading and they’re away!
‘Between blood and bone, breath and feather,’ I call to them, ‘travel well, my friends, to your journeys’ end.’
When I arrive at Crow’s Nest all is still. There’s not a whisper of a breeze to disperse the scent of mulch and peat. I open the gate. It snarls, startling starlings on a pylon nearby. They take flight in a dance that unravels like a never-ending scarf. They swoop and retreat in welcoming chatter. Loop to peer at me, then swing their wings in a whirl that curls up into the sky until tumbling down they perch on the roof.
I knock. No one answers. I’m about to place Nana’s bowl on the step, when the door opens and there she is: Mrs Gribble, my old babysitter. Eyes black as a raven’s, her brow furrows, puzzled.
‘How you’ve grown, Linet! Come in! Come in!’
I remember to smile just in time. ‘This is for you, Mrs Gribble. I was passing…’ I hand her Nana’s bowl full of blackberries.
‘Well, thank you! How are you and your nana, these days? Won’t you come in?’
‘Maybe next time. Say “hi” to Lance for me. And Arthur…’ I add.
‘I will,’ she replies.
I turn tail and run, my cloak of feathers lifting me off the ground.
*
Next day there’s a knock at Carbilly and I know it’s him. I heard his footfall as he walked to the door, his cough before a scent of blackberries seeped in.
‘I’ll get it, Nana!’
I race to the door. Pull it open.
Lance is taller than me, and blushes as soon as he sees me. My cheeks flush in reply. In his hands is Nana’s bowl filled with eggs. Chicken eggs.
I should call Nana.
I want to bolt. I bite my lip instead and stand tall; so tall I’m able to thank him before I place the bowl on the kitchen table.
As I turn, he says: ‘I thought you were a ghost when I saw you in our yard. A ghost lost in mist.’ His smile licks my skin once again, warming me inside and out. Wings outstretched, the bird in my chest flutters, singing.
‘Do you have a bike?’
I nod.
‘Fancy a ride up a tor and down again? I’ll race you.’
I grab my bike from behind the shed, and we’re off.