Feathertide Page 25

  Doctor Marino came out first, solemn in face. ‘He needs to rest. I’m afraid we won’t know anything until morning.’

  In the room behind him, I could hear my father’s soothing voice, light as a flute.

  Doctor Marino noticed the bloody smears across the floor and realised that there was another emergency he needed to deal with; his eyes sought it out. He settled my father into a chair and lifted up his feet, wincing as though he could feel his pain. Leo paced behind us.

  ‘They’re infected,’ he announced. ‘Eddero, where are your shoes?’ Then he shook his head for asking such a foolish question.

  Doctor Marino opened a glass cabinet and began rifling through an assortment of bottles and tubes, grasping around in the half-dark clutter of the trays, until he found what he was looking for. He unscrewed the cap and began to dab it on the wounds, which bubbled and crusted like thick lava. My father screeched in a repetition of parched syllables, but I soothed his head and without any resistance, he quietened against my arm. Across his overlapping wings, I could see the heavy indentation left behind from the weight he had just carried.

  ‘In the absence of shoes, I think it’s best that I bandage your feet to offer some comfort; they are too swollen for anything else.’

  He reached in his drawer and began to unravel a long strip of gauze which he then wrapped round both of Eddero’s feet securing them with a metal pin. Tightly bound, he rose clumsily to his feet. He looked like he had got his legs stuck in two old Coburg loaves. He stared down with a look of bewilderment.

  ‘Do these feathers not seem strange to you?’ I felt suddenly compelled to ask.

  He raised his eyebrows in a pretence of ridicule. ‘As a veterinary surgeon, I am quite used to dealing with feathers!’

  ‘Yes, but aren’t you more used to dealing with them on animals rather than on people?’ Before he had time to answer, I continued my lawyer-like appraisal. ‘Then again, perhaps you are used to dealing with things that are neither quite one thing nor another.’

  ‘I’m not sure what you mean, but my priority is always the recovery of my patients.’ His words stung, not that he had meant them to, and he spoke in that usual measured way of his. I lowered my eyes. It was then I noticed the velum-bound book still sitting on top of the brown paper, the twine twisting off the edge of his desk like a strand of Rapunzel’s hair. It was the package I had seen Elver carrying earlier. Without thinking, I lifted it up and immediately inhaled the scent of the sea and had to force myself not to press it against my nose. The picture of the front was of the teatro I had seen in the nearby square. Inside its pages were filled with songs.

  ‘I love opera.’ he said, laughing, half embarrassed by my discovery. ‘If you haven’t been, then I recommend you go. I would have been an opera singer, but my father was a doctor and my grandfather and his father before him. I sort of followed the family tradition; there really was no other choice for me. The book is a present – a reminder of what might have been.’

  ‘A present?’

  ‘Yes. Today’s my birthday.’

  ‘A present from who?’ I had a habit of asking him questions to which I already knew the answers.

  ‘A friend,’ he replied, but there was a wariness in his voice.

  ‘The same friend who gave you that shell?’ Any more and I would reveal what connected us, perhaps I already had.

  Doctor Marino watched me, and I could see he had questions, but he didn’t know what they were or quite how to ask them. He was trying to make sense of something just out of his reach and I hoped his thoughts wouldn’t turn to words. Leo was helping my father to his feet and I crossed the room to open the door for them.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, pausing for a moment. ‘And happy birthday.’

  ‘She was never mine to lose and she isn’t yours either,’ he said gently, before I pulled the door shut.

  Outside, I saw the Keeper of the Hours striding across the dusky square, his back as long and straight as the minute hand. The tick-tock of his footsteps hurried towards the clock tower. Slowly we made our way back to the market stall, and to the last few remaining jars of mist, which were mostly scattered and smashed on the ground. By the wall, I found one still untouched, alive with the dancing mist, and I slipped it into my pocket.

  As we said goodbye, my father told me there was something he wanted to ask, but it would wait until tomorrow. Parting, I heard the chimes of the clock ring across the rooftops, a reminder of time lost and time restored.

  CHAPTER 37

  Sybel’s grief was private and Zephyros’s cremation was conducted quietly and without invitation. She left the other dogs in the kitchen, muzzle deep and content in their gigantic bowls of rice pudding, oblivious to the despair contained within the apple box she carried outside to her boat. She returned hours later, subdued, but composed. Despite the warmth, she pulled the bench across the floor until it was angled towards the stove. There she stretched out her slipperless feet and wriggled her toes in front of the grate

  She had been holding Zephyros for so long that now her arms didn’t know what to do, and her hands flopped in her lap like two dead fish. Loss had reduced her in some way, and whether or not it was expected, loss was still loss, and the end result was always the same.

  ‘I brought you this,’ I said, handing her a jar of mist. ‘It’s to mend a heart that’s broken. You can smoke it in your pipe, or empty it into your pillowcase and sleep with it there all night. It will make you feel happy again.’ But she just stared at it blankly and pushed it to the back of the shelf, behind all the other jars.

  ‘Thank you, but the worst is over now,’ she murmured, reaching up and lifting the harness from its hook.

  ‘Is it?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes.’ She nodded. ‘There is nothing worse than waiting for something to happen. I will grow around my grief, but it will change the shape of me and the way I look at the world. It will always be the cold, hard stone at the centre of everything.’

  Then overcome by a sudden burst of practicality, she took a knife and began unpicking the sixth collar, loosening it from the harness, until there were only a few frayed ends left behind. She burned them away with the end of the poker. Afterwards, she dabbed at her eyes with an old, tatty handkerchief and that was the last I saw of her sorrow.

  The mist had already begun to thin and lift, leaving behind delicate, narrow tendrils like forgotten balloon strings at the end of a party. It meant only one thing: the island – and my father – would soon be leaving. We had been to Doctor Marino’s surgery, where the risk-taker had recovered enough to be sitting up and was sipping water. My father explained that they would be leaving the following day and the risk-taker must be ready. Doctor Marino began to protest, but he held up his hand, and it was clear that there was no negotiation to be had.

  We walked down to the park and for the first time we were alone. Leo had been delayed at the university and for now it was just us. The mist was no longer low enough to dampen our skin, but had not lifted enough to rouse the drowsy sun. We stopped under a cluster of little trees, and as we sat down a bird suddenly swooped out of the sky and landed with a tiny rustle in the canopy of leaves high above our heads. My father and the bird began a duet of silvery whistles and friendly chortles. Listening, I wished I could understand what they were saying, but Orniglossa had proven itself too much of a puzzle for me to solve completely.

  ‘Are you sure you have to leave tomorrow?’ I asked, trying to keep the panic out of my voice. It was the closest I could come to asking him to stay. I knew the city was too narrow for him to open his wings and stretch out his feathers, and without the mist he wouldn’t survive. Staying was not a choice; it was impossible.

  He stopped, tall and still, like a sailing boat waiting for the wind to set him free. ‘About that,’ he said.

  For a moment I thought perhaps he was going to change his mind and I could feel my heart burst with the wish of it. ‘There is something I need to ask you.’


  ‘Yes?’ I encouraged, but he had grown hesitant or perhaps he couldn’t find the right words. ‘What is it?’

  Distracted for a moment, I watched a worshipping bee lose itself in the gentle embrace of a yellow flower, every small detail magnified in anticipation of his question.

  ‘Will you come with me?’

  Of all the things he could have said, I hadn’t been expected it to be that.

  ‘Where?’ I blurted, but the question was a foolish one; we both knew what he meant.

  ‘Home,’ he chirruped, and the word glittered between us like gold.

  All of a sudden, I didn’t know what to say. I looked back at the bee, but it had disappeared.

  ‘Are you ashamed of your feathers?’ His question was an unexpected gust of wind stirring the treetops.

  ‘No, of course not,’ I replied, but my words were too rushed, too insistent to carry the note of truth.

  ‘Then why do you hide them?’ He stepped closer, his eyes searching beneath my collar.

  ‘I—’ I didn’t want to lie, but the truth felt like a betrayal. I couldn’t confess how much I hated them; how they had brought me so much misery and how only a few weeks ago, I had begged Sybel to rid me of them forever. My rejection of them meant a rejection of him. I shuddered. ‘I’m just used to keeping them hidden, that’s all,’ I said, finally settling on a sort of truth.

  He took another step closer, reaching his hand beneath my collar, feeling for my feathers with a tenderness that made them rush to greet his touch. ‘If you come with me, you can learn to use your wings on the Island of Mist.’

  ‘But I don’t have wings,’ I said, and, for the first time, I felt disappointed not to have grown all of my contour feathers – disappointed that I wasn’t more like him. Wherever I went it seemed I didn’t quite belong, neither one thing or another. I had felt this difference for too long, following me like a dark shadow.

  ‘Don’t worry. Didn’t you see? The risk-taker didn’t have any feathers left on his wings yesterday, but they will be restored again.’

  ‘The mist,’ I breathed, realising the full power of its magic.

  He came closer and I felt his wings fall around me. It was as dark as a nest as they closed together and their immediate warmth brushed against my skin. I closed my eyes and breathed him in, and as I did, it felt as though my feet had left the ground. Opening my eyes, I was astonished to be high above the world, but not the world I knew. Instead of the park, I saw stretches of shimmering green fields. The spires and domes of the city had disappeared, and in their place rose purple tipped mountains and dark sloping forests. There was water there too, but instead of narrow ribbons there were wide blankets of blue. The air was filled with melody; a bright silvery song that floated high above the rush of a distant waterfall. The air quivered and everything sparkled and I knew that this was the Island of Mist. Somehow, I had glimpsed it within his feathers. Just as I wanted more, I felt his wings open, lift and fold away behind his back and the spell was broken. I was disappointed to see that I was exactly where I had been just a few moments ago, and my feet had never left the ground.

  ‘Give me your answer tomorrow,’ he said, suddenly tilting his head to the sky. ‘Ah – rain will be here again before nightfall.’

  I sensed it too.

  Across the park a group of boatmen, just finished for the day, seated themselves on crates around an upturned barrel scattered with playing cards and the day’s earnings. They held their heads low in a hushed, studious mumble, inspecting what they had been dealt. Usually, I adjusted my collar at the sight of strangers, making sure it was lifted high against my neck, but this time as we passed them, I left it folded down and a spray of tiny feathers escaped. The boatmen looked up, but their eyes didn’t linger long and soon they were back shuffling and dealing their cards, preoccupied by their own pursuit of triumph. I smiled to myself. Until that moment, fear had kept me hidden, and now little by little that fear was slowly fluttering away.

  ‘My brave girl,’ he said, his eyes half-closed in satisfaction, and my smile widened with pride.

  We ambled along the canal and past the Church of One Hundred Souls. I wondered if he remembered this place wasn’t far from where their hotel had once been, tucked away like a secret love letter in its dark envelope of walls. In the square beneath the tower, we said goodbye and I realised that the next time we parted it could be for the last time. I left him then, carrying the weight of indecision and continued through the city, distracted by thought. There was an open-windowed warmth to the evening and as I passed the houses, I could hear the secrets half-told from their hidden rooms: raised voices, a child’s laughter, someone at prayer, one silent, but lit by a flickering candle. From another, the haunting sound of a cello played, then stopped, followed by a tiny splatter of applause. An audience of no more than one, but an appreciative one at least. I felt like an intruder, arriving at a party without an invitation in my hand.

  I quickened my pace until the song of a bird made me pause, unusual in this enclosed part of the city, where there was an absence of both trees or sky. Allowing myself a diversion, I soon discovered that the sound was coming from the interior shadows of a back-alley house. There in the frame of the window, hanging from a hook was a small cage with a domed roof, and within it sat a bird. Had I not heard it sing just moments ago, I would have thought it had been stuffed like the ones at the university, for it was completely still. Then it began again, and its plaintive high treble vibrated out into the street. A mirror twinkled from a chain tricking the poor creature into believing it had a friend. A cruel trick. This window had no bars and, without thinking, I reached up and lifted the catch, releasing the door. The bird stared at me with its glassy eye and then jerked its head, suddenly noticing the open door. Warily it hopped down from its perch and fluttered to rest, with a tiny wobble, on the edge of freedom. After a moment’s hesitation, it lifted itself into the air and was gone, like the flame of an extinguished candle. As I turned to leave, I heard the quiet rattle of a door coming from the depths of the house, and the slow shuffle of feet. Then a chestnut face appeared at the open window beneath the cage; it was that of an old lady, her grey eyes blinking in disbelief. She stood black-shawled and hunched as though everything ached, and in her gnarled, mottled hand she held the core of a half-eaten apple. Her mouth still chewed the last bite.

  ‘Have you seen my bird?’ she asked, in raspy syllables.

  ‘No,’ I lied, swallowing a stone of guilt. I stared innocently at the open cage.

  Her mouth drooped and she sank against the window in audible exhaustion; too old and broken to be stirred into any action. Her eyes shone with sorrow, but she was too tired to cry. Setting one soul free had trapped another and whereas moments before I had felt like an intruder, now I had become a thief. The bird had flown away and left her companionless. She stayed at the window, and I watched as she rested the apple core on the sill as though it might somehow be enough to tempt the bird back. Guilty, I left her then, mourning at her window, and I couldn’t imagine her ever latching it shut again. If I returned the next day or the next or the one after that I was convinced that I would find her there, waiting still. Perhaps it will return I thought, hopefully, just as a bird swooped and danced high above me in the evening sky, but we both knew that she would never see it again.

  Forgive me, I thought without releasing the words; I had released enough.

  The street was silent.

  By the time I got home I had to shake the rain from my hair. The old lady and her bird had brought back a memory, and although she didn’t look like Lemàn or Professor Elms or Sorren, or Sybel, she reminded me of them all: touched by the same hollow, empty loneliness, each suffering a different kind of loss, so crushing and tangible, it could be felt in the hearts of others. All of them waiting endlessly for something that had long gone, and for something that would never return.

  I didn’t tell Sybel about the decision I had to make and whether she sensed it or not sh
e didn’t mention anything.

  Appearing in the doorway, she looked at me in startled alarm. ‘I can see your feathers,’ she said.

  ‘I know.’ I beamed.

  ‘Ah!’ She laughed with sudden understanding.

  Sitting in the kitchen, she stroked the damp tangles out of my hair, as though I was a gutter cat in need of rescue. As I kissed her goodnight, she paused in the candlelight. ‘I’m so glad you are here. You are a blessing, especially now.’

  My heart fell. An already difficult decision had just become an impossible one to make.

  CHAPTER 38

  The following morning, I left the house full of worry and turmoil. I still hadn’t made my decision. It was too early for either Leo or my father and so I wandered the familiar city for a while until the warm, inviting smell of the bakeries tempted the dreamers from their beds, and the streets began to stir. This was the one place where I didn’t have to hide; a place of friends and lovers and dreams and wonder, where wishes were granted. There were people who mattered here, and I would miss them if I left them behind.

  Leo was waiting for me at the boat stop, and we walked together to the market in amiable chatter.

  ‘Did you know our hearts have four chambers, each one like a separate room?’ I babbled, trying to push the decision I had to make far from my mind.

  Leo shook his head. ‘No, I didn’t know that. It sounds more like a guest house.’ He laughed, continuing his jest. ‘Do they have to check in their details at the lobby? Perhaps a concierge could relieve you of any baggage.’ He nudged my arm playfully, and I rolled my eyes, laughing, glad to have my mind briefly distracted by something else.

  The Island of Mist was my father’s home, but could it ever be mine? I had found a place of belonging in the City of Murmurs, and I knew I wouldn’t find it anywhere else. You could still be close to someone and love them just the same even when they weren’t by your side. One of my heart’s chambers would always be his – his and Lemàn’s – the only place where they could fit together. Possibilities and loss again, but a place full of memory can never be completely empty. Memories cast into a grate can spark a fire to keep you warm.