“Heather, we’ve got our hands full here, and I’m not even in London …”
In the bar, Heather closed her eyes, wincing.
“… but maybe when I’m back?”
She put the glass down. “Absolutely. Give me a shout.”
From there the conversation became awkward, and she sensed him mentally retreating from her. Standing in the bar, her cheeks were warm with embarrassment, but she couldn’t feel entirely bad about asking him out so blatantly—later she would go back to an empty house, with nothing to think about but murdered women and the mystery of her own mother’s death. Was it so terrible to want company? The whisky was sour in her throat, and after she said her goodbyes, she downed the rest without pleasure.
CHAPTER14
BEFORE
MICHAEL LIVED AT the big house, but Fiddler’s Wood was his home.
He spent most of his days out there, whatever the weather, tramping through the undergrowth, sitting with his back against a tree or following half-hidden paths to places that seemed significant; a dead tree, blasted black and white by lightning decades ago; a deep ditch riddled with dog roses; a trio of birches, growing up together, twisted and light-dappled. Under the rain and wind and ever weakening sun, he grew taller and stronger. The marks on his wrists and neck faded, and the hair at his temple grew back, although it was the color of moonlight now.
There were still nightmares most nights. He dreamed of the cupboard, or he dreamed of his mother’s thick fingers twisted in his hair, her face contorted with rage, or slack and absent. Sometimes, he dreamed of a flat, red landscape, the sky the color of dusty roses, and there were things on the land, desperate, howling things, and from these dreams he still woke screaming, but the knowledge of the wood outside his window—dark and cool and green—was a balm to him.
Michael did not go to school, although he could not really remember ever going to school. He had some very vague memories of being left at a place with lots of children who did not want to speak to him, and he had an impression he had not been there for long. Instead, the man let him look at the books in the one room in the house that was full of them, and to Michael’s surprise he found that the words did make some sort of sense. The man largely left him to his own devices, providing food when Michael reappeared from the woods, covered in mud, or sometimes walking out with him across the fields, the big black dog somewhere in the grass ahead.
One day in the spring, the man caught him at the door just as he was hopping into a pair of boots.
“I’ve got something to show you today, lad,” he said. “Come on.”
He whistled between his teeth and the dog skittered across the wooden floor, and then they were out under a sky the color of cornflowers. Instead of heading to the woods, the man took them toward an old shed. Michael had always ignored it. A shed wasn’t the woods, after all.
“Here. Come look over here. Stand on that bucket.”
It was a large shed that clearly didn’t see a lot of use. There were tools and boxes stored in it, enormous rusty spades and sacks that had turned discolored at the bottom. The rafters holding the roof up were blistered and old, and there was a sizeable hole there, a chunk of sky staring through. Michael climbed up onto the overturned steel bucket and looked at the corner just below the hole. There was a bird’s nest, complete with three little chicks. Belatedly, Michael realized he had been hearing their peeping cries since they had entered the shed.
“Now look down there.” The man pointed. On the floor, in the dust and some curls of sawdust, was the body of a plump female blackbird. Its neck was at a strange angle and its eye, like a tiny bubble of ink, stared up at nothing.
“A cat must have got at it,” said the man. Michael knew instinctively that this was a lie. He had never seen a cat here, not in the fields or anywhere near the house, or even in the woods, and besides, he felt certain that the dog wouldn’t have tolerated it. As if it had been summoned, the dog trotted over to them and stuck its nose into the body of the bird, panting loudly in the small space. “These chicks will die in a day or so. What will you do about it?”
“Me?”
“They’re yours now. Here.” The man reached up and scooped the chicks into his big, shovel hands, and then pressed them on Michael. Shocked and somewhat repulsed, Michael gathered them into his jumper. Their outraged peeping grew louder, and they struggled weakly in his arms, oversized heads weaving back and forth.
“I don’t know what to bloody do with them.”
“Do whatever you like,” said the man. Michael looked at him. “That’s the point. Touch them, feel that they are living things, then do what you like.”
The man and the dog left him, and unsure what else to do, Michael took the chicks to the woods. As he walked, he contemplated a few different outcomes, the sorts of ideas that occur to children of that age—perhaps he would find a blackbird family in the woods willing to take on a few extra babies, or he could dig up worms, and feed the chicks himself, by hand. Eventually they would be his own pets, and they would come when he called them. The idea pleased him.
Eventually he came to one of his favorite spots: a grassy bank next to a small, muddy stream. The tree cover broke a little here, allowing for a small sunny patch, turning the stumpy grass a brilliant, almost supernatural green,
