The Best Horror of the Year. Volume 4

BLACK FEATHERS Alison Littlewood

There was a raven at the edge of the woods. It was huge — even its beak looked as long as Mia’s fingers. She stared at it and Little Davey laughed at her. Mia wrinkled her nose. Little Davey was younger than her by a year, but he wasn’t that little anymore. He was as tall as she was and twice as loud, and he rode a bike much quicker than she could. He stood in front of her now, him and Sam Oakey and Jack Harris from down the road, and Sarah Farnham who was more like a boy than one of the boys. Mia stared at the raven. She didn’t want to go into the woods, could smell its rank green warmth even from here. It was loaded with dark, with mystery, with her brother’s mocking laughter as he turned his bike towards the trees.

“Come on,” he said. “Last one in’s a chicken.” He started pedalling and the others followed him one by one, Sarah giving one ring of her bicycle bell, but none of them saying a word.

Mia stared after them. Davey knew she didn’t like the woods; she didn’t like the way the branches closed over her head, making it impossible to know which way was in and which was out. She knew he only went in there because of her fear; and because it was forbidden.

The thought of forbidden things reminded Mia of her fairy tales. Somewhere deep in the woods would be a castle circled by thorns that could put you to sleep with a single scratch. She reminded herself that a princess wouldn’t be afraid. Princesses were never afraid, and she was much more a princess than Sarah Farnham.

With that, Mia turned her own bike towards the woods. The raven let out a dry, rasping burr, the sound a chain might make as it slipped from its sprockets. Then the bird took to wing, lifting its heavy bulk into the air. Its eyes were sharp bright points and Mia thought it eyed her as it flew, but couldn’t work out what the look was meant to say. She paused, though, to pick up the thing it left for her — a single, gloss-dark feather — before following the others into the dark.

She heard them up ahead, shouting and laughing. Davey’s laugh was loudest of all, and Mia’s heart sank. For as long as she could remember, she had been wishing that Little Davey was different. Sometimes she had even tried to turn him into something else. One of her first memories was her mother pulling her off him, laughing because Mia loved her brother so very much she wouldn’t stop showering him with kisses. If a frog could be turned into a prince for the simple kissing, Mia had thought, perhaps this mewling thing could be turned into a frog. It stood to reason. It was worth the sour milk smell that clung to her clothes. Worth the feel of his faintly damp, slightly peeling scalp on her lips.

After that, whenever Mia blew out her candles or wished upon a star, she always wished for Davey to change.

Now he stood in front of everybody, leaning out over the place where the banking fell away. They weren’t supposed to come here. Mainly they didn’t want to, because this was where the bigger kids played; sometimes they found cigarette butts or crushed beer cans, still with foul smells trapped inside. There were no big kids here today though; there was only the swing. The swing was a rope tied around a tree branch with three fat knots at different heights, to sit on. And there was Davey, right on the edge of the banking, the rope held in his hand.

“Don’t,” said Mia, and the others laughed. But Mia saw what they didn’t. The rope was too high for him. He could touch it, but he wouldn’t be able to sit; even the lowest knot was barely within his reach. He’d swing wild, holding on with only his hands, and he’d let go. Mia knew what lay beneath. The banking ended. After that it was a sheer drop, nothing but mud walls and broken branches waiting in the bottom. Old leaves and slimy things, long-legged things. She swallowed. It was up to her; she was supposed to look after him. She, after all, was the eldest.

Once, Mia had made a potion out of all the nasty things she could find, dust and dirt and a hair she had found next to the toilet. She mushed them all up with water and gave it to him in their father’s sports bottle, so he couldn’t see what was inside. Then she had wished Little Davey dead.

She hadn’t really wanted him dead. She had knocked the bottle out of his hand before Davey could drink it. He had cried and run to Mum, and Mia got into trouble; or rather, Miranda had. Mia was always ‘Miranda’ when someone was angry with her.

Miranda was Mia’s real name. It wasn’t a name fit for a princess. She knew two other Mirandas, and neither of them looked like princesses. If anyone called Mia Miranda, she wouldn’t answer. She wouldn’t even look at them. Even Davey called her Mia. Miranda, if anything, sounded more like the name for a witch. Mia sometimes wondered what happened to the spell she wove that day, when it missed its target and fell to the ground with the bottle.

Little Davey let go of the rope and stepped back. Then, impossibly, he launched himself out over the space. His hands reached, grasping the rope high. It moved with him and his legs followed, trying to catch up. And then he was sitting on it, and not even at its lowest; he was sitting on the middle knot, cheeks burning, his face split by an enormous grin. Mia caught her breath. And she knew she had been right: the rope was too high for him, but Davey, with his courage, had made it fit. He had worked his own magic with his recklessness, taken a little of the world and made himself its king. She found herself grinning too, looked around at the others; but they weren’t looking at Mia. Their eyes were fixed on her brother as he swung higher and higher, and they were all smiling.

Mia put her hands in her pocket and felt the smooth feather. If she stroked it one way it was like glass; if she rubbed it the other it was rough and caught in her fingers. She could feel it splitting, each thread parting from the next in a way she would never be able to put back together. She did it anyway, thinking of the raven and the way it had looked at her. Its beady black eyes.

Mia wanted Davey to be a girl. They would have been princesses together. Of course, all the stories favoured the younger sister, but Mia wouldn’t be like the older girls in tales — proud, haughty, cast aside when the prince came along. Her little sister would have looked up to her, astonished by her beauty and cleverness. The prince wouldn’t have had eyes for anyone but her.

After a while Davey got down from the swing and Sam Oakey had a go, and then Jack said he couldn’t be bothered but Sarah tried it and so Jack did too. Each of them held onto the rope with both hands and pushed out over the drop; no one managed to get seated the way Little Davey had. None of them seemed to expect Mia to try, and she didn’t care. Instead she spread herself on the grass, pretending she wore some great sparkling dress. What princess would go on a swing like that? She waited until it was time to go, and rode back with them through the woods, and the others said goodbye and headed away.

“What did you think of that?” Davey asked.

Mia scowled and turned to him. What she saw, though, wasn’t Davey the pain; it almost wasn’t like her little brother at all. He still had a glow that lit him up from the inside. She remembered the way he’d leapt out over nothing, the small spell he’d woven there in the woods. And she found herself smiling.

“It was pretty cool,” she said. “Really cool.” And Davey looked surprised, and then he smiled back.

“It was like you were flying,” she said, and she fingered the feather in her pocket.

Mia went outside and headed towards the woods. She looked for the raven and he wasn’t there but she saw that he had left more feathers for her. She picked them up and put them in her bag. Then she looked into the trees. She had thought she would be more afraid, but she was not. It was easy to hide when you were alone, and besides, she had the feathers. She scanned the ground for them, found one among the exposed roots of a tree. She went on, looking for the next; it led her into a bramble patch and she stepped carefully, picking the black thing out with care. She was following a trail, she realised, like Hansel and Gretel, but this time it was the birds which had left it instead of eating it up.

She found another feather beneath a curling fern, then a whole pile of them on a knoll of grass. It was as if they had been left for her to find, as though the birds knew what she needed. Mia looked up. There must be a lot of ravens living in these woods. She wondered if they were watching her now through their little black eyes. She swallowed, but forced herself to go on. It wasn’t so bad. There wasn’t much time to be afraid when there was something you really needed to do.

Mia’s favourite story was The Six Swans. A maiden’s brothers were bewitched and cursed to live their lives as the white birds. So the maid wove them special shirts to turn them back again, and it worked, except she hadn’t time enough to make the youngest brother’s sleeve and he was left with a swan’s wing for an arm. The sister loved them dearly, and was dutiful and kind all her days; she married the king and lived happily ever after.

There weren’t any swans near Mia’s house, but there were the ravens. And she knew that they were good, really, that they had looked after her and Davey on that day in the woods. She knew because she had dreamed of it. In her dream, her little brother Davey had leapt for the rope, and his fingers had brushed it, making it shiver. Then he had started to fall.

He fell until there came a loud rasp like a chain coming free, and the raven swept in and bore Davey up. It saved him from the sharp branches and the long fall and the slimy wriggling things that waited, and carried him up, over the treetops and far away.

Mia took the glue and spread it on the fabric. It had been a skirt, but she had taken her mother’s scissors and cut it so that it looked like a cloak. She knew her mother would be angry, but Mia had never liked the skirt, and anyway, it was black; that was good, because it wouldn’t show if she missed a bit.

She pressed a feather into the glue. It shone for a moment, blue and green and white before returning to black, and she felt a throb of excitement. Davey would love this. He would be king of the air. She had always wanted to turn him into something else, but she knew by the tingle in her fingers that this time it would be different.

This time, she would turn him into a bird.

Mia led Davey along the path to the woods. He huffed and puffed, kicking at loose sticks. She turned and put a finger to her lips. “It’ll be great, Davey. You’ll see.” She smiled at him, and it must have been a good smile because he tossed his head and half smiled back.

She picked her way down the path, following old footprints and bicycle tracks. There weren’t any feathers, she noticed that as she went, and that was a sign; the ravens had gifted the feathers just for her, and for her alone. Now they were done, and it was up to her, Mia, to do the rest.

She carried a bundle under her arm. It was bulky and Davey had cast odd glances at it as they set off, almost as though he knew.

The others hadn’t been near the woods and that had been another sign, a good one. This was a thing for her and her brother, the one she had been dutiful for, had thought of all the time she had been making the cloak. That was why it would work: because she’d put herself into it, and all the care for him she could muster. Davey would see that. He would appreciate the time she’d spent, her caring.

She led the way to the swing and Davey turned on her. He shrugged. “Well? What is it?”

Mia ignored his words. She took the bundle and unrolled the fabric. She straightened it. And the cloak shone, but it wasn’t like she’d imagined, some soft, glowing, magical thing. There were spaces between the feathers and in the bright light of day you could see the gaps after all, dull and glue-spotted. Feathers were falling off, or had split when she’d rolled it. At the top, where she’d tried to make a collar, you could see it was only a waistband after all.

Little Davey wrinkled his nose. “What’s that?”

“I made it for you, Davey. So you can fly. It’s special.”

“It’s a skirt.”

“No, Davey, it’s not. I mean, it was a skirt. Now it’s a cloak, and I made it for you, because—”

But Mia could no longer think why she had made it. She looked at the thing in her hands and saw it was a sorry thing, a poor thing. It wasn’t something you would present to someone as a gift. Not something that could hold magic within it.

“It stinks.”

“It doesn’t.” But Mia realised it did stink, a mixture of animal and glue that almost burned her nostrils. She wondered why she hadn’t noticed it before. She turned the cloak, trying to make the feathers catch the light. Some of them did and she looked at Davey, hoping he had seen. She started when she saw his eyes. He was rolling them, as if looking at something ridiculous. He was rolling them at her and the start of something painful rose in her chest.

Davey started to laugh. He put his hands on his hips and leaned into it, and she heard how he was forcing the sound out, making it as loud as he could.

“You idiot,” he said. “Oh, you idiot. Wait till I tell the others.”

Mia’s cheeks flooded with heat. “Davey, no.” She looked down at her work. It was already ruined. Feathers fell from it to the ground. And then she heard something coming towards them through the woods: the ching, ching of a bicycle bell. She looked at Davey in alarm.

“Go on the swing,” he said.

“What?” Mia glanced at the old rope hanging down over nothing.

“Go on the swing and I won’t tell.”

Davey smiled a slow smile. Mia wished, harder than she had ever wished before, that he would turn into something else: anything else.

The sound came closer. She looked down at the feathered mess at her feet. She couldn’t bear the thought of the others laughing at the work of her hands, throwing it between them, scattering the birds’ gift. She picked it up and ran towards the swing. She heard Davey calling her name but she didn’t stop, just went faster and faster over the ground. Then, when she was almost at the rope, she skidded to a halt and threw the cloak of feathers into the drop below. She watched it fall, spreading itself as if it was trying to take off. And then it hit a fallen tree trunk before slipping down into a gap among the earth and the slime and the beer cans and the spiders and the cigarette butts, and she wanted to cry.

“Hey, Davey,” a voice said. Mia didn’t have to turn round to know it was Jack. There were grunts and greetings and the laying down of bikes, but she didn’t turn around. Then she heard someone at her side. She twitched when he spoke.

“Come on, sis,” Davey said in a low voice.

“Oh, are you going on the swing?” It was Sarah. “Look everybody, Mia’s going on the swing.”

“No,” said Davey. “No, she’s not.” And Mia felt his hand on her shoulder.

Sarah laughed. “Chicken. Your sister’s always a chicken, Davey. She doesn’t do anything.”

“No,” echoed Sam Oakey. “Anything.”

“She’s been on it already,” said Davey. “It’s my turn now.”

Mia turned and stared at him. He winked.

“She went really high,” he said. “Higher than me.”

The others stared at Mia, but she wouldn’t look at him. They didn’t say anything, either. She knew they wouldn’t question Davey. They never did question him, just followed him and tried to do what he did. She felt a stab of pride for her brother.

“Go on then,” said Jack.

Mia realised he was talking to Davey. She looked around as her brother backed off, then started to run. She opened her mouth to call him back; closed it again. She smiled as he raced, all boy, all freedom, towards the rope. It already felt better. He was doing that thing again, weaving his magic in the air between them. It was all right. It was his spell, Davey’s spell, not her own; but it was all right.

He ran towards the rope and he leapt. His fingers stretched out and the rope trembled.

Then Davey began to fall.

Mia screamed. He went so fast; how could he have gone so fast? There was only his hair, floating above his head, and the weight of him, and there must have been sound, but Mia hadn’t heard any sound at all because she had screamed so loud.

The others ran past her to the drop. The rope was still there, hanging quite still. Jack edged up and down in front of it. Then he turned and ran past Mia, his face white, mouth open. He grabbed his bike. “I’ll get someone,” he panted, and was gone, off into the woods.

Sarah looked over her shoulder. “Where’s he gone?” she asked. Her voice wasn’t like her voice. “Where?”

All Mia could do was look at her.

“We have to go,” Sarah said to Sam Oakey. “We can’t get to him. We have to get help.” She walked past Mia, slow but without pausing, and grabbed her bike. After a moment Sam followed. He didn’t look at Mia at all.

Mia stepped towards the drop. When she reached it, she looked down.

There was the tree trunk she’d seen before. Other branches, scattered about. There was an old car tyre she’d never noticed before. And Davey. Little Davey lay in the cleft, and his body was broken. She could see it in the way his back fitted to the shape of the branch on which he lay, a giant, twisted thing. His arm was bent in an unnatural way too, and Mia thought she could see blood on it. It wasn’t bleeding now though. She could tell from the look on her brother’s face that little Davey was dead.

She let out a sound, something between a sob and a wail. She stared at the rope, the evil thing that Davey’s spell hadn’t worked upon, and wondered where the spells went when they missed the thing they had been meant for. Old potions made of dust and dirt and hair. She felt sick. Bent to the ground, leaned further over the edge. Tried to see into the gaps between the old wood in the hole in the ground.

Then she looked from side to side.

The ground was sheer where she was, but a little further around there were breaks in it she thought she might be able to hold onto. She remembered she wasn’t supposed to—never does anything—as she hurried over there, threw herself onto her stomach and slithered backwards over the edge.

It was hard, but she held on tight, and kicked her shoes into the dirt face to make footholds as she eased herself down. She forced herself to think it through, deciding where to step next and how to hold on. It didn’t seem to take very long before she stood at the bottom, mud clumped to her shoes and smeared down her dress.

She saw the white shapes of Davey’s face and arms from the corner of her eye and looked away. Instead she headed for the tree trunk, her feet sinking into the ground. It was spongy, layers of old grass and rubbish. She looked down and saw something dark and long-legged skitter over her shoe. Shook it off with a little cry. She climbed over the branches and they didn’t feel dry like tree bark but clammy and damp like cool skin. When she took her hands away they were tinged with green.

She could see the gap where the cloak had fallen. It was dark. She would have to lie flat against the biggest branch and reach in with her hand. She shivered but didn’t hesitate, just threw herself down and let the wood dig into her belly and her knees and her chest. She put her arm down into the space and groped. Somewhere above her came the cry of a bird. She ignored it. It made her think of outside, of playing with the others, of watching Davey fly. She couldn’t think about that now. She had to think of this, the darkness under her, the sudden smoothness she felt under her fingertip. She stretched down, pressing her face into cold wood. Felt its clammy touch rub onto her cheek. She felt feathers; pinched the fabric between her fingers and pulled it towards her.

She slithered back off the branch, clutching the cloak, feeling its dry weight. She held it close, pressed tight against her body. Davey still lay where he had fallen. Everything was motionless; everything quiet.

Mia walked towards him, trying not to see how white his face had become. His jaw was sticking out; it looked as though it was unhinged. She wondered if he had shouted anything as he had fallen. If he had, Mia hadn’t heard; had been too busy with her own scream.

She held out the cloak, turned it so that all the feathers hung downwards, like they do on birds’ wings. She straightened it, tried not to see the black flakes falling to the ground. “You’re my brother, Davey,” she said. Her words seemed wrong in the empty air, too loud. It was for them, she thought. It was because her words were only for the two of them. She put the cloak over her brother’s face. Then she turned and ran back towards the slope.

When Mia got home and looked into her mother’s face she knew that no one had told her. The others must have run to their own homes and she felt a stab of anger. Their mothers knew, and Davey’s mother didn’t. It was unfair. The whole world was like that, out of kilter.

Then her mother ran to Mia and knelt down and put her arms around her, and Mia wondered if she had been wrong, if her mother had known after all. Then she realised her mother was saying something, over and over: what is it Mia, what’s wrong Mia, and she remembered the mud all down her front, and the wood-slime on her face, and knew her mother knew nothing, that she had only seen what she had read in Mia’s eyes, and the next thing was, that Mia was going to have to tell her. And Mia started to cry.

For a moment, Mia wasn’t sure what she’d been saying. Something about birds, and Davey, and the woods, and a rope. She knew her mother didn’t understand. She just kept stroking Mia’s hair and making shushing noises. Mia took a deep breath because she had to tell her, couldn’t let her not know any longer, and she opened her mouth to say that Davey was dead and then the door opened and she saw the thing that stood there and Mia screamed.

It was Davey, but not Davey. His face was white and expressionless; only his eyes stared, dark and bright. His hair was plastered tight to his head. Mia saw that his jaw didn’t stick out anymore and she looked at his arms and saw that they were wings after all; pitch black, inky black, and shining so brightly they looked wet. The wings hunched over his shoulders and hung long and powerful all around him.

Then Davy moved and she saw it was only a cloak, her cloak, the one she had made for him. He threw it to the floor and brushed himself down, his arms shaped as they should be, moving as they should move. And he looked at her. “I’m back,” he said, and that was all she remembered before she fell.

At first, when Mia tried to tell her mother how Davey had been hurt, she listened to her and stroked her head and soothed her. Later she began to tut and brush Mia’s words away; later, she became angry. He’s fine, she said. Your brother’s fine.

Mia knew that Little Davey wasn’t fine. He wasn’t even the same. He was like Davey and yet not like him. He was too pale, his eyes too bright. He didn’t smile.

The others didn’t like to play with him anymore. Mia didn’t really know why because they didn’t tell her, and Mia knew that was because they had always been Davey’s friends and not her own. They had liked his smiles and his bravado, and they were things she didn’t have. Now they were things Davey didn’t have either. He sat around the house, scowling at the television or staring into space. He stared at her, too, if she tried to talk to him, to ask him about the woods or the ravens. He stared at her as if he didn’t really know what words meant.

One day her mother was trying to clean up around them, and she kept darting little looks towards her son. Sharp, hard little looks. At last she stopped and turned on him. “Why don’t you go out?” she said.

Davey stopped staring into space and stared at her instead.

Their mother straightened. She licked her lips. When she spoke again her tone was different: sweeter. “Why don’t you take your sister for a walk?” she asked.

Mia heard this, and thought: I’m the eldest. But she didn’t say anything.

Her mother said, “Why don’t you take her to the woods?” and Mia knew then how much their mother wanted them to go because she never told them to go to the woods, it was somewhere they weren’t supposed to be.

Her brother turned his head and looked at her. “Do you want to come to the woods, Miranda?” he said.

She looked at him and saw that he hadn’t said that to be funny or mean. He hadn’t meant it in any way at all, he’d just said it, and they were only words, things that didn’t seem to mean anything to him.

Mia, she mouthed. She was Mia. Even Little Davey had always called her Mia. But she didn’t say it out loud.

He got up and put on his coat and so did she. When he went out of the front door she followed him. She didn’t try to talk; knew it would be easier that way. Instead she walked at his heels until they reached the woods. The raven wasn’t there but Davey stopped and stared for a moment, at something only he could see.

“What is it?” asked Mia, and he just started walking again and so did she.

They went into the woods and Mia wasn’t afraid, not really. She had learned there were other things to be afraid of; things that came into your home and slept in the room next to yours; things you weren’t really sure were the people you had known or the ones you had loved, in spite of yourself, all the time you were wishing they were something else.

She followed Davey until they reached the swing. He walked over to it, leaned out until he grasped the rope with his fingers. He didn’t jump for it, though, or do anything else. He just stood there with it clasped in his hand, looking down into the drop.

“You died,” said Mia.

When he turned, she wasn’t sure that he had heard. She saw his eyes, though, and they were dark, and small, and bright. She couldn’t look away from them. Then Davey smiled, and although it was something Mia had wished for, she suddenly knew it wasn’t a thing she wanted to see. It wasn’t Davey’s smile. It wasn’t a good smile.

Davey opened his mouth and he spoke to her in the voice she’d known was inside him. His voice was the sound a raven made and she knew then that the birds hadn’t been good, after all; that they hadn’t meant well. They had taken her brother just as she had dreamed, and it was the birds which brought him back: except, when they did, they left a part of him behind them, in whatever dark place they had been.

Mia shuddered. She felt stinging at her eyes. She closed them and felt the tears come, no use now. So many times she had wished, and she wished again now, but she knew it wasn’t any use. The magic had gone. It had gone with Davey, and he had known that. He had looked at her and called her by her name.

So many times she had wanted her brother to be something else, some strange and magical thing. Now she clenched her fists, still feeling Davey’s stare, and wished harder than anything to have her brother back. To have Little Davey come home, just the same as he had always been.