The Rain Heron Read online

  Yes, I said. I really did.

  She smiled again, sad and pained, before putting her pen back to her notepad.

  At least you’re seeing clearer.

  In all those times I’d closed my eye and seen her, it had never occurred to me that she might be funny.

  69

  THAT EVENING REN and I walked into the pines beyond the edge of town. The boy and his father stayed behind.

  She led the way and I carried the cage. It felt wrong to keep the heron imprisoned like that in her presence, but Ren didn’t object. She just walked to the trees, and at the edge of the forest turned to see if I was following her. She saw me hesitating, beckoned with her hand. Then she threaded into the tree line.

  The pines were as thick as I remembered, the air still dense with their smell. Dried needles slid under my boots. Other trees I couldn’t name were scattered among them, along with mossy logs, boulders, and hundreds of kinds of bracken, bush and sprout. Heavy ravens flapped through the lower parts of the canopy, trailing low, dry calls. Other birds chirped and whistled, but I did not see them. Creeks sang with damp rhythm.

  The sounds and scenery, the smells—the freshening pine, the earthy rot of fallen wood—all of it combined to remind me of how relaxed I’d felt in this place, and of what I’d done here, amid all the calm beauty. I looked ahead at Ren. Her pace was slow, and she had to stop every ten or fifteen minutes to catch her breath. Yet her movements were confident, purposeful, and she never slipped or stumbled on the roots and rocks of the forest floor.

  The sun lowered, its fading light broken by the forest roof. On we went, apparently to where I’d captured the bird. It seemed impossible we’d venture that high, especially given Ren’s condition. But I looked at her again, at her steady, implacable stride, and I began to wonder if we were climbing all the way up the peak, to the grotto at its heart.

  We reached a wide stream, and Ren stopped. I thought she was resting, but when I felt her eyes settle on me I realised we were doing more than that. I lowered the cage to the ground.

  Here?

  She nodded. I was going to ask why, but she turned to look upstream. I followed her gaze and saw that the water ran in an uncommonly straight course. Pines lined its banks, all the way to the rocky heights. The stream eventually disappeared into a cliff, which ran right up to a high, weathered peak, framed by the night sky.

  I turned back to Ren. She indicated the cage. No light showed through the wax.

  I hesitated.

  You should do it, I said.

  Ren looked back at the peak, her neck cocked. She crossed her arms. Still I did not move. I didn’t want to be the one to release the bird. I didn’t feel like I deserved it. Finally, she ended our stalemate by scribbling one of her notes.

  You’re the one who took it.

  By the time I’d digested her words she’d hoisted herself onto a large rock and leaned back on her arms, an expectant expression on her face. I turned to the cage. I looked back at her. My thoughts wobbled, my neck felt hot, and before I let myself think about it any further I ripped the oilcloth free and staggered a few steps backwards.

  Within the bars sat the rain heron. It was in its most animal form—a normal, if watery and ghostly, heron. The only difference to its appearance was the splash of colour in its wings—the blend of red and green, yellow and violet that had come from its amalgamation with the ink.

  It appeared to be sleeping, but seconds after I removed the cloth it stirred. Perhaps it was the sound of the stream, or the brightness of the moon. The bird opened its shimmering eyes and stood. It stretched its neck. It regarded the forest, the running water, the distant peak. It looked up at the sky. It looked at Ren, then at me. I suddenly felt sure that it would rush to me in a storm of colour and take my remaining eye: that I would finally receive the blindness my actions had earned.

  But the bird just picked its way past the bars, carefully sliding its body through the metal. The rainbow on its wings caught on the iron, sluicing out of the feathers like stripped oil. When it had emerged completely from the cage it was once again a pale, pure blue. All that remained of its temporary colouring ran as thick, shining ink down the cage’s bars.

  I did not move. The bird looked again at the peak, then gave its wings a tremendous flap. Cold water sprayed my face. The rain heron rose into the air, high and fast, to hover briefly above the stream before plunging down into it in a steep dive. A wave broke from the place it entered the water, and began travelling upstream, against the current. I watched it grow in size and gather pace as it moved, an impossible wave that hastened up the wild water until it was gone from view.

  70

  ON THE WAY back to the village I finally apologised. With the bird released my thoughts had cleared, and I found I could say the things that been tumbling in my mind ever since I’d discovered Ren had survived my bullet.

  I told her I was sorry for what I’d done to her, and for what I’d done to her friends. I said that I had been wrong, and cruel, and that I didn’t expect her to forgive me. I didn’t offer any explanations, didn’t give an excuse, lay any blame, or try to convince her that my actions had been a kind of calculated mercy. I didn’t tell her about my life, the things I’d experienced. I just apologised. It didn’t make me feel any better, but I felt glad that I’d said it.

  She was still walking ahead of me, so I had no way of knowing what she thought of my words. But a few minutes after I gave her my apology, she stopped. We had come to a grassy glade. A gap in the trees let in the shine of the moon and stars. She turned and studied me, her expression as blank and unimpressed as ever. I looked around, trying to see if there was a significance to this place. When I looked back at her, she was scribbling yet another note.

  It was almost too dark to read, even in the unbroken moonlight. I peered closely until I could make out the words.

  Are you going to stay?

  Something churned within my stomach, my chest. It had never occurred to me. I stared at her, confused.

  Do you think I should?

  She seemed to think about it, before shaking her head. Another note followed.

  Probably not a good idea.

  I nodded. I made to start walking again, but Ren hadn’t moved. She still had that thoughtful look. I waited, and as I did a question occurred to me—one I’d thought of often during our first encounter, in that time that felt so long ago, but had never asked.

  Why did you come here?

  Her face lost its look of contemplation. She waited a moment, taking in the moon, the trees, then me, before writing a note.

  I had a son.

  She frowned, and wrote another one.

  Have a son.

  I tried to make my face look sympathetic.

  The coup?

  She nodded. Her pen scratched again.

  Maybe one day he’ll find me here.

  Then she smiled. We resumed walking. Clouds covered the stars: I couldn’t see where we were going. But Ren did not hesitate in her path, and I had her steady back to follow. It made me feel safe, even as my feet fumbled in the darkness.

  71

  THAT NIGHT I slept in the utility. In the early morning I woke to someone knocking on the window. It was the boy. He invited me in for breakfast, and I had no way of refusing.

  Inside, there was toast and porridge. Ren ate slowly, in tiny mouthfuls, wincing each time she swallowed. Small trails of tears crept down her cheeks, though her face stayed still. I felt sick, and tried to look away. It was only porridge, but it was as if she were eating glass. I ate as fast as I could, thanked the boy’s father, and went back outside.

  The sun was only half-risen, but the day already felt hot. The pines loomed, weighed heavy with needles and cones. I heard the door open, heard footsteps approaching.

  The boy’s father walked forward. I realised I still didn’t know his name. He tried to hand me the northerner’s pistol; I refused. He put it back in his pocket and nodded, a motion of acknowledgment, t
hough I didn’t know what he was acknowledging. An understanding, perhaps. The most I could ask for.

  Ren and the boy had come out, too. He was dawdling near the doorway, but she was pulling on a large backpack and adjusting the wide brim of a hat. Without looking at me or the boy’s father she began walking towards the same gap in the trees that we’d taken the night before. When she reached it, she turned and waited.

  I looked at her, unsure of what was happening, until the boy’s father began to speak.

  She’s going back up the mountain. Only for a few hours. There are some things she left in her cave, and she wants to check on what’s left of her garden. Set some traps.

  I nodded. Ren kept waiting.

  She was wondering, the boy’s father continued, if you’d like to go with her. Just for the day.

  I looked at her again. I thought about our trip the previous evening. The trees, the streams, the sounds and smell and stillness of it all. I thought of low-flapping ravens, of the greenness of moss. I thought of how good it would be to tread through that world, to do it not just today but again and again, following Ren’s back, sliding into all that quiet, dappled beauty.

  And then I thought of the breakfast we’d just shared. Of the agony in her gulps, the tears on her cheeks. Of her still-healing wound, the scar it would leave—of her silence.

  I shook my head, but did not trust myself to speak.

  The man turned back to the house, where his son hovered beneath the eave. The boy waved at me. I waved back as, moving automatically, I pulled open the door of the utility.

  I looked one last time at Ren. She adjusted her pack, then gave a small nod. I felt suddenly transparent, as if she could see through my skin and flesh, and into the air behind me.

  Then she turned and began to trudge forward, slow and sure, into the trees. When she was out of sight I climbed into the driver’s seat, started the engine and drove away.

  72

  I LEFT THE mountain, and Ren left my darkness. I no longer saw her when I closed my eyelid. Instead, I saw what most people see: strange shapes, points of light, nothing. But while my dreams settled, I did not. I could not stay still. And while I saw many pleasant places, they were joined by just as many broken ones.

  I went looking for something like solace. I didn’t find it, no matter where I went, which ended up being just about everywhere. Always I expected the military to find me, but they never did. I supposed the generals were too busy clinging to power to bother with a crippled deserter. The odd patrol, the occasional cold remnants of a burnt town showed that things weren’t going well, for the military or for the people they ruled. But I didn’t stop to find out. It never seemed worth the time.

  I rumbled over the farmlands, skirted the cities, looking for somewhere to collect myself. But everywhere I stopped my skin jangled, and every place felt unsteady beneath my feet. The days of travel turned into weeks. My skills and strength made me useful to the various communities I passed through, so I was always able to feed myself and organise shelter. But I had done so much in the coup that might be remembered, and I didn’t trust that I wouldn’t run into someone with memories of my actions.

  Most nights I fell asleep thinking of the rain heron on the mountain, diving in and out of its high pool with only moss and stars for company.

  Eventually I came, by way of the old, perilous hill road, back to my home town in the south. I arrived in spring, a time I remembered as chilly and bright-skied. As I neared the port I began to skirt the granite hills of my youth, although their smooth domes were capped by snow—lingering signs of a winter that must have been even harsher than the one I remembered so well. These snowy peaks reflected the southern sun in a different, sharper way from the crystal of the granite. I tried to avoid looking at it, but the light lanced at my vision for the brief last stage of my drive.

  In town, I found that people had returned, although none that I recognised. They had boats, and they worked at the dock, but I learned that none of them were going after squid. They were trawling for fish. Any fish—they didn’t care what kind. They told me that almost all of their catch was ground up into fertiliser. When I asked about ink, trying to figure out if any of them knew how to harvest it, they laughed at me, as if I was bringing up a fairy tale. I thought of showing them the sea–sky painting in the pub, but the pub was no longer there. It had burned down, and only a few beams of charred, frozen wood remained.

  I walked on, looking at the buildings that had once been my school, my friends’ houses, avoiding the street that held my aunt’s cottage. I shuffled down the long white beach that ran away from the township until I felt something small break apart inside me, and I turned back. That night I slept in the hills, shivering in my tent under every blanket and piece of clothing I owned. In the morning I looked back at the town—at the whitening waves, the whiter sand, the mean collection of fishing boats. I left, and did not return.

  By then it was the third year after I had returned the bird. That summer millions of fish rose to the surface of the country’s largest river, bloating the banks with rot. Dry lightning licked once-wet forests into infernos. Peat fires burned underground in the marshes of the highlands, fires that might not go out for centuries. A few months later, frost entombed the roots of palm trees on the coasts. So much was ruined, either slowly or in red instants, and nothing was getting better, and nobody was doing enough about it. And through the quiet carnage of the world, I kept moving.

  73

  SOMETIMES I STILL feel that phantom chill—the sensation of air on the back of my lost eye. At first it didn’t worry me. I took it as a sign of my connection to the creature that had taken it from me, and that if I was feeling it, the bird must be healthy and free. But as years passed it began happening more and more, in all sorts of places, at random times. In the lush garden of a former city park, as I harvested pumpkins for semi-militant horticulturalists; under a hot lowland sun, as I taught survivalists how to gut rabbits; on the stony shore of a lake at dusk, as I angled for oily-fleshed salmon. At all these times and more I would feel it: the cold night grazing at my old, long-gone eye.

  The more it happened, the more it reminded me of how I had lost it, of the things I’d done, of the person I had been and perhaps always would be. I knew it was a phantom pain, but that made the feeling of it no less real. It came to be unbearable, this fake scratch of breeze and its associated memories, and I decided to do something about it.

  I was staying in a small town that had been mostly unaffected by the coup and what had followed. I cast around for a psychologist, but nobody had ever met one. I would have settled for a doctor to talk it over with, but the town’s last GP had been hauled into the army and never returned. There was a retired nurse, but he drank whisky for breakfast, and I didn’t want him to know anything about me.

  I considered my options. I couldn’t remember if there were riots happening, if people generally thought we were now lurching in a good direction or a bad one. Certainly the weather was still worsening. Either way, I didn’t want to have to go into a city, where the doctors would be. The thought of crowds made me flinch. But I had reached a point where the wind passing over my missing eye was jerking me awake three, four, five, times a night. I didn’t like my chances of finding any mindfulness experts or alternative therapists—everyone who the military had thought even vaguely resembled a hippie had been killed or chased over the borders during the coup. A lot of that chasing, I remembered, was done by me.

  Medical help of some kind was the only option I could come up with. I thought about the part of the country I was in, the places I was near. I imagined a map with the town at the centre of it. My mind roamed over the country surrounding it, the places people lived and didn’t, the farms and forests and lakes and hills—I was nowhere near the ocean; I had grown allergic to salted air and the sound of waves—and it dawned on me that help might not be far away.

  It didn’t take me long to reach the valley. I was sure it was the place. One
of the things that had made me such a good soldier was my memory, my attention to detail. I had rarely forgotten the particulars of my orders, my missions, or the soldiers under my command.

  Bare orchards greeted me as my car dipped down the valley’s green hills, and stone-fruit trees hustled the narrow road. I didn’t know where I was going, exactly, but smoke was rising from most of the farmhouses as I descended into the valley’s lower corners. After knocking on doors and asking a few questions, I was armed with an address and directions.

  I drove for another hour, over stone bridges, around tight bends hemmed by yellow-flowered hedges, and finally across flat fields, trim and ordered. I turned into the driveway I’d been directed to and followed its lines to a red-brick house with a neat lawn. I parked carefully, making sure my tyres didn’t damage the grass. I wondered if he was home, and what he’d do when he saw me.

  I didn’t have to wait. He came out as soon as my foot hit his lawn. I heard warm sounds of people from inside the house, but he closed the door. He had grown a beard, thick and curled, which hid whether or not his features remained youthful. But the rest of him was the same. Still hesitant, cautious. Still coming towards me, a look of concern in his eyes that I remembered so well.

  When my medic recognised me he paused, halfway across the lawn. I didn’t know how to greet him, so I raised a hand.

  Daniel stayed still, glued to that beautiful grass, and I wondered if he was afraid, if he thought I was there to do something terrible. He kept looking, then his eyes and cheeks softened. He must have seen something I wasn’t aware of. I thought I looked normal, or as normal as I could in those days. But he was coming to me faster, his strides urgent.

  I tried to tell him I wouldn’t stay long, that I just wanted some help with my old injury, that I was sorry to leap out of his past like this, but then he was before me, and he was not stopping.

  He crashed into me, and I was buffeted by a forceful hug. Half my breath was knocked out of me, and the sudden physical contact jittered my pulse. I found that I was returning his embrace. We stayed there, pressed tight, unmoving.