Black Feathers Read Online Free PDF Page A

but I know it’s true – and they shone just as bright as the moon itself. His hair, well, I’ve never seen anything like that either, Mr Keeper. Black as Tor Caves on a winter’s midnight. So black it was blue. And it shone too. His skin, his eyes, his hair; lit up my dream like purest starshine. He made me feel a little strange. I suddenly thought maybe not all boys are only good for wrestling and playing ball and hunting. Maybe there’s other things they’re here for. He made my chest fill up with something, like I had something to give away to him – to everyone – but whatever it was, it was stuck there for the moment, with no way to come out. I looked down at myself and I’d grown lovely soft mams as big as my amu’s and I had hair on myself just like my amu. I felt lovely, Mr Keeper. It was the boy who brought them to me, so they only existed in the night country at first, but now…” She glances down shyly at the obviousness of her chest, “Well, they’re real. They’re coming. I shall be a woman soon enough.”
    Megan is crying. She doesn’t know why. She’s smiling too. Nothing makes any sense. But Mr Keeper doesn’t say a word. He merely nods, and the nod says he understands everything she’s telling him. Understands it better than she can now or perhaps ever will. She wipes away the tears with a knuckle and continues:
    “Then, just this evening past, the boy brought me another night country gift. It was a feather, quite long and thin and straight, but shimmering blue-green in the moonlight. It was the tail feather of a magpie. He touched it to my forehead and suddenly I wasn’t in my bed any more. Just for a moment – and I thank the Great Spirit that’s all it was – I saw a man bound to a twisted old black tree, a tree long dead, I reckoned. The man was suffering a great torment at the hands of his captors. It was so terrible, what they were doing to him, that the moment the boy took the feather away, I forgot it. All I know is that they intended to kill this man and they wanted him to suffer. They wanted his death to be so awful it would be a lesson to us all.
    “When the boy took the feather from my forehead, I was weeping. He gathered up my tears with the tip of the feather and flung them out of the window. The next thing I knew, my tears were sparkling in the night sky with a thousand other stars.”
    Megan shakes her head as she remembers.
    “He was a bearer of gifts, that boy.”
    She puts a hand to her chest.
    “And then he left. I couldn’t bear to see him go so I got up and followed him. He was too quick, though. He flew. Somehow, the night gave him wings. By the time I was out of the front door, he was gone. I was so sad. And then I looked down and there on the track outside the door was the magpie feather. It was pointing out of the village, in the direction of Covey Wood. I made a promise to myself in the night country, then. I promised I would follow the boy to Covey Wood. Then I went back to bed.
    “Come the morning, I’d forgotten all about the beautiful boy and his gifts and even my promise. You know how the night country is.”
    Mr Keeper’s eyes gaze deeply into hers. He seemed to lose himself for a moment.
    “Oh, yes, little thing. I know how it can be. I know it very well.”
    “When we’d cleared up the breakfast and Apa had gone to the fields, I decided to go for a walk. I found myself wandering to the meadow and saying hello to some of the animals. And then I walked around the high cornfield to the borders of Covey Wood. I remember thinking how dark it looked inside and how the wind flapped the leaves of the cornstalks ever so gently. The day felt lazy outside of the wood. But the breeze didn’t seem to penetrate the trees, so inside the wood all was silent and still. I was frightened to go in there.”
    “But you went in nonetheless, little thing.”
    “I did. I know I had a choice. I could have turned around right then and headed down to the river to