Birds of Paradise E-Book

Oliver Langmead

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

Many millennia after the fall of Eden, Adam, the first man in creation, still walks the Earth – exhausted by the endless death and destruction, he is a shadow of his former hope and glory. And he is not the only one. The Garden was deconstructed, its pieces scattered across the world and its inhabitants condemned to live out immortal lives, hiding in plain sight from generations of mankind.But now pieces of the Garden are turning up on the Earth. After centuries of loneliness, Adam, haunted by the golden time at the beginning of Creation, is determined to save the pieces of his long lost home. With the help of enlisting Eden's undying exiles, he must stop Eden becoming the plaything of mankind.Adam journeys across America and the British Isles with Magpie, Owl, and other animals, gathering the scattered pieces of Paradise. As the country floods once more, Adam must risk it all to rescue his friends and his home – because rescuing rebuilding the Garden might be the key to rebuilding his life.

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Leave us a Review

Copyright

Prologue

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

XII

XIII

XIV

Acknowledgements

About the Author

“It’s tremendous. With echoes of Charles De Lint’s Someplace to be Flying, it’s fresh, fast-paced and wholly immersive. Love it!”Joanne Harris, author of The Gospel of Loki, Chocolat and many more

“Astonishing, riveting. Powerful mythic fiction that makes you remember why you read this stuff in the first place.”Ellen Kushner, author of Swordspoint and many more

“Birds of Paradise sits in a place between Plato and John Wick, a place which frankly I didn’t know existed. And it is profoundly human too: whoever has ever known loss will resonate with it.”Francesco Dimitri, author of The Book of Hidden Things

“A beautifully written novel by one of the UKs most exciting new voices.”R. J. Barker, author of Age of Assassins and The Bone Ships

“A meaningful tale told with style, subtlety, and a deep understanding of the world and all its ways, Birds of Paradise joins the past to the present, the oldest stories to the new, without putting a foot wrong. It’s a beautiful, thoughtful read.”Aliya Whiteley, author of The Beauty and The Loosening Skin

“This is a profoundly felt and richly imagined novel; a fragment of myth from an older time which, as you turn it around in your mind, you know instinctively must be true. A beautifully executed and original work of art.”Una McCormack, New York Times bestselling author of Star Trek: Picard – The Last, Best Hope, The Undefeated and many more

BIRDS

OF

PARADISE

BIRDS

OF

PARADISE

OLIVER K. LANGMEAD

TITANBOOKS

LEAVE US A REVIEW

We hope you enjoy this book – if you did we would really appreciate it if you can write a short review. Your ratings really make a difference for the authors, helping the books you love reach more people.

You can rate this book, or leave a short review here:

Amazon.com,

Amazon.co.uk,

Goodreads,

Barnes & Noble,

or your preferred retailer.

Birds of ParadisePrint edition ISBN: 9781789094817E-book edition ISBN: 9781789094824

Published by Titan BooksA division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UPwww.titanbooks.com

First edition: March 202110 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.

© Oliver K. Langmead 2021Illustration © Darren Kerrigan 2021

Oliver K. Langmead asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

The king! With beak and talons

The king! In the form of man

Nothing escapes those eyes

He sees everything

Cult of Luna – ‘Ghost Trail’

PROLOGUE

Adam tends to the garden. He works among the flowers where the bees dance. Around his ankles, and up his legs, and across his shoulders coils the snake, its tongue flickering in his ear. Beyond the grove a hill rises high and the twin trees stand at its apex, knowledge and life overlooking all, with their roots buried deep in Eden’s rich earth. The birds overhead are of every colour and they fly high above the trees and call out to one another, and beneath them in the river and the lake swim and play the shining fishes, and among the trees wander the beasts and fowl that walk the earth, and all and everything belongs to Adam; the earth and the plants and the trees, all made for him, so that he might love and care for them; his paradise.

The low-hanging branches of the trees at the edge of the grove shift and Eve appears, her hair so long and dark, her eyes bright. As she approaches she digs her fingers into the skin beneath her breasts, beneath her ribs, until she pierces her flesh and she can grip hold of her ribs. Her ribs she pulls upwards, outwards, until they jut from her in glistening red and white nubs, and her skin tears away, revealing her lungs inflating and deflating, and her beating heart, thudding its own rhythm besides. From her open chest she tears her heart, pulling the arteries from it, dripping blood with every pulse of it, holding it out to him.

Uncoiling the snake, Adam lets it drop and takes hold of his own chest, digging his fingers into his flesh just as she did. He has one rib less and has to worm his fingers around to find purchase, but he manages to get a good grip and rips himself open. For Eve, he tears his ribs aside and reveals his own lungs and heart, so that they are both exposed to each other, breathing and beating in rhythm together. By touch he finds his heart and pulls it from himself, twisting each artery until it breaks and the pulsing organ is free. It is a heavy heart, bigger than Eve’s by far, but he offers it to her just as she offers hers to him, and in that way they make their exchange, their blood pouring into Eden’s soil and feeding the twin trees.

Eve’s heart is so small. Its beat is the fluttering of the wings of a butterfly. He presses it into his open chest tenderly, pulling his arteries and knotting them around the heart until it stays in place. Then, one rib at a time, he pushes his chest closed, and smooths his ragged broken skin over the hole. Eve is struggling to fit his heart into her chest, so he helps her, pushing and pressing until the heavy trembling organ remains in place, knotted beneath a net of veins, and then, together, they close the opening and seal his heart inside.

When they are both shut, her heart in him, his heart in her, they embrace, she so small, so delicate in his broad arms. There is no weakness to him; her heart has made him stronger, for all its tender fluttering. Eve, too, grips tighter than he has ever known her to, as if she might sink into his skin and become him, return from whence she came. Eden’s bright sun sinks, and Eden’s silver moon rises, and as dusk becomes night becomes dawn becomes day, the snake coils around them both, tighter and tighter, like rope, until they are bound so closely together that Adam no longer knows where he ends and she begins.

I

Cinema still seems strange to Adam. He’s always been a great admirer of literature, but he still struggles to get his head around moving pictures. The problem, he thinks, is that he’s too used to the ambiguity of naked words – the way that he’s allowed to be the director of the story when he’s reading it. Watching a film is like watching someone else’s idea of how a story should look, and he prefers the pictures he makes in his mind.

The film he’s watching is about a group of plane crash survivors, marooned on an island. The characters are covered in layers of artfully arranged filth, and when they grimace their teeth are pearly white. They deliver lengthy monologues, and die handsome deaths, and Adam becomes preoccupied with the scars across the backs of his hands, shining in the light cast by the projector.

White rivers through dark skin.

Eventually, a scene draws his attention. One of the survivors has whittled a spear out of a stick, and is standing waist deep in a river. The survivor lashes out with his crude harpoon, and raises his catch triumphantly. The camera zooms in on the fish, speared and still flailing, its shining scales refracting the sky into all kinds of colours. The camera pauses on the fish as it suffocates, and Adam realises that he feels as if the spear through the fish is jutting through his chest as well. The scene changes, but the sensation of being skewered does not fade.

Today, Adam is working security. He has been charged with escorting a young actress by the name of Cassandra Coleman, whose real name is Sally Ainsley, to and from the film’s premiere. From here, he is able to see her, sitting between a grizzled-looking veteran actor and the film’s writer, whose name is Damon Darcy. Cassandra is doing a stellar job of ignoring the way Darcy keeps brushing his leg up against her own; the black trouser of his impeccably fitted suit against the silvery scales of her dress. Whenever she has a scene, Adam watches the way she mouths along with her lines, eyes glassy.

“Adam,” she says, when the curtains have closed. “I want to go home.”

But of course, they can’t go home. There’s still the after-party. So, Adam becomes her shadow and guides her there. Cameras flash and microphones are thrust into her face, and she bears it bravely, all the way to the limousine.

“What did you think?” she asks. “Was I good?” She’s looking out of the window of the limousine. Adam thinks that she was the best bit of the film, but he stays quiet because she isn’t expecting an answer. The night lights of Los Angeles streak across her face in red and green and blue, and she pulls her white fur collar up around her shoulders, and she looks so delicate that she might shatter.

The party is too bright and Adam feels exposed beneath the hot lights strung from the roof of the marquee. Champagne is flowing freely from bottles to glasses to throats, and everyone seems like exaggerated versions of themselves. The more Cassandra drinks, the smaller she becomes. Darcy’s hands rush eagerly across her shoulders and down her spine, making the scales of her dress shimmer, and she does her best to laugh at his jokes. “You and me, baby,” he’s saying. “You and me. I’ll write you in.”

She makes to turn away, but he grabs her wrist. Adam’s hand is upon his shoulder in an instant. “Hey, man,” says Darcy, trying to grin at him. “Hey now.”

Darcy squirms uneasily beneath Adam’s grip as he’s led through the marquee. His red face is reddening further. “Hey, shit. Look, man.” He struggles, jabs an elbow out and nudges a waiter, who spills a tray of champagne. Through an open archway decorated with fairy lights, they emerge into the smoking section, where Adam releases him.

“Shit.” Darcy wipes the champagne from his suit. “Look what you did! Don’t you fucking know who I am?” He digs into his satchel and hefts out an ornament. It looks like a miniature replica of a typewriter, cast in gold. He waves it triumphantly at Adam, eyes bloodshot, nostrils flared. “Do I look like just anyone to you? Anyone you can just push around? Look at you. What have you ever done? This is a fucking Golden Typewriter.” Of course, Damon Darcy takes his screenwriting award with him to parties. “Who the fuck do you think you are?” he demands, trembling.

Adam takes the trophy from him. He can still feel the spear grating against his ribs. He can still see the writer’s hand, lustily caressing the scales of Cassandra’s dress.

“Hey! What the fuck? What the fuck are you doing?”

When Adam kills Damon Darcy, he feels divorced from the action, as if he is simply watching another scene from the movie. There is the motion of Adam’s arm, and the glint of gold as the typewriter flashes through the air, and the crunching of the writer’s bones. There is no passion in the murder – it simply feels like the way the script plays out. A repeat of something he has done before.

When the deed is done, chaos reigns around him.

Adam stands, drops the trophy, and returns inside. Everyone is running away from him. For a brief moment he glimpses Cassandra – the glittering of her silver dress, and the flash of terror in her wide eyes – and there he finds relief; he no longer feels as if he is flailing on the end of a spear. His relief is brief – no more than the slightest ripple through the placidity of his apathy – and when it leaves, he takes a seat at the heart of the abandoned marquee. He looks at his hands and the blood turning his bright scars red, and wonders why all of this feels so familiar.

The authorities arrive. They tear down the tent with their cars and their boots, and they surround him. Dozens of rifles are pointed at his scarred skull. Adam kneels, and presents his wrists, but they don’t have any handcuffs big enough, so they use zip-ties.

They haul him into a van, close the doors, and leave him in darkness.

* * *

“Hey, pal. You paying attention?”

Over the past two days, Adam has seen a lot of different faces. Some are kind, but most are furious. He lets the interrogations roll over him – lets their words go unheard. He finds a hidden place inside himself and goes there. Even when they try fists, their blows go unfelt. It’s been a long time since Adam last saw his own blood, and their knuckles don’t draw it.

“Listen. You’re fucked. You know that and I know that.”

This man has a drooping moustache, hiding his red face. Behind him, another man, clean shaven, is leaning against the wall. Both have their sleeves rolled up. The moustached man has laid out photocopies of documents on the interview table. They spark recognition, and for the first time Adam begins to pay attention.

“We need your help with something else. What can you tell us about these?”

Some of the documents look ancient. Crumbling at the edges. Their presence means that the LAPD have searched Adam’s apartment – turned it upside down, probably.

“My garden,” he says.

The detectives exchange a glance. “What about your garden, pal?”

Adam realises his mistake immediately. If they haven’t dug it up yet, they definitely will now. He leans back and thinks about his cherry tree. He remembers it as a sapling, no more than a twig. Leaves, so small. He remembers the seasons as they passed over it – remembers the way he would fall asleep against it as it grew tall. He remembers the taste of its cherries.

“Look,” says the man with the moustache. “These certificates don’t make sense. You don’t make sense. You’ve gotta help us out here.”

Reaching for the closest couple of photocopies, Adam reads them. The first says that Adam’s name is Adam Reynolds, and that he was born in Massachusetts a few decades ago. The next one says that Adam’s name is Adam Thompson, and that he was born in Kenya almost a century ago. He remembers both of those lives as if he had read about them once in a book – as if they were other people that occupied his head for a while.

“What do these mean, pal?”

They are keepsakes. That’s all. Mementos nobody was ever meant to find.

Embedded into the wall is a mirror. In it, Adam looks like the shadow of a giant. “I’ll tell you if you give me a book to read,” he says, because he knows he can tell them anything. They won’t believe the truth.

“Sure.” The man with the moustache leans back, opens his arms, inviting Adam to speak.

“I got made before death.”

The rest of the interview goes on as before. Their questions bounce off his skull. Before long, he is led back to his cell by an armed quartet of officers. The cell is far too small, but it has a window that lights up in the evening, and Adam is surprised to find that today somebody has left a book for him to read. He makes a note in his head to try and remember the officer with the moustache. Then, he sits on his bunk and begins to read.

The book is nothing good – a well-thumbed pulp noir – but Adam lets himself become immersed in the words. He watches the book’s city rise in his imagination; builds the streets, fills them with people and rain. The book’s protagonist sails out to the middle of a lake, and there, with a hook, fishes out a sunken corpse, and for a brief moment Adam feels the curve of the hook viscerally, through his chest. The feeling fades as he continues, as the book’s characters come to life for him. He reads, and he reads, until the room grows bright.

The sun is setting.

When Adam looks up, there is the silhouette of a bird across the floor, made enormous by the sun. But before he can turn and see it, it flaps its wings and takes flight.

* * *

Recently, Adam’s been thinking about Eden a lot. The problem he’s been having is that he’s not sure which bits of his memories are real. He distinctly remembers waking up early one day and walking through the field of long grasses; the way the grasses cut little red lines across his palms, and the way the waters of the lake at the base of the hill sparkled as if all of Eden’s stars had been poured into it. But when he remembers that morning, it feels as if he’s wearing shoes. It’s not a case of being unable to recall the feel of the grasses beneath his feet, which he knows he should remember; more that there is something faulty with his memory.

The problem, he thinks, is the tangle of thorns growing in his head. He can feel them scratching at his skull, and all the thick, twisted coils of them are making it difficult for him to remember things properly. He’s not sure what the tangle of thorns is – but he does know that it hurts to remember certain things. In fact, the deeper into the thorns he tries to remember, the sharper they get. There is something terrible at the heart of the tangle, he thinks – the root cause of all the dreadful needling growth – and he’s not sure he wants to find out what it is.

* * *

Adam is put into a cold white room with a single table, a single chair, and four lawyers.

Three of the four lawyers are speaking to him simultaneously, and Adam only has the vaguest idea of what they are saying. They have interchangeable faces, as if they have been cast from the same mould, and he is only able to tell them apart by the colour of their ties. The lawyer with the yellow tie is telling him that he should plead guilty; the lawyer with the blue tie is telling him that he should try for a plea bargain; and the lawyer with the red tie is telling him to plead insanity. Adam sits in his chair, idly runs his fingers across the metal surface of the table, and repeatedly glances at the quiet fourth lawyer, feeling like a man who can see an oasis in a desert, but mistrusting what his eyes are telling him.

The fourth lawyer leans against the far wall, and is absorbed in the screen of his phone. He is wearing a suit that looks as if it cost more than the suits of all three of the other lawyers combined. It is a black suit, with a black shirt and a black tie, and his hair is black and tastefully tousled, and the rims of his rounded designer spectacles are black as well. He is pale, and small, but his shadow is cast long before him.

All at once, he lowers his phone and raises a hand towards the door. “Out,” he says. Then, “Bring me a chair.”

The three other lawyers are immediately silenced. They leave with their heads bowed. Only the lawyer with the blue tie briefly returns, to deposit a chair opposite Adam. The lawyer in black unfastens his jacket and sits, and the temperature in the room seems to drop. There is a long silence as he observes Adam, punctuated by the sound of his fingers drumming rhythmically on the metal table.

“Rook, I’m not—”

“Shut up,” says Rook.

Silence reigns anew. Eventually, Rook removes his spectacles, and places them on the table between them. “Fake,” he says. “They create a narrative for me. They tell my clients that I have spent a great deal of time reading and straining my eyes in order to learn the many nuances of law. They give me an air of superiority and, because of that, I remain unquestioned. Just one of the many significant little details I have laboured at in order to create the perfect disguise.”

He leans forward. “Do you know how much effort it takes me to have all the certificates and passports made? This government has a lot of new systems in place – all manner of gates through which a man must pass to prove that he is, indeed, the person that he claims to be. Every year, my role in our grand masquerade grows more complex and, as such, more precarious. Every year, we take one step closer to discovery and extinction. Tell me, Adam. What drove you to murder a celebrity?”

“I don’t—”

“Shut up. It was a rhetorical question.” Rook leans back, returns to drumming his fingers. “I’m sure you’re well aware of the ire I harbour at being dragged down here to fix this. I have a life, Adam, which I am quite proud of. I have a life which you have threatened by your actions. Yes, I know that the police have found a whole selection of your old certificates, and yes, I am angry that you’ve failed to follow my very clear instructions on how to dispose of them. Fire, Adam. The great cleanser. As simple as striking a match and setting them alight. Poetic, even: that, much like the phoenix, you should be reborn into a new life as the old one smoulders. Their discovery threatens my life, and the lives of all those whom I protect. Do you understand the damage which you might have caused, had I not been so swift in rushing down here?”

“They’re not—”

“Shut up.” Cleaning his spectacles, Rook perches them back upon his face. “The question remains: what should I do with you? The obvious answer is that I should leave you in prison for at least a couple of decades, that you might learn some kind of lesson from the mess you’ve created. Indeed, I have an ongoing arrangement with Barracuda which should keep him behind bars for at least thirty years yet. Perhaps it would be best if you joined him, and were given time to reflect. That being said…”

Adam considers the idea of a lifetime spent behind bars. It would be quiet, he thinks; an opportunity to do a lot of reading. And maybe, given time and patience, he could find the cracks in the walls of his confinement and grow things there, like lichen, or moss, or tiny mushrooms. It would be a long, patient, soothing time, free of the pressure of having to remember things.

“Perhaps,” says Rook, weighing the word. “Perhaps it would be better were you to be free, and abroad, away from prying eyes. Out of my hair, as it were. I do have a matter that requires the attention of someone other than myself, and you may very well be able to help with it.” Rook makes a pyramid of his hands. “It would be a simple enough operation. An escalation of your crimes to the federal level, which would necessitate moving you to a far more secure location, remote from Los Angeles. And in the act of moving you, an opportunity would come to free you. You would be a fugitive, of course, but I imagine that you might lose the authorities with the appropriate assistance.” Pausing for a moment to think over his plan, Rook smiles to himself. “Yes. Very good. I think it the best option. You are clearly not in your right mind, but I still believe there’s enough of the man you once were in you to be useful. Let’s try giving you an errand.” He stands, fastening his jacket closed.

Adam finds that he is disappointed by Rook’s decree; he had rather liked the idea of staying in prison for a while. “What’s the job?”

“Oh.” Rook focuses on Adam again. “I need someone to find my brother. His spending habits have become peculiar as of late, and I have been unable to contact him. Indeed, my only means of tracking him is by following his withdrawals, which have been growing steadily more substantial. It’s… unlike Magpie to spend my money. I’ve never known him to not have his own. And while I am well aware of my brother’s eccentricities, this is unusual, even for him. I’d like someone to track him down, and either have him contact me, or questioned; I’d like to find out where my money is going.” Rook knocks on the door, waiting to be released. “Last I knew, he was in Scotland.”

“Okay,” says Adam.