“And your mum? What’s she up to these days?”
This was torture. Paul and Peri had never tried to make small talk with him before: They’d always talked about interesting things, like nature and art and music. He forced himself to answer politely and was dreading the next question when Peri broke in:
“Tell me about Uganda. What’s it like?”
Timothy was surprised: She’d never asked him about his home country before, and he’d assumed she wasn’t interested. “It’s…different,” he said. “Warmer mostly, and there’s more sunshine and not nearly as much rain. But it’s not all dried up or anything,” he added quickly. “It’s got plenty of green plants and trees and flowers. Kampala’s the capital, so there are lots of big banks and hotels and crazy traffic….”
His memory conjured up the image of Entebbe Road at rush hour, crammed end to end with the blue-striped white vans that served as regular taxis, while the motorcycle boda-bodas darted in and out of the chaos. His mother had begged Timothy not to ride the bodas when he went into the city with his friends, since they were dangerous, but they were so much cheaper and faster than a taxi that he’d usually done it anyway.
“The buildings are mostly light-colored plaster,” he went on slowly, trying to put the images into words, “and the roofs are red. Instead of crows and pigeons, we have these big, ugly storks. And the streets are full of people, but it’s not like here, where everyone rushes around with their heads down and won’t even look at one another. Ugandans are friendly—they like to talk and laugh, and when you meet someone, they ask how you’re doing and if your family is well and if you have any news….”
Paul nodded politely, but Timothy could tell he wasn’t that interested. Peri, on the other hand, had a faraway look on her face, as though she were imagining herself in Uganda at that very moment. “It sounds fascinating,” she said. “Like nothing I’ve ever seen. I wish…”
Her words trailed off as Paul reached over and gently put his hand on hers. She looked down at their overlapping fingers, and her face closed up again. “Yes. Well, never mind that. Did you get enough to eat?”
“The computer’s in my studio,” said Paul, leading Timothy down the corridor to a pair of French doors. “The connection’s slow, though, and sometimes it doesn’t work at all. I can’t make any promises.”
Though the curtains were drawn and the room dimly lit, it only took Timothy an instant to recognize his aunt’s old parlor. But now the built-in shelves that had once held porcelain figurines were littered with paintbrushes and tubes of oils, while an easel stood where the piano used to be. And instead of family photographs the walls were hung with canvases, all rendered in the bold strokes and vibrant hues that were Paul McCormick’s trademark.
“Here you go,” said Paul. He flicked a switch and the track lighting at the back of the room came on, revealing a computer desk in the corner. “Help yourself. Any problems, give a shout.” And with that he wheeled back out into the hallway.
Timothy dragged over a chair and sat down in front of the computer. Despite Paul’s warning the internet connection seemed to be working fine, and within a few minutes he had logged in to his school account.
You have one new message, his mailbox informed him.
Timothy’s heart plummeted as he saw the return address. It was from his mother. Swallowing against the sudden dryness in his throat, he forced himself to click the email open.
Hello, dear one! Hope this finds you well and happy, as we all are here…
He relaxed. Just her usual weekly letter. She hadn’t found out about his suspension after all: wouldn’t, either, until Timothy was ready to tell her. Though when he explained the reason for what he’d done, the news that he’d picked a fight with the biggest boy in the school would be the least of his mother’s worries, probably.
He skimmed the first few paragraphs of her note—which included a report of how his little sister, Lydia, was doing at school, as well as a funny story involving one of the neighborhood children and a list of requests for prayer—then slowed abruptly at the sight of a familiar name:
Miriam has been helping me with the children’s club, and a wonderful help she is too! So good to have her lovely voice to lead the singing, instead of my feeble croak. She asks to be remembered to you, and says she will write soon. In the meantime I am sending you a picture I took of her and Lydia last Sunday….
Quickly Timothy scrolled down to the photograph. There she stood in front of the familiar white bungalow on Luthuli Avenue, one long arm draped over his sister’s shoulders. Her hair was a mass of tight braids, with a colorful scarf tied around it, and her smile seemed to blaze out of the screen. Miriam Sewanaku, his neighbor and best friend.
He missed her, now more than ever. She’d introduced him to the music of Bernard Kabanda, who’d become one of his musical heroes; and when he bought his first guitar she hadn’t laughed at the muzungu boy wanting to play Ugandan music, the way Timothy’s schoolmates did. Instead she’d gone to a family friend, one of the finest guitarists in Kampala, and persuaded him to teach Timothy how to play.
Without Miriam’s encouragement, he might have given up. But now the guitar had become his passion, and he couldn’t imagine a life without it. He would always be grateful to her for that—and lately, he’d come to realize that he might be a little more than just grateful. But she was a year older than he was, and he was a muzungu, and besides they were both too young to do anything about it. So he hadn’t worked up the courage to say anything…at least, not yet.
Reluctantly Timothy closed his mother’s letter and started a new message of his own. A few lines to his old email account in Uganda (which his parents never checked), a copy to Greenhill to make sure the dean was satisfied…done. He shut down the computer and…
There it was again, that feeling of being watched. As though there were some presence in the room with him, invisible but uncomfortably real. Timothy sat very still a moment, then abruptly spun around—
No one was there. But on the opposite wall hung a painting he’d never seen before. It was a portrait of Peri, her narrowed eyes staring directly out of the canvas. Her feet were bare, and she gripped a long knife in her hand.
Timothy got up from his chair and walked to examine the picture more closely. It was beautifully done, but something about it bothered him. It wasn’t that Peri looked murderous, not exactly: If her expression was fierce it was only in a protective way, like the face of a guardian angel. In fact, the way the light filtered through the leaves behind her looked almost like a pair of translucent wings….
No, that was stupid; he was reading too much into it. But something about the portrait still made him feel uneasy, like it was sending him a message—or a warning—he didn’t understand.
Timothy glanced around at the rest of the art displayed—mostly Paul’s, interspersed with a few pen-and-ink sketches in a different style that had to be Peri’s—then turned off the lights and left. But as he climbed the stairs, the image of that strange portrait still haunted him, like a voice whispering at the back of his mind:
Beware.
The guest bedroom had a four-poster and a window overlooking the front garden, and it was as big as the room he’d shared with three other boys at Greenhill. Timothy kicked off his running shoes and jeans, flopped back onto the mattress, and put his hands behind his head, thinking.
Maybe there wasn’t anything wrong at Oakhaven. Maybe it was just him. He’d been confused and unhappy for so long, he just needed time to relax and get his head clear—that was why he’d come here in the first place, wasn’t it? Maybe all he needed was a good night’s sleep, and this feeling of constant tension, of being spied on wherever he went, would go away.
And yet out there in the garden, beneath the oak tree…he knew what he’d seen, what his hands had touched. That hole in the trunk had been real. So how could it just have disappeared like that?
Part of him wanted to go back outside at once and investigate.
But the sky was dark now, and there’d be plenty of time for that tomorrow. Timothy got up, picked a novel off the shelf at random, and read until his eyes felt heavy. At last he turned off the light and settled down to sleep.
He was just drifting off when he heard a voice floating up through the grate beside his bed, muffled and tinny-sounding but still distinct:
“—difficult with him here, but we’ll have to manage somehow.”
It was Peri, talking about him. And now that Timothy knew it, there was no way he could close his eyes and pretend he hadn’t heard. He squirmed closer and dangled over the edge of the mattress, straining to hear Paul’s deeper voice reply:
“Of course. But we’ll still need to warn the others. Make sure they know it’s not safe to visit until we give the word.”
Not safe? Timothy frowned. All right, so he’d hit somebody and got himself suspended, but Paul was making him sound like some kind of dangerous criminal. Or the mad cousin shut up in the attic.
“I don’t think they’d try it in any case,” said Peri. “Not with so many crows about.”
Had she really said crows?
“You’re forgetting Linden,” Paul remarked. “Or was that wishful thinking?”
Peri must have made a face instead of answering, because Paul went on in an amused tone: “Not my fault, love. She’s her mother’s daughter. Or”—his voice sobered—“as near to it as we’re ever going to see.”
“Don’t say that! I’m not ready to give up yet. And don’t tell me you are, either.”
“What else can we do? We’re only human. No offense.”
Peri was silent.
“And as for the rest,” Paul continued more gently, “remember what Amaryllis said. They’ve got to find their own solution. It’s not your battle anymore.”
“Whose is it, then? Hers?” She was bitter now. “If it is, it won’t be for much longer. And how long will the oak survive once she’s gone?”
Timothy had done a lot of eavesdropping in his time, but this had to be one of the oddest conversations he’d ever overheard. He was still wondering who Linden and Amaryllis might be and what the oak tree had to do with anything, when he heard Paul say in a husky voice, “Love. Don’t look like that. Come here.”
There was a long silence, and then Peri said, “I just want this to be over. I want to be able to leave the house without worrying that something’s going to happen while I’m away. I want—”
“I know. If anyone was meant to see the world, it was you.” Now it was Paul’s turn to sound bitter. “And I can’t give you that. Especially not right now.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“Isn’t it?”
“Paul Graydon McCormick.” Her voice was stern, but there was a shake in it that might have been laughter, or tears. “You start wallowing in self-pity and I’ll wheel you down the road and dump you in the pond myself.”
“I’d like to see you try,” said Paul in a tone that was half-growl, and for a moment Timothy thought he was angry. But then their words slurred to murmurs, broken by pauses that were not entirely silent, and Timothy decided it was time to stop listening. He dropped a pillow onto the grate and wormed back into the middle of the bed, resolutely shutting his eyes.
But his dreams were full of dark wings and great trees falling, and he did not sleep well.
Three
When Timothy awoke, it took him a minute of staring stupidly at the ceiling to remember where he was. Pale light fingered the edges of the curtains, and the silence seemed expectant somehow, as though the house were waiting for its inhabitants to hatch.
The bedside clock glowed 7:05—too early for Timothy’s liking, but it was pointless trying to sleep longer. He stumbled out of bed, scrounged some clean clothes from the tangled mess inside his suitcase, and headed off to the bathroom.
He had just turned on the shower when he noticed something outside the window. Brushing aside the gauzy curtain, he peered out to see Peri striding across the back garden toward the house. She carried a vicious-looking knife in one hand, and the limp body of a dead rabbit in the other.
Timothy let the curtain fall and stepped into the shower, but even the hot water couldn’t wash away the crawling feeling that had come over him. As a child he’d thought everything Peri did was wonderful, but seeing her now reminded him just how unnatural her love of hunting really was. As far as he knew, she didn’t eat anything she caught, or sell the pelts either. Yet as long as he’d known her, she’d been killing wild rabbits and other small creatures on a regular basis….
“You’re up early,” Peri remarked when he came down to the kitchen a few minutes later, still damp-haired from his wash. “Did you sleep all right?”
“Not bad,” said Timothy, watching her sidelong while she wiped her hands on a tea towel. They looked clean, but as she turned them over he could see a dark line of blood beneath one nail.
“Well, I’ve already eaten and Paul won’t be up for an hour at least,” said Peri, “so you may as well go ahead and have your breakfast. There’s fruit and cold cereal, or you can make toast if you’d like—here.” She pulled the toaster from a shelf and set it on the counter, hesitating fractionally before plugging it in with a quick, almost savage thrust. “I’ll be in the studio if you need me.”
One apple and two bowls of cornflakes later, Timothy piled his dishes by the sink and looked out the kitchen window. The sky was the color of dirty wool, the garden dismal with rain. He still wanted to have another look at the old oak tree, but there was no reason it couldn’t wait until the weather cleared.
All at once he heard a high-pitched cry, and a small brown shape flashed by the window, with a crow in close pursuit. Timothy knew more about marabou storks than he did most British birds, but he was pretty sure crows didn’t usually hunt on the wing like that. Didn’t they eat things that were already dead?
From the other end of the house came a muffled oath, and the sound of feet pounding up and down the stairs. Timothy stuck his head out into the corridor to see Peri wrench the front door open and leap outside—
Had she been carrying a gun?
Timothy raced down the hallway and skidded to a halt on the step. Peri stood barefoot on the muddy lawn, an air rifle raised against her shoulder. She squeezed the trigger, and the crow plummeted from the sky.
Shocked, Timothy was about to protest, but then Peri turned and the fire in her dark eyes silenced him.
“Go back inside, Timothy,” she said.
“What happened?” said Paul sharply from behind them. “I thought I heard—”
“You heard me,” said Peri. She strode back into the house, propped the gun against the wall, and began wiping the dirt off her feet with a rag. “But it’s all right now.”
“Is it?” asked Paul.
Peri straightened up. “I did what I had to do,” she said. “And if those crows don’t keep their distance, I’ll keep shooting until they get the message.” Her fist clenched around the rag, crumpling it. “How dare they!”
Paul opened his mouth, glanced at Timothy, and shut it again. At last he said with deliberate calm, “Quite. But I expect people might begin to wonder, if you make a habit of it.”
People meaning him, Timothy supposed. But it was a bit too late to stop him from wondering now. “I don’t get it,” he said. “It was only a crow.”
“You don’t understand,” said Peri, and turned an appealing look to her husband. “It was chasing one of ours, Paul. What else could I have done?”
“Ours?” Paul looked startled, as though this put a whole new complexion on the matter. “Did it get away all right?”
“I don’t know,” Peri said, pushing her feet into her shoes. “I couldn’t see her anywhere.”
“I didn’t know you kept birds,” said Timothy.
“We don’t,” said Paul. “They’re wild. It’s just that we’ve been looking after them for a few years now, and we’ve become…quite fond of them.” He glanced at his wife, wh
o had turned her face away, then continued in a crisper tone, “The crows here are overpopulated, and they’re becoming more aggressive all the time. If something isn’t done to protect the other wildlife, we’ll soon have nothing but crows.”
“I’m going to look outside,” said Peri. “In case she’s just hiding.” She snatched up the rifle again and disappeared.
“Well,” said Paul to Timothy, “we may not get out much, but never let it be said we aren’t interesting.”
He smiled wryly as he spoke, but there was no humor in his eyes, and Timothy’s answering smile was equally thin.
Peri spent much of that morning in the garden and the neighboring fields, searching for her lost bird. When she returned to the house her expression was strained, and Paul began to look anxious as well. They kept leaving Timothy alone and going off to consult with each other in whispers, until Timothy couldn’t stand it any longer and went upstairs to play his guitar.
After five years of practicing an hour or more every day, he knew the strings so well he could have played blind. He’d even started picking out some tunes of his own lately, though songwriting proved to be more of a challenge than he’d expected. The tune he’d been working on had an amazing chord progression; just playing those three arpeggios made his bones vibrate. But he hadn’t been able to figure out what to play next, no matter what he tried.
Once again he felt eyes upon him, though he knew no one was there. Timothy steeled himself to ignore it and kept playing. Arpeggio, arpeggio, arpeggio…
Then his fingers seemed to move of their own accord, leaping up the neck of the guitar to a position he’d never even thought of before. He’d found it! Timothy slapped the guitar in triumph—and amazingly, that was right, too. Arpeggios, strum, slap, repeat. Perfect!