‘I think it would be best if you left now, Father,’ said Violet softly. ‘After all, as you said, I’m my mother’s daughter.’
‘Graham?’ Violet smiled at the note of panic in Father’s voice.
‘I’m staying, too,’ said Graham, folding his arms across his chest.
Violet heard Father’s shallow, rasping breaths. Several of the bees were dangerously close to his mouth now.
‘The front door key, please, Father,’ she said. It landed on the wooden floor with a dull clank.
‘Thank you,’ she called, as Father, pursued by the bees, slammed the door behind him.
Violet held out her hand, and a lone bee came to rest on her palm.
‘You’re not afraid, are you?’ she asked, turning to Graham. ‘They won’t hurt you this time.’
‘I know,’ said Graham.
He put his arm around her. They stood still for a moment, listening to the car rumble away.
50
KATE
In the corridor, Kate can hear what sounds like hailstones hitting the windows. But they are not hailstones, she sees, looking through the doorway at her bedroom window; they are beaks.
Outside, illuminated by the moon, are hundreds of birds. She sees the gunmetal sheen of a crow’s feathers, the yellow glare of an owl. A robin’s red breast. Their bodies writhe and flutter against the glass. Snow falls around them, drifting to the ground. Their cries echo in her ears. They are here, she knows, because of her.
The door to the sitting room is slightly ajar. Simon is yelling frantically. He can’t hear her as she approaches, cloaked by the sound of the birds.
She pushes open the door. Simon is standing in the centre of the room, facing the window. The poker quivers in one white-knuckled hand. She is still for a moment, watching the muscles of his back tense beneath the fine wool of his sweater. The skin on the nape of his neck is goose-pimpled with fear.
Birds clamour at the window. Kate can see cracks begin to form in the glass, glinting silver like the thread of a spider’s web. There’s a scratching sound coming from the chimney.
‘Simon,’ she says. He doesn’t hear her.
‘Simon,’ she says again, louder this time, trying to keep the fear from her voice.
His blond hair flashes as he turns around.
Her heart knocks in her chest. The handsome features are sharp with anger, the lips snarling away from the teeth. The shock on his face at the first sight of her. How different she must look to him, she thinks, with her huge belly and cropped hair, Aunt Violet’s beaded cape around her shoulders. Then his eyes narrow, glittering with rage.
‘You,’ he hisses.
Kate takes a gulp of air as he moves towards her. She tries to shift her body away from him, back to the doorway, but he is too quick.
He shoves her into the wall, so hard that plaster dust drifts into the air like the snow outside.
‘You thought you could leave?’ he shouts, spittle landing on her face. ‘You thought you could leave with my child?’
The poker clatters to the floor, and then his hand is around her neck, squeezing, crushing, like a vice.
Horror settles into her stomach, cold and hard.
Thoughts spark and die in her brain. The colours in the room look brighter, even as her vision grows hazy at the edges. She sees the flecks of gold in his blue irises. The whites of his eyes, with their red tracing of veins. His breath is hot and sour in her face.
So this is it, she thinks, as her lungs burn from lack of oxygen. The end. Even if he lets her live – for the sake of the child, he might – it will not be a life, but a cell. She thinks, suddenly, of the jail in the village: the cold grey stone, darkness closing over her.
He is saying something now, but she can barely hear him above the tapping on the windows and the scrabbling on the roof.
He says it again, louder and closer, tightening his grip on her throat. Aunt Violet’s necklace is digging into her neck.
‘You are nothing’， he says, the words tolling in her skull, ‘without me.’
The panic is rising. Except it isn’t panic, Kate knows now. It never was. The feeling of something trying to get out. Rage, hot and bright in her chest. Not panic. Power.
No. She is not nothing.
She is a Weyward. And she carries another Weyward inside her. She gathers herself together, every cell blazing, and thinks: Now.
The window breaks, a waterfall of sharp sounds. The room grows dark with feathered bodies, shooting through the broken window, the fireplace.
Beaks, claws and eyes flashing. Feathers brushing her skin. Simon yells, his hand loosening on her throat.
She sucks in the air, falling onto her knees, one hand cradling her stomach. Something touches her foot, and she sees a dark tide of spiders spreading across the floor. Birds continue to stream through the window. Insects, too: the azure flicker of damselflies, moths with orange eyes on their wings. Tiny, gossamer mayflies. Bees in a ferocious golden swarm.
She feels something sharp on her shoulder, its claws digging into her flesh. She looks up at blue-black feathers, streaked with white. A crow. The same crow that has watched over her since she arrived. Tears fill her eyes, and she knows in that moment that she is not alone in the cottage. Altha is there, in the spiders that dance across the floor. Violet is there, in the mayflies that glisten and undulate like some great silver snake. And all the other Weyward women, from the first of the line, are there too.
They have always been with her, and always will be.
Simon is curled on the floor, screaming. She can barely see him for the birds, swarming and pecking, their wings quivering; the insects forming patterns on his skin. His face is covered by the tawny wings of a sparrowhawk; a flock of starlings have landed on his chest, their crowns shimmering purple. A brown fieldfare nips at his ear, a spider circles his throat.
Feathers swirl in the air – small and white, gold and tapered. Opaline black.
She lifts her arm – the pink scar catching the light – and the creatures draw back. Dark drops splatter on the floor.
Simon’s hands, criss-crossed with red gashes, are pressed against his eyes. Slowly, he removes them, and she sees the pink flesh, oozing blood, where the left eye should be. He cowers as she stands tall above him, the crow on her shoulder.
‘Get out,’ she says.
The creatures leave after Simon.
Kate’s hair moves in the wind created by their wings. The insects first, then the birds. As if by agreement.
She looks at the floor. It is strewn with glass, feathers and snow, glittering like jewels. It is the most beautiful thing she has ever seen.
Only the crow remains. It loiters on the windowsill, head cocked to one side. Unsure of whether to leave her.
There is the growl of an engine outside; the slamming of car doors.
The doorbell rings, then the door shakes with frantic knocking.
‘Police, open up!’
‘Kate? Are you in there?’ She hears the fear in Emily’s voice. Emily. Kate smiles. Her friend.
‘We’re going to force the door,’ says the police officer. ‘Stand back!’
The crow turns to her one last time. Kate watches as it takes flight, rising above the moon into the night sky. Free.
51
ALTHA
For a moment, I forgot where I was when I opened my eyes this morning. I had to pinch myself, to make sure that I was safe, that the dungeon and the courtroom really do lie in the past, along with that cold winter morning where ice glittered on the trees.