I half expected to find her gone when I woke at half past four this morning, but she was curled up on the roof where we left her – she’d taken to sleeping up there on dry nights, tucked behind the chimney. This morning, though, she was wide awake and watching the sky, its stars hidden behind a layer of thick blue-grey clouds.
‘I know,’ I said, as she twitched her wings in greeting. ‘I’m ready when you are.’
I got Rani and Calum up to say their bleary-eyed goodbyes, then asked Dad to drive Teacake, Allie and me over to the glen. The short journey passed in sleepy silence. Dad kept glancing at Teacake in the rear-view mirror, a question – the question – forming on his lips. Now, as he parks the car by the gate leading to the glen, he turns around to face her.
‘Well, then,’ he says. ‘This is it.’
He opens his mouth: I can see almost see the words spilling on to his tongue, but he swallows them back. Instead, he takes out his phone and pulls up a map of the country to show Teacake.
‘Fly north if you can,’ he says, suddenly business-like. ‘It won’t hurt if a few people spot you, as long as you’re high enough, but best to avoid large towns or cities just in case. Fewer plane routes up there too.’
He says goodbye and leaves the three of us to take the path towards the waterfall. Morning dew brushes against my ankles; the weak sunlight leaves glints of gold in Teacake’s hair and feathers. After a few minutes, we enter a small, leafy clearing and the waterfall comes into view. My breath catches at the splash of red in the pool below. It’s just the sunrise spilling its colours into the water, but it sends painful images flickering in front of my eyes.
Allie puts her hand on the small of my back. ‘Are you sure this is what you want? Teacake can leave from anywhere –’
I shake my head. ‘I’m fine. It has to be here.’
This place is where everything began to go wrong, where my own apocalypse began, even before the sky started to cave in. But so much has changed since then. It feels like I’m coming full circle.
Teacake flies low across the pool, dipping her toes below the surface of the water. My heart is hammering. The closer she comes to leaving, the more impossible it seems that we’ve got this far. I flinch every time something rustles in the hedgerow, half expecting Damien and a dozen Standing Fallen members to pop up from behind the bushes. The fear that crept up my spine the first few times I heard a car in the distance has lessened with each day that passes, but it hasn’t quite disappeared.
Allie says her goodbyes first. She hugs Teacake (who shoots me a bewildered look and gingerly pats Allie’s back – hugs are obviously something they don’t do where Beings come from), then takes both of her hands. I linger by the bushes, letting them have their moment. Afterwards Allie walks back to me, wiping the corners of her eyes with her sleeve. Her hand brushes my side as she moves back on to the path, leaving me alone with Teacake.
She sits down on a rock, the lower edge of her wings falling into the water. I watch her, trying to memorize all the things I know will eventually fade from my mind: the musical swell of her voice, the impossible lightness of her skin, the dreamlike feel to the world when she’s around.
A sparrow alights on a rock just by her foot. It dips its beak into the pool, ruffles its feathers, then takes off again. I watch it flit above the trees with another jolt of nerves. The sky is so vast, endless. It seems impossible that Teacake could ever find her way home again.
‘It’s not your fault.’
My heart stops. Everything stops. Teacake is looking at me, her eyes solemn.
‘What did you say?’
‘Maybe you feel guilty that you survived and they didn’t,’ she says slowly. ‘But don’t feel guilty, OK? Don’t blame yourself.’
A lump comes to my throat. She’s just repeating my own words – the things I said to her back in McEwan Hall after she saw the videos of the Falls. But the tears spill over, and I let out a sob. She still doesn’t know what she’s saying. To her they’re just sounds, without meaning.
Only . . . they’re not.Imeant them. I meant them when I said them to her. If I could tell Teacake she’s not to blame, surely I can tell myself that too.
I look up to the edge of the waterfall. The stream keeps rushing over the rocks, oblivious to all it robbed me of that morning. The same pain throbs beneath my ribcage, no duller than the day Mum fell. But something else has gone: the restless creature wriggling in my stomach and squeezing at my windpipe; the thing telling me it was all my fault.
Suddenly, Teacake is standing in front of me. I hold her tight, pressing my face into her shoulder, my hands against the waxy feathers of her wings. She wipes the tears from my cheeks. Her own eyes are glistening: the whites are pale pink against her deep garnet irises.
‘And the moon shines bright, as I rove at night,’ she says, nodding seriously. ‘Terms and conditions apply, Jaya.’
‘Exactly,’ I say, half laughing and half crying. ‘Go. Go fly.’
This time, there’s no dramatic take-off: she simply pushes off from the ground and rises above the waterfall, slow and serene. A few curious blackbirds loop around her legs, like ribbons trailing from a kite. Her wings make powerful sweeps back and forth, creating gusts of wind that ripple across the water. I close my eyes, feel the breeze on my face and in my hair.
When I look up again, Teacake has floated far past the treetops. Then, quite suddenly, she stops. She glides downwards, picking up speed as she tumbles towards the water. I leap to my feet, my heart in my mouth – but then she makes a wide curve across the pool, splashing me with the edge of her wings, and flies back into the air. She hovers above us for a moment, a peaceful smile on her face, and flicks her wings goodbye.
‘Go!’ I laugh, though my heart is still pounding. ‘Get home. Be safe.’
I walk back to Allie, who’s sitting below a beech tree at the edge of the path. She kisses the tears off my right cheek, runs one hand through my hair. Above us, Teacake rises higher and higher, her wings sketching pinkish curves against the sky. Allie leans against my shoulder, her hair tickling my ear. ‘It’s still hard to believe, isn’t it?’
The sun’s glare starts to makes our eyes water, but we keep watching as Teacake shrinks into the sky. Soon, she’s just a shimmer of movement against the sunrise. Another few beats, and she disappears from view. But not completely.
