Page 10 of The Unknown Birds

A wave of panic battered Ash—she was well aware what shock could do to a body. But then his cocky half smile grew bigger, and she was able to breathe once more.

She must have stopped speaking at some point, for the audience began to clap, reminding her she and Rook were not alone.

“We have time for a few questions, I think,” Professor Richards suggested, and though she had little interest in the audience or their questions, Ash reluctantly agreed.

“Wonderful lecture, Miss Ashley,” a woman about her mother’s age called out, rising to her feet. “Do you know any of the poets personally?”

At the sound of her name, Ash snapped back to the present, but her voice came out raspy when she replied, “I’ve had the very great privilege of meeting one or two, yes, and thank you.”

“Will you make a study of poems from the next war?” a young man in the front row asked.

Before she could answer, Richards cut in. “Yes, do you still study poetry, Miss Ashley?”

“These days, mostly just those written by schoolchildren still learning the form,” she said to a round of laughter so polite she wanted to scream.

Through all the questions, her eyes never left Rook’s face. She wanted to memorize it for safekeeping, because if she looked away even a moment he might disappear for another twenty years.

Suddenly the congregation was surging towards her, and Ash realized the session must be finished because they clapped their hands and slapped her shoulder, babbling more incomprehensible questions she couldn’t be bothered to hear.

They pressed forward like soldiers preparing for a push over the top into No Man’s Land. Someone shoved a fistful of papers in her face, finally severing her eye contact with Rook, and she wanted to hiss and claw, whatever she must do to keep from being drawn fully back into the present moment.

“My brother wrote these poems. Can you get them published?”

“My uncle wrote these as well.”

“Do you know Siegfried Sassoon? Can you bring him to your next lecture?”

“Is it true you were a soldier at the Front yourself?”

“What do you think is going to happen? Is Germany all bluster this time around?”

The questions merged into chatter, a cacophony of annoying gulls, a wall of desperately unwanted sound.

And then she found him again, and all went quiet—or almost quiet—the eerie pitch of false silence as your ears ring after a too-close shell.

With the assistance of a cane, he pressed through the crowd towards Ashley until the man in the tawny cap and glasses appeared at his shoulder. A good ten years too young to be Tom Tomasson and ten years too old to be his ghost, the man whispered in Rook’s ear and gestured at the door. With a wary nod, Rook turned and followed him outside.

“No,” Ash tried to call to him, but the word came out a whisper as she stepped forward into the barbed-wire fence of strangers’ hands.

She cleared her throat. “No, I don’t know how to have them published. I merely studied the ones that were. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, I’m afraid I must go.”

Shouldering her way through the surprised and disappointed mob was like slogging through the mud of No Man’s Land, each step more difficult than the last. Ashley held her breath until she burst out of the lecture hall, running down the stairs and scattering pigeons across the courtyard.

Passersby turned to gawk or jumped out of her way, but there was no one there, only students kicking a football idly in the waning evening light or scurrying home, arms laden with books from their study sessions in the library.

She turned one helpless circle, exhaling a frosty, devastated breath, and a sob choked her throat, threatening to erupt for all of London to hear.

He’d been a specter after all. Should she be worried that her mind was starting to slip, playing tricks, aging her ghost after all this time?

Before she could decide, a form pushed away from the shadows where it had stood against the wall, and the form became a man in a fine black coat with baggy grey trousers and a cane which he used to take one step and then another in her direction.

She wanted to fly to him, to take his warm hands and touch his soft face and convince herself he was real, but like that nightmare mud, she was stuck, unable to smooth down her skirt or fret with her close-cropped hair, unable to so much as budge until he reached her, staring as though he too had seen a ghost.

“You’re alive,” she gasped, releasing the pent up sob at last.

“I’m alive,” he repeated, almost like he didn’t quite believe it himself. “And you’re…” He shook his head, eyes roving her face as though making her image over anew. “A woman?” he asked, his voice thick with emotion, confirming once and for all that he’d never known the truth.

Chapter 5