Eddie

I SIT HERE IN MY room and stare out at the dark. The stars are so bright tonight. I can see them up there: the Great Bear, the Little Bear. The stars: the same. The woods: the same. Me... changed forever.

There's a murmur of voices from the living room, down below. A big rumbling belly laugh. Was that... Dad?! It's such an unfamiliar sound. Then Mum saying something. And then another voice, a new-old voice. Jake.

He's come home. After fifteen years my big brother's come home. All of us under the same roof again—a family. Just for a couple of hours at a time. Baby steps. But today he came over for Sunday lunch, then stayed to sit by the fire in the living room. And it's weird and super awkward at times, like we're all trying to play the parts of family members without having learned our lines. Jake and Dad reaching for the gravy boat at the same time, apologizing to each other like strangers.

We are strangers. We're never going to get the lost years back. Sometimes I catch Jake shooting Dad the odd glance when Dad's not looking and I think: he hasn't forgiven him. Not yet. Maybe he never will. And at other times: Dad watching Jake with this raw, ashamed, sorrowful expression on his face. And I know that there's more to come... difficult, messy, angry, sad stuff that has to be dealt with but can't until they've got past the polite stranger stage.

But today everyone wanted to get along, and so we did: chatting over blackberry crumble, everyone's bellies full of food and booze. Jake saying how much he missed Mum's homemade custard, Mum getting all glassy-eyed and actually reaching out to ruffle his hair... then Jake joking that he'd even missed the lumps and Mum pretend cuffing him on the ear. That—the happy part—was when I had to make my excuses and come up here to be on my own. Because I'm OK with the awkwardness. I much prefer it, actually. I can hide behind it, hide the change in me.

I've caught Jake looking at me funny once or twice. And when it's just been the two of us he's opened his mouth like he's about to say something, then closed it again like he's changed his mind, or just can't find the words. I guess he's seen it before plenty of times in his work: guilt.

The worst part is everyone round here thinks I'm a hero. Telling me what a good job I did during the fire, getting all those people out... after I cycled back to The Manor because there was no way I could go home after what happened. What I did.

Did I mean to do it? Did I know what might happen when I put on that cloak? When I stood in the road to stop her in her tracks? When I, Eddie Walker, became a killer?

I jump at the sound of a soft knocking on my bedroom door. Mum pokes her head through the gap before I can respond because she never waits even though you'd think having had two teenage boys she'd have learned to give it thirty seconds at least.

"Alright, love?" She steps into the room. Stands looking down at me. I feel like I've been caught out doing something dodgy, even though I've just been sitting here on my bed looking out at the dark. I guess it's because I haven't had time to get my mask in place... the old version of Eddie I have to put on these days like a costume.

"Yeah," I say. It comes out a little hoarse.

"I'm just heading out to my book club," she says. "I think Jake's leaving in a little bit, too, if you want to say bye."

"Sure."

Just like I've seen Jake do a couple of times, Mum opens her mouth like she wants to say something. Closes it again. I wish she'd stop looking at me. I wish she'd just leave so I don't have to try so hard to pretend.

And then she drops something. Something that falls to the floor with a muffled flump. Both of us look down at the small dark shape on the floorboards.

"Whoops," Mum says. But there's a pause before she stoops to pick it up. A pause that gives me time to see what it is: a long, black leather glove. Not at all the sort of thing Mum usually wears (I know, because I once saved up to buy her the beige cashmere mittens she uses all autumn and winter). But that's not the reason I suddenly feel cold all over. It's because I've seen gloves like that before.

"Mum," I say, "what is that?"

Mum holds the glove for a moment in both hands as though weighing it, as though deciding what to say next. "It was you," she says, finally. "Wasn't it, love?"

For a sickening moment I just stare back at her, heart thumping, feeling like I'm going to vomit. Is she saying...

Then Mum says, "I mean, it was you who took the... the things from the understairs cupboard, wasn't it?"

I'm half relieved, half totally confused. I took those things to stop Dad using them, to protect him. Dad, one of the Night Birds. Dad who hid his mask and cloak and gloves there.

Wasn't it...?

"That was such a silly place to leave them," Mum says, shaking her head. "I needed somewhere I could grab them quickly and somewhere your dad wouldn't look, as he never does any cleaning. Luckily, there was a spare I could borrow. One of our number wasn't wearing hers that night."

Not Dad. Mum. It's my mum who was—is?—a Night Bird.

But—no. It can't be. It just can't. Mum is home and safety and comfort and cottage pie and watching cooking shows together. Mum doesn't go into the woods in the middle of the night dressed in a cloak and mask.

But maybe nothing should surprise me now. The whole world has turned on its head. No one is what they seem. Including me.

"But..." I say, trying to find the words, not knowing where to start. "I thought... I was so sure that it was Dad..."

"You thought your dad was a Bird?" Mum gives a little sigh. "Your father, of an evening, would go to one of the outbuildings and play Fortnite—I think that's what it's called—into the small hours with strangers on the internet. We both had to find a way to live our lives, you know? After everything."

"You..." I still can't cope with the size of this new knowledge. I start with the first thing that comes to mind: the blood in the woods. The black-cloaked figures. "It was you," I say, "you killed Ivor the bull?"

Mum gives a little sigh. "Ivor was old and sick. He had arthritis in all his joints, he was in constant pain. He had a good life and his time had come. We needed a sacrifice, for the solstice. For Samhain, too, Beltane... all the others. It's tradition. A blood-letting, to bring us good fortune in our endeavors. And we especially needed it this solstice."

I stare at her. She doesn't even sound like herself. It's like someone else—something else—has possessed Mum's body. Then she looks at me and says in her normal voice, "Honestly, Eds. Every time I looked into Ivor's poor old face he seemed to be saying ‘Help me.' Far kinder than being sent off to the abattoir."

"But... but Dad seemed so guilty..."

"Oh, your father did feel guilty, because he couldn't remember if he had left the gate open. He thought it might have been his fault that Ivor escaped. He'd been drinking and you know what your father is like when he drinks."

While she's been talking another piece of the puzzle has fallen into place. "Wait. That's why you were working at the hotel?" I see her in her white uniform pushing her cart, the laundry inside speckled with blood. "The sheets," I say, "with the blood on—"

Mum shrugs. "Ah, well. Yes—I was on my way to... deliver a message when I ran into you."

My head is spinning as I remember that night in the woods, with Delilah, much longer ago now. The black feather on the desk. "And the old man? Lord Meadows?"

"We simply paid him a visit... or two. You know what they say about a guilty conscience. Who knows? Perhaps there is such a thing as being frightened to death after all."

Francesca Meadows's face that last night. The staring eyes, the screaming mouth—

"This," Mum brandishes the black glove now like it's more than just a glove—which I suppose it is, "this gave me a purpose. When I put on that mask and cloak—I am something different. I am powerful. I am something more than myself."

Her words hang in the silence for a long moment. I can sense her looking at me but I can't bring myself to meet her eyes.

And into the quiet comes a sound from beneath us: another deep belly laugh from Dad.

Mum steps forward, puts her hands on my shoulders. Eventually, I manage to lift my gaze to meet hers. "That laugh," she says. "Do you understand what a miracle that is? I thought I'd never see your father happy again. Finally, finally, our family can start to heal. And Tome, too—rid of a deadly parasite. Because the Birds are like nature. And nature always finds a way."

Now she takes my face in her hands. "Oh my lovely boy. Don't cry. Please don't cry."

AFTERWARDS I'M LEFT here in the dark and silence with only the stars looking in at me. And I get it, what Mum said about becoming someone—something—else. I get it because I felt it that night.

But I killed her, all the same. I know that, too. I can feel it like a wound deep inside of me that no one else can see. For all Mum's talk of healing I don't know if or how I'll ever recover from it. Probably I never will.

But would I do it again, if I had the chance to go back in time? Yeah. I think I would.