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“I’m still not exactly sure what he was Gathering.” Eggie was sitting on the edge of the sofa, red nails tapping on the side of her teacup. The Bridge ladies and the rest of the creaky fan club never called anymore because Gavin had stopped Gathering since Buddy died.

  “Death,” Bill said. “I must have told you twenty times by now. He was Gathering little pieces of death from all of you and then he gave it to Buddy.”

  “But I just don’t understand that at all. We all have a death in us. Why didn’t he take some from you and Gem?” Her mother’s look was reproachful; they had failed to contribute any of their deaths to Gavin’s Gathering. The Bridge ladies could never be told what had happened in the garden after they’d left and so Eggie had no one to confide in who’d shared the same fate.

  “Maybe your death was easier to get at. Maybe it was right there on the surface and he only had to lift it off you. Ours would have been deep and he’d have had to dig,” suggested Gem. She would never have thought it possible, but she was missing Buddy playing with his cap at the table, hiding under the beech tree, sitting beside her on the decking the day all the birds had swirled around them. Perhaps missing wasn’t the right word. She was getting accustomed to the idea he would never be back.

  Eggie was still trying to understand what had happened to her? “And how can you Gather pieces of death? How does that work? What is a piece of death?”

  “Creaky old knees, wrinkled skin, greying hair,” Bill suggested.

  She shook her head, dismissing his answer with some annoyance. “You have no more idea than I do, Bill. I’m just not sure what I have given up. I wish Gavin would have explained what he was doing. I can’t help but be cross with him.”

  “Oh, come on, Eggie,” said Bill. “He’s only four. What could he say? You saw him burn up the roses. That should have been your clue.”

  “Well, it wasn’t. That was just a few plants.”

  “And anyway,” said Bill. “Why aren’t you happy? He’s probably given you a few extra years. You should be very grateful.”

  “If I knew that for certain then I would be happy, but I don’t.”

  Eggie had been harping on about Gavin’s Gathering since she’d found out about it. Gem at first thought it was her need to make a drama out of everything, but there seemed to be some greater issue behind her repetitive circling of the subject.

  “What exactly are you worried about, Mother?” Gem asked. “What do you think Gavin’s Gathering will do to you?”

  “It’s just...”Eggie put the cup down and then grabbed it up again. For a second she reminded Gem of Buddy and the way he would nervously fidget with things.

  “That creature,” Eggie continued, “I’m frightened I’ll have to share any part of his fate.”

  “Creature! Buddy was not a creature.” Bill sounded annoyed. The word creature could carry with it compassion or disdain, and Eggie’s weighting was painfully obvious.

  “Oh, Bill. Leave it please,” Eggie burst out. “This is not about Buddy. This is about me. I’ve been thinking. I can’t stop thinking about it. What if the day of my death comes and I don’t die. What if I’m left like Buddy hanging on? I can’t bear it.”

  Eggie jumped up and stood hesitant as to where to go for a second or so and then she headed for the window to look out into the garden. Once there she drew in her breath sharply.

  “Gem, there’s a giant crow right there.” She looked at Gem as if she was to blame for any and all sightings of birds.

  “It’s outside. What’s it going to do to you?” Bill’s voice was grumpy, and Eggie turned pointedly away from him without responding and banged the window furiously.

  “Scoot! Scoot! Go away!” she shouted as she thumped at the glass. “It won’t go. Can’t you make this thing go, Gemma?” Eggie’s tone had lifted upwards into a wail and she ran back to the sofa where Bill was waiting for her, still brooding on Eggie’s use of the word, creature.”

  “Buddy knew how people felt about him, you know. It made everything worse for him. Everyone could have been a lot nicer to Buddy.”

  Eggie grabbed up her bag and started hunting in it for her car keys. “I am not going to stay here to be lectured at by you, Bill. If you are saying I could have been a lot nicer to Buddy, then you could be a lot nicer to me. Why don’t you try it? It’s not like I can try to be nicer now to Buddy. He’s dead.”

  Bill spread his hands wide in defeat and sank back into the sofa, Eggie’s tirade having robbed him of either the words or the will to respond. Gem suspected he just wanted Eggie gone and talking back to her would only delay the moment of departure.

  “What is that crow doing now, Gemma?”

  “It’s not a crow,” she murmured, having gone to the window, “It’s a jackdaw.”

  “Oh, what’s the difference?” Eggie had her hand on the doorknob. “Is it still sitting there?”

  The jackdaw was indeed still sitting there. Gem wondered was it the same one that Buddy had held. Its black eyes had a soft expression as it faced into the evening sunset, soaking up the last rays of light. Gem wondered how on earth her mother could be frightened of this beautiful creature.

  “Why don’t you come to the window and look at the bird? It’s not scary and it can’t get at you anyway. It might help you not to be so frightened.”

  “Would you leave off about your damn birds?” Eggie yelled, and she left, slamming the door shut behind her.

  The bird flinched at the noise, but remained where it was.

  “It was giving her a reading,” said Gem quietly.

  “I get readings for people that don’t want them,” said Bill. “You have to respect what they want. So I don’t tell them. What does it say anyway?” Bill’s defeated look had completely vanished and if anything he looked fairly pleased with himself. He came over to look at the bird. It met his gaze and returned it with that soft black look.

  “That bird is smiling at me. I never knew a bird could smile before. It’s in the eyes, isn’t it?” he said.

  “Well it’s not in the beak,” said Gem. “It’s just saying not to worry. That’s all. Everything’s fine, everything is going to be fine. Isn’t that really nice of it when she’s always been awful to birds? And she won’t even listen to it.”

  Bill nodded. “Creatures are forgiving.”

  Gem looked out into the garden. She would never again see the spot where Buddy died without seeing him there, outstretched on the ground, his mother thrown across him, screaming at the injustice of having lost her eyes and her boy.

  Gem knew she would also always remember the last conversation she’d had with Buddy.

  “I don’t want Eggie spending the rest of her life worrying about what’s going to happen to her. She can be nasty, we all know that, but I don’t want her chained to a fear.” She was thinking about Buddy chained to his mother’s grief, his family chained to her decision. She got a heavy feeling in her chest just thinking about all that.

  Bill seemed to have a funny thought. His shoulders shook and he had a smirk on his face

  “What’s so funny?” she asked.

  “I was thinking. She might not want to hear it from a bird, but perhaps she’d listen to a spider. Say we give it a few days, I have to let her suffer a little bit Gem, I just do, don’t judge me, and then I’ll go over and tell her I got a web for her. Tell her everything’s fine and she’s not going to turn out like Buddy. She’ll believe the spiders. They’ve always told her the truth.”

  The jackdaw suddenly turned its head to one side as Bill finished speaking and stared at him with an expression that appeared to be incredulous. Then it looked all around it before cawing loudly and taking to the air with loud flaps of its strong black wings.

  “Wait!” said Bill. “It heard me, didn’t it? It understood me. It knew what I was saying about the spiders. What did it say?”

  Gem stared out into the garden at the empty spot where the jackdaw had been. She looked to the left and saw it disappearing over the gar
den fence, flying determinedly. She knew it would come back, over and over again until its message was delivered. It wouldn’t give up until it fell out of the sky. She thought about all those birds who had been trying to deliver readings to her over the years and then quickly pushed the thought away. She couldn’t change that now and it didn’t bear thinking about.

  “See the direction that jackdaw is flying in?” She indicated the spot where the jackdaw had disappeared.

  Bill followed the direction her finger was pointing in and groaned.

  “Oh, yes,” she said. “The jackdaw says Eggie’s house is this way. Get going. Oh, and it’s not going to give in until you do it. It will fly back and forth, back and forth until you get over there.”

  “Damn bird,” said Bill. “Won’t even let me have a few days fun.”

  “It doesn’t think it’s fun,” she told him.

  Bill shook his head sadly. “Spiders would have let her wait,” he said, but he was already looking for his jacket, stuffing his car keys into his trouser pocket.

  “Don’t go over immediately,” she said.

  “I know, I know,” he waved at her as he opened the door. “I will now go and walk around the meadow and get the ends of my trousers nicely drenched and then I shall go saunter on over to Eggie and put an end to her turmoil. She will barely thank me and I will see myself out. But Eggie will sleep better tonight so it will all be worth it.”

  He sounded exasperated. Being around Eggie. Thinking about Eggie, could bring that on.

  “And the jackdaw will be able to sleep too,” she reminded him.

  He stopped at the door and thought about that for a moment before turning back to her to declare.

  “That jackdaw deserves a decent night’s sleep. Suddenly I feel a hundred times better about my little excursion.”

  He tramped along the decking with heavy steps, but she could see that his eyes were laughing.

  Bill called Gavin off the trampoline to join him and the two of them left the garden side by side, off to look for spider Magic and wet cobwebs. The space on Bill’s left side where Buddy used to be looked empty, Gavin’s little body on his right side not balancing it up, not yet anyway. She knew the emptiness wasn’t real, it was just what she’d habitually seen. Soon this would be what she’d become accustomed to, Bill and a growing Gavin by his side, and in time after that, Gavin would be grown and leave to find his own life and Bill would grow old and his shoulders might stoop and his steps be more measured. The ghost of Buddy’s presence would be pushed aside by the vigorous onslaught of life and the changes that it brought. Everything would flow as it should, happiness and misery, turn after turn.

  She felt like she’d been holding her breath. Now she let it all out and thought about how this time could be seen as an ending, and yet how endings and beginnings were exactly the same.