Chapter One
Homing
1
Nothing ever begins.
There is no first moment; no single word or place from which this or any otherstory springs.
The threads can always be traced back to some earlier tale, and to the talesthat preceded that; though as the narrator's voice recedes the connections willseem to grow more tenuous, for each age will want the tale told as if it were ofits own making.
Thus the pagan will be sanctified, the tragic become laughable; great loverswill stoop to sentiment, and demons dwindle to clockwork toys.
Nothing is fixed. In and out the shuttle goes, fact and fiction, mind and matterwoven into patterns that may have only this in common: that hidden among them isa filigree that will with time become a world.
It must be arbitrary, then, the place at which we choose to embark.
Somewhere between a past half forgotten and a future as yet only glimpsed.
This place, for instance.
This garden, untended since the death of its protector three months ago, and nowrunning riot beneath a blindingly bright late August sky; its fruits hangingunharvested, its herbaceous borders coaxed to mutiny by a summer of torrentialrain and sudden, sweltering days.
This house, identical to the hundreds of others in this street alone, built withits back so close to the railway track that the passage of the slow train fromLiverpool to Crew rocks the china dogs on the dining room sill.
And with this young man, who now steps out of the back door and makes his waydown the beleaguered path to a ramshackle hut from which there rises a welcomingchorus of coos and flutterings.
His name is Calhoun Mooney, but he's universally known as Cal. He is twenty-six,and has worked for five years at an insurance firm in the city center. It's ajob he takes no pleasure in, but escape from the city he's lived in all his lifeseems more unlikely than ever since the death of his mother, all of which mayaccount for the weary expression on his well-made face.
He approaches the door of the pigeon loft, opens it, and at that moment — forwant of a better — this story takes wing.
2
Cal had told his father several times that the wood at the bottom of the loftdoor was deteriorating. It could only be a matter of time before the planksrotted completely, giving the rats who lived and grew gross along the railwayline access to the pigeons. But Brendan Mooney had shown little or no interestin his racing birds since Eileen's death. This despite, or perhaps because, thebirds had been his abiding passion during her life. How often had Cal heard hismother complain that Brendan spent more time with his precious pigeons than hedid inside the house?
She would not have had that complaint to make now; now Cal's father sat most ofevery day at the back window, staring out into the garden and watching thewilderness steadily take charge of his wife's handiwork, as if he might find inthe spectacle of dissolution some clue as to how his grief might be similarlyerased. There was little sign that he was learning much from his vigil, however.Every day when Cal came back to the house in Chariot Street — a house he'dthought to have left for good half a decade ago, but which his father'sisolation had obliged him to return to — it seemed he found Brendan slightlysmaller. Not hunched, but somehow shrunken, as though he'd decided to presentthe smallest possible target to a world suddenly grown hostile.
Murmuring a welcome to the forty or so birds in the loft, Cal stepped inside, tobe met with a scene of high agitation. All but a few of the pigeons were flyingback and forth in their cages, near to hysteria. Had the rats been in, Calwondered? He cast around for any damage, but there was no visible sign of whathad fueled this furor.
He'd never seen them so excited. For fully a half a minute he stood inbewilderment, watching their display, the din of their wings making his headreel, before deciding to step into the largest of the cages and claim the prizebirds from the melee before they did themselves damage.
He unlatched the cage, and had opened it no more than two or three inches whenone of last year's champions, a normally sedate cock known, as were they all, byhis number — 33 — flew at the gap. Shocked by the speed of the bird'sapproach, Cal let the door go, and in the seconds between his fingers' slippingfrom the latch and his retrieval of it, 33 was out.
"Damn you!" Cal shouted, cursing himself as much as the bird, for he'd left thedoor of the loft itself ajar, and — apparently careless of what harm he mightdo to himself in his bid — 33 was making for the sky.
In the few moments it took Cal to latch the cage again, the bird was through thedoor and away. Cal went in stumbling pursuit, but by the time he got back intothe open air, 33 was already fluttering up above the garden. At roof height heflew around in three ever larger circles, as if orienting himself. Then heseemed to fix his objective and took off in a north-northeasterly direction.
A rapping drew Cal's attention, and he looked down to see his father standing atthe window, mouthing something to him. There was more animation on Brendan'sharried face than Cal had seen in months; the escape of the bird seemed to havetemporarily roused him from his despondency. Moments later he was at the backdoor, asking what had happened. Cal had no time for explanation.
"It's off!" he yelled.
Then, keeping his eye on the sky as he went, he started down the path at theside of the house.
When he reached the front the bird was still in sight. Cal leapt the fence andcrossed Chariot Street at a run, determined to give chase. It was, he knew, anall but hopeless pursuit. With a tail wind a prime bird could reach a top speedof seventy miles an hour, and though 33 had not raced for the best part of ayear he could still easily outpace a human runner. But Cal knew he couldn't goback to his father without making some effort to track the escapee, howeverfutile.
At the bottom of the street he lost sight of his quarry behind the rooftops, andso made a detour to the footbridge that crossed the Woolton Road, mounting thesteps three and four at a time. From the top he was rewarded with a good view ofthe city. North toward Woolton Hill, and off east, and southeast, over Allertontoward Hunt's Cross. Row upon row of council house roofs presented themselves,shimmering in the fierce heat of the afternoon, the herringbone rhythm of theclose-packed streets rapidly giving way to the industrial wastelands of Speke.
Cal could see the pigeon, too, though he was a rapidly diminishing dot.
It mattered little, for from this elevation 33's destination was perfectlyapparent. Less than two miles from the bridge the air was full of wheelingbirds, drawn to the spot no doubt by some concentration of food in the area.Every year brought at least one such day, when the ant or gnat populationsuddenly boomed, and the bird life of the city was united in its gluttony. Gullsup from the mudbanks of the Mersey, flying tip to tip with thrush and jackdawand starling, all content to join the jamboree while the summer still warmedtheir backs.
This, no doubt, was the call 33 had heard. Bored with his balanced diet of maizeand maple peas, tired of the pecking order of the loft and the predictability ofeach day — the bird had wanted out; wanted up and away. A day of high life; offood that had to be chased a little, and tasted all the better for that; of thecompanionship of wild things. All this went through Cal's head, in a vague sortof way, while he watched the circling flocks.
It would be perfectly impossible, he knew, to locate an individual bird amongthese riotous thousands. He would have to trust that 33 would be content withhis feast on the wing, and when he was sated do as he was trained to do, andcome home. Nevertheless, the sheer spectacle of so many birds exercised apeculiar fascination and, crossing the bridge, Cal began to make his way towardthe epicenter of this feathered cyclone.
Copyright © 1987 Clive Barker. All rights reserved.
