‘I've been watching you, you know,’ he says quietly. ‘Out there on the lake.’ He turns back to me, his pupils smaller from looking at the light. ‘Do you mind?’
I find myself nodding. ‘Yeah. I was . . .’
‘What?’
‘I was actually kind of hoping you were.’
We stare at each other. I feel like I've said too much. I should be looking away now, but I can't somehow. It's weird, a little like the pull I felt when I was watching the swan. Harry doesn't look away either. His eyes are bright and shining, as if there are bonfires burning inside them.
‘What was going on down there?’ he asks. ‘When you ran around the lake? Did you have food with you or something?’
‘I didn't have food.’
‘Then why was she following you?’
‘You saw it? Really?’
My face gets hot, even my ears go warm. I'm scared of saying any more. I can't just blurt out how the swan looked at me really intensely then ran after me across the water. I'd sound like a head case. So I drag my eyes from his and look down at the floor. I wait for Harry to laugh it off, to say something about me being a crazy twitcher. To say exactly what I'm thinking myself: that all of this is in my imagination. But suddenly he's leaning towards me.
‘You were on the path and she was on the water,’ he says quietly. ‘Her wings were flapping, but . . .’
‘She didn't fly, I know.’ I look at him carefully, check that he's not just making fun of me. But he's not smiling at all now.
‘That's pretty weird, isn't it?’ he says. ‘For a swan to do that?’
‘Wild swans should be scared of humans,’ I say. ‘She wasn't scared of me at all.’
‘Was she trying to attack you?’
‘I don't think so. Swans aren't like that, and I wasn't threatening her.’
I don't tell him how, for a moment, it felt like the swan wanted me to go faster. But I want to. I want someone else to understand that there's something different about her; that it isn't just stress that made me think it happened. A thought pops into my head.
‘Why don't you come with me?’ I say. ‘To the lake? You can see the swan properly then.’
Immediately I wish I hadn't said it. Harry is obviously too sick. He frowns as he thinks, as if he's trying to find exactly the right words.
‘I haven't been outside for ages,’ he says quietly. He stops and looks down at the bed, suddenly awkward.
‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘I didn't mean to ask you if you're too sick.’
He shakes his head. ‘I could go, maybe. If I got permission from the nurses.’ He hesitates, still looking at the bed. ‘I'm just not sure . . .’
I swallow, thinking. Perhaps he just doesn't want to go down there with me. But if he could see that swan, just once, I know he'd understand. I touch the feathers in my pocket.
‘I don't have to come with you,’ I say quickly. ‘You could go with a nurse or your mum or . . .’
‘I want to,’ he says softly. He finds a stain on the bed sheet and scratches at it. ‘It's just . . . it's a hard place to get away from quickly. Do you get me?’
I frown. He's trying to tell me something without actually saying it. But I think I understand. Up here, in his cancer ward, there are nurses and painkillers and Hickman lines. Safe things. Things that he's used to. Down there, on the reserve, it's different.
‘You think it'll make you sicker, going there?’
He folds his hands in his lap. ‘I'd just rather watch from the window.’ His voice sounds shaky and quiet.
It makes me wonder. Maybe he's scared. Maybe he's spent so long in bed feeling tired, that he's forgotten what it's like to do normal thinks like walk to a lake. Suddenly, I don't know what to talk about. I want to tell him more about the swan and how it felt to run with the wind behind me. I want to show him the photos on my phone. But it seems stupid now.
Harry shifts in his bed. ‘But you'll go down there again though, won't you?’ he asks.
I glance up at him, surprised. ‘Why would you want me to?’
‘You have to find out about the swan; why she's following you . . . ’ He shrugs, looks away. ‘Anyway . . . I don't have much else to do up here, not until my transplant.’
I hold his gaze. ‘Transplant? What do you mean?’
‘It's where they kill off all the stuff inside my bones and give me someone else's instead.’
‘Stuff inside your bones?’
‘Yeah, you know, bone marrow. It seems mine's pretty diseased.’ He half smiles at my expression. ‘Anyway, they'll stick someone else's in me and hope my body accepts it.’
‘When's that going to happen?’
He runs his fingers through his hair, pulling a few strands out. ‘Dunno really, a couple of weeks, a month . . . whenever they find a match for me. It's why I'm in here . . . what I'm waiting for.’ He grins quickly. ‘And until then, I need something to do. So you running around the reserve . . .’
He blushes really badly, and all the paleness in his skin disappears for a moment. It's kind of cute. I start laughing as I get my head around what I think he's trying to say.
‘You want to watch me? You want me to run around the lake like I'm your own private TV show?’ The shocked look in his eyes makes me laugh more. ‘You're as nuts as that swan is,’ I say.
And suddenly he's laughing too.
CHAPTER 23
I race down to the cafe. Mum's got a half-eaten cheese sandwich in front of her.
‘Sorry,’ I say.
She raises an eyebrow. ‘Who is this Harry, anyway?’ she says. ‘He must be nice if he keeps me waiting twenty minutes.’
She's looking at me carefully, wondering just how much Harry means to me. But I can't answer her. I don't even know that myself.
‘He's got leukaemia,’ I say. ‘I think he's lonely.’
She's happy with that. It makes sense. Harry is lonely. Perhaps it's the only reason he wants to be friends with me; so he can watch me run around a reserve and not be bored.
As we drive home, Mum tells me the latest on Dad.
‘The bits that lead into his heart, his valves, aren't working properly,’ she says. ‘The specialist wants him to have an operation.’
‘That sounds serious.’
‘It's a major op. They have to replace a part of his heart.’
‘But that means it will work better, doesn't it?’
‘Hopefully, if his body accepts it.’ Mum looks both ways as she pulls out onto the ring road. ‘They're replacing one of his valves with a pig's valve.’
‘A pig? Really?’
Mum smiles slightly. ‘It sounds a bit odd, doesn't it?
Apparently, some parts of a human heart are really similar to a pig's.’
‘So Dad's going to be part-pig part-human . . . half animal?’ I frown as I try to understand it.
Mum looks at me, and her smile widens. ‘You could look at it like that, I suppose.’
I lean back against the headrest and imagine Dad turning into a pig . . . developing trotters instead of hands. ‘It's a shame it's not a bird, really,’ I say.
Mum nods. ‘Tell me about it. A bird's heart would suit him fine. He'd probably even look forward to the operation then!’
I tilt my gaze to the grey sky. I can almost imagine Dad up there now, circling beneath the clouds and holding his arms out like wings . . . half man, half bird. Mum's right, Dad probably would jump at the chance to be like that. I reach into my pocket and touch the swan feathers I took from the lake. I wonder if Dad will look any better next time I see him and am able to give them to him.
I watch the fields speeding past the window. Soon they start merging into the factories and car yards outside town, the green soft-looking ground changing to grey. I sit up to look down Granddad's lane.
‘Do you think Granddad's worried?’ I ask.
‘About Dad?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I suppose so, in his way. He's not very good at showing it, though
.’
I remember how Granddad seemed so hesitant when we stayed at his house, how he'd not really spoken to us at all. Then I notice the shadows flickering across the fields. I look up. There are swans in the sky. A whole flock. I wind down the window, lean my head out to see better. The cold air hits me at full force.
‘Isla!’ Mum squeals. ‘It's freezing! ’
‘But there are swans up there!’
I watch the way they are spaced out, flying in that V shape. There's enough of them to be whoopers. They're honking and trumpeting, and keeping pace with the car, flying in the same direction.
‘You should follow them,’ I say. ‘Then we can tell Dad we know where they're roosting.’
The birds veer across the fields to the left of us. I scan the land, try to work out where they're heading.
‘They're going back to the farms,’ Mum says. ‘We can't follow them. We'll be late for Jack.’ She leans over the steering wheel to look up at them and the car wobbles for a second. ‘They make it look so easy,‘ she says. ‘But when you see them on the ground, they look clumsy, too big to fly like that.’
‘Yeah, they transform. That's why Dad likes them.’
Mum laughs suddenly. ‘The first date your dad ever took me on was to watch those blasted birds. He made me get up really early for it, too. He said it would be magical.’
‘It must have worked,’ I say. ‘You're still with him.’
Mum's smile freezes then, and for a moment I think she's going to cry. Then she looks quickly in her side mirror and indicates to overtake. We're both quiet. I watch the swans until they get too far away to see properly. Their feathers glint when the sunlight hits them and they do look magical for a moment. I wonder what they see from up there, what they think of all the roads and buildings. Do they notice our red car, travelling beneath them?
I close the window and look through the windscreen. It starts raining. I turn on the radio to the talky station I know Mum likes. I listen to the drum of drops on the roof and remember the sound of the swan's feet as she ran around the lake beside me.
The traffic becomes busier as we edge into town and Mum sighs as we reach a new set of roadworks. I shut my eyes against the vivid brake lights of the car in front. I wonder if the lone swan on the lake is a part of the flock we just saw. Perhaps they're heading back to pick her up. Perhaps she's running across the lake right now, taking off with them. I breathe out slowly. A small part of me doesn't want that swan to leave.
CHAPTER 24
Dreams come easily that night.
I'm down at the edge of the lake, wearing only my thin nightie. I'm looking at the grey swan. My eyes are locked with hers and I can't look away.
She comes towards me. Her eyes are unblinking. It's as if she wants something, needs something, almost. If I don't give it to her she's going to tear it right out of my chest.
I turn, try to run. But I can't. My feet are stuck deep in the mud. The swan gets to the bank. Her wide, webbed feet don't sink into the gooey earth like mine do. I try to pull myself free.
The swan stretches her beak towards me. She pecks my thigh. My skin goes colder immediately and a pain spreads out from the muscle. I grasp at my skin, try to stop the throbbing. I pull up my nightie to look. The skin swells, as if there's a blood blister forming beneath the surface. It's agonising for a second then fades to a tingling. She goes around to my other leg and pecks there too. I scream. Fall backwards. My head thuds against something then sinks into the mud. She pecks my stomach next, my shoulders. Each time there's a stab of pain. Then it settles.
I watch where she pecks. The blood blisters are swelling and my skin is moving . . . opening up. Something is sprouting. Small grey feathers are appearing, pushing through the surface. They're all over me. My skin is becoming covered in a swan-like down.
She hisses. She runs her beak over my arms, pushing them out wide across the ground. There's no point resisting. Her touch sends shivers down my spine. I turn my head, look at her small, dark eyes. I suddenly understand what she's doing. The swan is transforming me. She wants me to be part of her flock.
CHAPTER 25
I can't get out of school for a second day.
‘Now that they're monitoring him, Dad's going to be fine,’ Mum says as she pulls up near the gates. ‘Don't worry.’
But I do. I worry all through maths, where I don't understand anything anyway, and all through science where Miss Giles talks about adaptation. Now that Saskia's not here, I don't even have anyone to hang around with. I just sit by myself and worry.
Art class is different, though; it always is. Mrs Diver comes up to me straight away and asks about Dad.
‘I heard what happened,’ she says. ‘If you need some more time with your work, or if you just fancy coming in here at lunchtimes for a bit of quiet, that's fine by me.’
She smiles, and I see it's genuine. She puts her arm around my shoulder and leads me away from where I normally sit to a desk near the front. The new girl, Sophie, is already sitting there.
‘Thought you two could sit together,’ Mrs Diver says.
She's trying to be nice, I can see that, trying to bring the two loner-girls together. But I'm not really in the mood for talking. Sophie doesn't look very happy about it, either. She looks down at the desk as she moves her stuff over to create room for me. Neither of us says anything.
Mrs Diver hands out a pile of light blue sheets of paper. Then she turns to her picture of Leonardo da Vinci and drapes her arm across the top of its frame.
‘As you know, your major assignment for this term,’ she begins, ‘is to think about flight. We will be working on capturing and then creating the movement of flying. My friend Leo here was one of the first people to be interested in a practical solution to flight. He studied and sketched the things that flew around him, and he used this knowledge to try to design a contraption, or a flying machine so that humans could fly too. His artistic skills in observation helped him to understand flight, and that's what we're going to try to do too.’
She pulls out some pictures from under her desk and gets some of the kids in the front row to hold them. Thankfully she skips over me. They are sketched drawings: one of something that looks like a kind of hang-glider and another of a huge parachute. There are also studies of birds’ wings and bats’ wings, and diagrams of how da Vinci tried to attach wings to a human body using belts and wood.
‘Your task,’ Mrs Diver continues, ‘is to study something that flies. You'll do sketches first, trying to understand and capture on paper the movement of how your study subject flies. Then you can use what you find to create your own flying model. You can make a simple model of whatever it is you're studying, or you could challenge yourself to use what you've learnt about flight to make a flying machine for humans . . . like something da Vinci did. Your models don't have to be big, and they don't even have to fly, but I want you to think about capturing the movement of your study subject . . . action. You can use da Vinci's sketches as inspiration.’
She hands out copies of the sketches so we can look at them more closely. I skip over the hang-glider and parachute, but look carefully at his sketches of birds’ wings.
I hear Sophie sigh beside me. I guess art isn't really her thing.
‘What are you going to study?’ she whispers.
She looks away quickly, her eyes darting over everyone else in the room then back to me. She's shy, really shy, even more shy than me. Suddenly I feel sorry for her. I look down at the blue sheet on my desk. Choose something that flies and study its movement it says.
‘I could do swans,’ I say.
I wonder about the swan on the lake, whether she's still there. I could study her and sketch her wings easily. Perhaps I could make a flying machine like da Vinci did, but based on swans’ wings. Dad would love to have the pictures and the model afterwards. They may even lift his spirits.
‘How will you find a swan to study?’ Sophie's leaning over my shoulder.
‘Easy.??
?
I explain that Dad's a birdwatcher and he's told me where to find them. I don't tell her about the swan on the lake, though. She goes back to reading the sheet.
Mrs Diver starts talking about things we could base our studies on: bats, helicopters, butterflies . . . I start sketching the outline of a swan. I can't make it look like the swan on the lake, though. I draw her with her wings stretched out, as if she's flying. But that doesn't look right, either. After a while, I realise that Sophie's staring at me. She's holding her chin up with her hand, just watching me draw.
‘You know, back home, the swans are black not white,’ she says. She sighs again, quickly, as she turns back to the sheet in front of her. ‘Everything's different here, kind of the opposite . . . even the birds.’
I can sort of understand what she means. Right now it feels like my life has been turned upside down, too.
CHAPTER 26
I take my sketchbook when we go to the hospital after school.
‘I want to draw that swan for my school project,’ I tell Mum, ‘then I can tell Dad about it later.’
She lets me go. I think she's so worried about Dad right now, that she doesn't even really register what I'm doing.
‘Meet you in Dad's ward in about an hour,’ she murmurs.
I jog around the edge of the car park. I find the wooden shed and the hole in the fence. I duck through, walk quickly. There's a dampness in the air, and the smell of earthy, straggly winter trees. The days are getting shorter and it's going to be dark soon.
The swan is still there. She's floating in and out of the reeds, watching me; exactly as I hoped she would be. It's almost as if she's been waiting for me. She skims her beak across the water then points it skywards, swallowing. I tense as I remember my dream, the feel of her beak going into me. But I'm not scared of her now. I run my eyes down to her wings. They don't look broken or damaged. I'm sure she could fly if she wanted to.
‘What's your story?’ I murmur. ‘Why are you still here?’
I find a tree stump to sit on, then take the sketchbook from my bag and start drawing. I want her to open her wings wide like she did last time so I can draw them for my project, but she keeps them folded on her back. I draw her anyway. The feathers are so neat across her body, each one stacked in exactly the right place beside the next. Some of them ruffle with the breeze. I try to sketch the feathers on my page so it looks as though they're ruffling too. She keeps feeding, not bothered by me at all. She's ordinary today, just like all the other swans I've ever seen.