Charlotte Newman Extract from The Magpie’s Daughter One for Sorrow
H
er wings carry her over the A-road, to the outskirts of the city. Over the trees she goes, hazel, mostly, and ivy dressed with the usual human detritus. A teething ring, a ring-pull. Here, winged with silver birches, is a nest of human making. Lovers have claimed its walls like moss, carved names in shaky hearts, as well as the question: what are you? It’s a good question. What is she? There are others who are like her but not really like her. Garden birds, common as muck – but there’s an ancient lesson in her blood. She can rasp and pierce and give time the slip as well as tell the difference between a real car and a toy. Nothing’s black and white except for her feathers and even some of them are blue and green. She’s in-between. And above a field now, which is yellow-bellied from summer. She swoops over to the houses on the edge. Oh, the human tangle. She looks! She listens. Lawnmowers, ambulances, drunks, articulated lorries, wood pigeons and windchimes from every suburb in London and she’s a-hover by Michael Smythe from Dorking’s rental, where he is ordering a curry, which he did the night Lexi said he was more like her brother than her lover (Michael Smythe would be willing to work past this, but Alexia Kouris, it turned out, would not). He thinks of her in the home they shared with their bird-of-a-feather boys. She likes the boys, especially their stories, especially the ones with birds.
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charlotte newman
