Three Kings. Группа авторов

She would need to regenerate very soon, or old age would leave her incapable of any movement at all.

      By now the third boy was turning to flee. But she had a crow waiting. It swooped down from a nearby building, a missile of beak and black feathers, aimed straight at the teenager’s eyes …

      And that’s when it happened. A pain such as the goddess had not felt in the longest time. A wrongness that jerked her out of her body and flung her awareness across the city to Sandy Row.

      Disoriented, she tried to understand what had brought her here.

      It had begun to drizzle. Boys and girls stood by the gable end of a house where patriotic hands had painted Queen Margaret on the day of her coronation. Badb watched the children from the eyes of one crow and then another until, suddenly, the gang sprang forward as one. A boy and a girl carried a net between them, she in sneakers, he in boots, the laces dangerously trailing.

      What are they hunting? Badb wondered. But only for a second, because then, the net came down over the crow she occupied. She flicked to another bird and then another, but they too had been caught. Other children smashed at the birds with planks of wood. With rocks. With the soles of their Doc Martens. The pain! The pain!

      Half the flock escaped, and Badb with them. What was going on? Who had ever heard of such a thing? Even in this city where the spilling of blood had not slowed in fifty years?

      Badb wheeled with the other crows, toying with the idea of sending the flock back to peck some manners into the children, but she knew better than to give herself away like that. Over the last decade she could count on the fingers of two hands the number of people her flock had killed. Even so, the idea had leaked out into the city’s subconscious. ‘Crow’ had become a slang term for treachery or for informers. Criminals and terrorists regularly warned each other to ‘keep your beak shut’.

      She led the surviving birds over the Peace Wall between Sandy Row and Belfast’s jokertown, known locally as ‘the Island’.

      They would be safe there, she felt sure, while she tried to work out what was going on.

      She returned to her body in the alleyway to find the third boy had escaped. Inconvenient. A loose end that would need snipping and she—

      The crows in the Island were under attack now too. Again, it was children. Misshapen ones that not even Picasso or Dalí or Goya might have imagined. Their assault on the crows was less organized, but several birds were taken out before the flock could flee once more.

      Finally, the exhausted crows came down in the grounds of St Louise’s Comprehensive School where thirty girls stopped their game of camogie to stare at the arriving flock. As one, they charged forward and began stamping on wings and feathered bodies. A nun and two other teachers looked away, as though indifferent to what must have been a shocking sight.

      Each time Roger Barnes felt he had adapted and made peace with his body, it found some new way to betray him.

      He sighed and took off his robe. He liked to consider himself a practical man, but of late the rituals of self-care left him glum, all too aware of how much he had changed, and was still changing.

      He stood before an antique full-length mirror with doors that contained additional side mirrors when opened. The frame was scuffed by time and travel, but it was still sturdy. Appropriate, thought Roger. Like all the things he owned, it had been purchased with cash, and by someone else. There were no accounts in his name; the cards and phone that he sometimes carried were not registered to him and they were cycled at regular intervals, just to be on the safe side. They, much like the basement he currently dwelled within, were transitory parts of his life, functional, impersonal, disposable.

      The fingers of his right hand were too thick to manage the delicate clasps holding the doors of the mirror in place. Roger knew this but tried anyway. It was a little game he played with himself. Perhaps this time I’ll manage it, he’d think. As if the passing of the seasons would grant him more manual dexterity rather than less. Three times, his thumb was tantalizingly close to hooking the thin strip of gold metal, but it soon became clear that it wasn’t going to happen, so he switched to his left hand and the clasp opened easily, though not, he noted, as easily as it once did. Compared to his right hand, his left appeared normal, but the wooden fingers were still longer and thicker than they once had been.

      For years Roger had not thought of himself as Roger at all, but as Green Man. Green Man was many things to many people. To some he was a prominent figure of London’s underworld. To others he was a benefactor to be approached by those unwilling or unable to call on the authorities. And to a select few he was the head of the Twisted Fists, an infamous group of joker terrorists. In the three and a half decades since his card had turned, Green Man had been labelled killer, saviour, traitor, and monster; simultaneously a champion of the oppressed, an opportunist thug, and a dangerous revolutionary.

      But at these times, when he stood naked, exposed, his Green Man mask sitting on the desk next to his wardrobe, he saw something of the man he once was. A small, neat man. Conservative in politics and manner. A man of principle. A family man.

      Nearly all traces of that man were gone. Roger Barnes had been short, and the Green Man was now seven feet tall. Roger Barnes had been slight, and the Green Man was, while still long-limbed, undeniably sturdy. Roger had kept his hair neat, while the Green Man had no hair at all, unless one counted the persistent moss he was forever having to trim.

      Roger sighed again, picked up a pair of secateurs, and started to prune the shoots sprouting from a spot on his chest. He’d been shot there, many, many years ago, and like all of his injuries it had healed swiftly, but never quite the way it had been. This was most evident in his right arm, which he’d lost in a fight with … with … He paused, shocked that he couldn’t immediately recall her name. He could picture her face, could hear her voice in his head; swearing, predictably. But her name eluded him. How could I forget the name of that foul-mouthed creature?

      A twinge in his shoulder brought his attention back to the mirror. His body hadn’t forgotten. Thanks to her, one arm was now thicker than the other, rough to the touch and prone to sprouting leaves, which he found terribly embarrassing. He flexed the bark-heavy fingers on his right hand, working them until they were no longer stiff.

      Wielding the secateurs awkwardly in his left hand, he trimmed his right as best he could, and then turned his attention to his back. There were several old bullet wounds there. All caused by his daughter when she’d tried to kill him – do not think about Christine, he admonished himself sternly, not today. Though they’d healed, they’d become a never-ending source of itching and unsightly growths. Being on the middle of his back they were devilishly hard to reach too.

      There was one he just couldn’t get. It was tempting to call Wayfarer and ask her to clip it for him but he resisted. In part because he would be crossing a line – What next? Have her clip my toenails? Polish my head? Uh, the very idea! – But mainly because it would be showing vulnerability. It was fine for Roger Barnes to ask for help, but not the Green Man.

      He took another look at the mournful face in the mirror, and then redoubled his efforts with the secateurs. And there, at last, was the satisfying clip and a whisper of pain that meant he’d got the bastard thing.

      The secateurs were put down, and the mask picked up. It was lavishly carved, every leaf lifelike from stem to tip, linked together to form the shape of a face. A trio of leaves stood proud at the forehead like a badge of office. It was larger than life, larger than Roger Barnes, both a shield for him to hide behind and a symbol to inspire others.

      He put it on.

      Green Man again.

      Then he reached for his suit, not the dark green he usually favoured, but his funeral suit. One of his jokers had died, and though any public appearance carried its risks, Green Man must be seen to pay his respects.

      Green