Almost a lifetime had passed, when, walking in the woods, Bee met a stranger with skin, hair, and eyes as dark as her own. After they’d exchanged the usual pleasantries about the weather, the price of cows, and so forth, the old woman dropped her voice to a whisper.
“You’ve forgotten yourself,” the stranger said. “So much so that you can’t even remember your own name.”
Bee had to admit that this was true, since she could not recall, no matter how hard she tried, any name other than the one her stepsisters had given her.
“It’s time to remember,” the old woman said. “Before it’s too late.”
“But how?” Bee asked. “How can I?”
“Climb to the top of the tallest tree in this forest,” the stranger said. “Then jump from the highest branch. As you fall, you will remember who you are.”
Bee regarded the woman with horror. “You think it’s worth giving my life to remember myself?”
The woman considered this for only a second. “Yes,” she said. “I do.”
For many months, Bee ignored the woman, thinking her mad. But, as months again turned into years, and she found herself growing heavier with sorrow, Bee finally decided that she had nothing to lose, for she no longer cared if she lived or died.
So she found an ancient oak in the forest, as high as three houses, and, branch by branch, climbed to the very top. There she sat, catching her breath and gazing down at the ground far, far below. Bee waited, until day turned to night, then she stood. She whispered her goodbyes to the living and said her greetings to the dead.
Then she leapt.
As Bee fell, soaring through the air so fast that it thundered in her ears, she remembered her name: BlackBird. And with it, herself.
Just as her body was about to hit the ground, as her skull was about to shatter on the stones, BlackBird threw back her head and laughed, her jet-black hair whipping out behind her, transforming into gigantic wings that lifted her into the winds, until she was soaring high above the trees—feathers glinting in the moonlight—once more gliding on currents of pure joy.
BlackBird never again forgot herself, her name, or what she loved. And so she spent the rest of her life flying through the skies and never again coming back down to earth.
Now, if you go into your own garden on a moonlit night, and if you listen very well, you will still be able to hear the echo of her laughter in the air.
Liyana bites the end of her pen. Then, recalling the time she stained her lips green, wipes her mouth. She selects a thicker pen, adding curls to BlackBird’s Afro, sketching in her wings. Liyana works slowly, in no rush to finish, since her comic book world is an infinite improvement on reality: the good triumph, the bad perish, and if chaos is reaped along the way, in the end everything is always set right with the world. Justice prevails.
Liyana often finds herself stepping into the long black leather boots of her feminist superhero. She fights crime, saves lives, pines for her lover, honours her mother’s memory. Truthfully, Liyana spends more time in Elsewhere than in London. She can be walking the streets, sitting on the tube, bumping into pedestrians, when in fact she’s alone and soaring through the air in a magical land.
“Ana, I need you!” her aunt shouts up the stairs.
Reluctantly, Liyana abandons BlackBird and LionEss (who bears an uncanny resemblance to both her aunt and Catwoman, an issue Liyana plans to resolve when the distant matter of publication arises), along with her drawings and pens, and returns to Earth.
5:48 p.m.—Scarlet
“Scarlet!”
Catching sight of the finial she’s placed proudly on a shelf balanced between a jar of sugar and a jar of salt, Scarlet stops sieving. She slaps the bag of flour onto the kitchen counter in a puff of white dust and hurries from the kitchen into the café.
“What is it, Grandma?” Scarlet asks, reaching the table.
Esme sits in her favourite spot beside the bay window, overlooking the intricate arches and turrets of King’s College, contemplating the dim lamplit rooms of the college where she met her husband. Before Alzheimer’s took hold, Esme told great tales about her husband, though spoke rarely of her daughter. The only story she’d tell was the story of Scarlet’s birth, how she was born feetfirst, on a river of screaming blood, in the moment between one day and the next. Whenever Scarlet asked for other, less gory anecdotes about her mother, Esme fobbed her off with fripperies. And that was before; now Scarlet only gets information she can’t trust at all.
Excepting the rare snapshot image, the main thing Scarlet remembers about Ruby is how she looked: the same red curls, the same brown eyes. Which is lucky, since she doesn’t have a photograph, everything having been destroyed in the house fire less than a decade ago, the fire that killed her mother.
“Look, Scarlet, isn’t it beautiful?”
Scarlet follows the point of her grandma’s curled finger to the orange sky breaking like cracked eggs above scalloped stone spires. Sometimes, when she’s cleaning tables, Scarlet stops to gaze across the road at King’s College, the latticed stained-glass windows of the chapel set into sculpted stone walls and topped with fluted pinnacles. A flag flickering atop the central tower like a flame. Scarlet feels comforted, though she can’t quite say why, to imagine that stained glass being fired in a furnace nearly six centuries ago, created and crafted by expert hands over the course of two hundred years. The solidity of King’s is reassuring somehow, offering a pleasing permanence in this too quickly changing world.
“Yes.” Scarlet smiles. “It’s like Bonfire Night. I’ve made cinnamon buns. Would you like one? A treat for dinner.” No matter that they’d eaten crumpets for dinner last night—her grandmother won’t remember.
“Oh, yes.” Esme smiles like a delighted child. “They’re my favourite.”
“I know.” Scarlet touches her grandmother’s shoulder before turning away. She hasn’t made cinnamon buns but still has a batch from yesterday. She’ll heat them in the microwave, though Esme would have a fit if she knew it, believing microwaves to be the Devil’s work. She didn’t speak to Scarlet for two days after she bought one, though her grandmother doesn’t remember that anymore either.
The trick to reheating is not to overdo them, only warm the centres, then pop them under the grill, to get that slightly crisped, just-baked topping. And Grandma will never know. Although the heat of the plate might give Scarlet away. It’s so hot that anyone else would drop it, but Scarlet can pull trays straight from the oven without flinching, something her grandmother has never been able to do. Not that Esme has baked in years.
In the kitchen, Scarlet fills the dishwasher—a concession to modernity even her grandmother couldn’t resist—while the microwave whirs. When it pings, she sets the plate on the counter to cool a little and switches on the dishwasher. Nothing happens. No industrious sounds from behind the flip-up plastic door. Scarlet waits. She presses the button again.
“Shit.”
She kicks it. Still nothing. Last month the fridge—which, at £356, was cheaper to replace than to fix, plus an extra £125 to take it to the dump. Now the fucking dishwasher. Which, at £2,575, must be fixed instead of replaced.