Page 46 of House of Roots and Ruin
I wondered how he would react. Would he pull away instantly, thanking his lucky stars to have escaped such an unluckyacquaintance? Or worst of all, would his eyes turn cloudy with pity, worrying over the girl gone mad? The thought burned.
“I didn’t sleep well either,” he confessed after taking a sip of his own coffee. “Those damn birds kept half the house up last night.”
“Birds?” I echoed, confident I’d heard him wrong.
“They were screeching like banshees. You must have heard them.”
“I heard…I heard something last night, but it couldn’t possibly have been birds.”
He nodded. “Mother’s peacocks. They’re horrible things. You can hear them for miles.”
I blinked at him.
Alex let out a chuckle of disbelief as realization dawned over him. “Oh, Verity. I can’t imagine how terrifying that must have been for you, not knowing what it was.”
I leaned forward, needing to hear him say it out loud again. “You…you heard it too?”
“They usually roost quietly in the trees, but there’s something about a full moon…. They wail all night long. I’m so sorry no one thought to warn you.”
“But I saw…I mean, I thought I saw…” I stopped short before I mentioned women in white dresses roaming the grounds. “You said they roost in trees?”
“They’re white!” I exclaimed as we entered the side garden.
In front of us, two peacocks strutted across the lawn, dragging trains of dotted feathers behind them, six feet long.
“Mother insists upon it,” Alexander said.
“Albino peacocks,” I murmured in wonder.
Yes. In the dark, under a full moon, I could have easily mistaken them for women. They were enormously tall, coming well past my waist. And their feathers…they trailed the birds as easily as a silk dress would.
“Not albinos,” he corrected. “They’re actually blue peafowl but a mutation drains their color away. See their eyes? Blue, not red. Our entire ostentation is made up of the leucistic whites. Though occasionally, a chick grows up and sprouts traces of blue or green mottled throughout their plumage. It’s called a pied.”
“What happens then?” I asked, glancing about the garden, hoping to catch a glimpse of such an unusual bird.
“We eat them,” Alex said, his voice deadpan.
I waited for him to laugh at the joke.
He didn’t.
I swallowed. “So…the noises last night…it was them?”
He nodded and as if on cue, one of the males tilted back his head and released a guttural shriek. Instantly, the hairs on my arms rose.
I let out a short laugh of relief. “You have no idea how good it is to hear that!”
“Is it?” Alexander asked, covering his ears.
“I’d pictured so many horrible things last night. I’d thought…” I hesitated, then pushed forward, ready to admit my fears. “I thought I was going mad.”
“If listening to that for half the night doesn’t drive you mad, nothing will,” he assured me as the other peacock responded to the first. He charged, shaking his body as the long train rose upinto an impressive fan. Strange cream-colored eyes dotted the tips of each feather, staring with an unsettling blindness.
I watched the peacocks square off against one another, already mentally balling up my letter to Camille.
“It’s a beautiful morning,” Alex said, glancing up at the trail of cirrus clouds breaking up an otherwise perfect blue sky. “Should we take the long way back around the house before starting our session?”
“Please,” I agreed, following after him.
