Chapter Text
“So, you’re really an astronaut?”
Jamila watches the man next to her curiously as a smile tugs at his lips.
“I’m really an astronaut,” he says.
Adam Lang – that’s what Gabriela had said a few minutes ago, joyfully and unashamedly announcing herself to the man when she’d recognised him. A man who, before their arrival, had been happily minding his own business, waiting at a bus stop. Of course, the whole reason they’d stopped had been because Gabriela had insisted upon getting snacks before they headed out of town, and so she’d gone and dashed off over to the shop, leaving Jamila with the wonderful job of having to pick up a conversation she’d had very little intention of having.
That’s the key difference between her and Gabriela, she thinks – one of them will go up and talk to anyone, without any concern about social graces or politeness or anything like that, and one of them will definitely not. Which isn’t to say that Jamila would want Gabriela any other way – far from it. She loves her exactly as she is, and wouldn’t change her for the world. However, she does feel like perhaps the British Isles aren’t quite able to cope – and, perhaps, never will be – with Gabriela’s particular brand of typical Brazilian boldness, all bright sunshine and blinding colours.
And that’s probably as much an explanation for the difference between them as anything – Gabriela, born and bred in the Brazilian city of Curitiba; versus Jamila, born in the Portuguese city of Amadora, raised in the UK after her parents moved here for work. Some people say it’s a wonder that they get along, considering the only thing they have in common is their mother tongue – and to that, Jamila says that they clearly haven’t heard Gabriela complain about the ridiculous grammatical structures Jamila employs just so she can avoid saying você. But, in truth, they have a lot in common – and their differences only complement each other. After all, if they were really so incompatible, they wouldn’t have become so close so quickly. They wouldn’t be where they are now.
They definitely wouldn’t be making vlogs together on the regular.
Despite what people seem to think, a lot of time and effort and stress goes into those things.
The silence between her and this astronaut guy is getting longer, rapidly veering from awkward territory into extremely awkward territory.
“So…how come you’re not in space?” she asks.
His smile is rueful. “We have to come down sometimes.”
She huffs a little laugh at that. “You live around here, then?”
“No,” he answers. “I’m just…” He hesitates, like he’s choosing his words carefully. “Taking a break.” He looks up at the sky, the sun tentatively edging downwards into its evening arc. There are seagulls wheeling above them, crying to each other. Beyond them, further out into the bay, is the hunking great big shape of the navy vessel that’s been stuck there for several weeks now. “Clearing my head.”
She looks up too, and wonders if he’s thinking about the view he used to get from up there.
“Well,” she murmurs. “I suppose this place is as good as any to do it.”
Falmouth, she thinks a little fondly. A large town nestled into the coastline, right in the depths of Cornwall. It’s nice here – peaceful, for the most part, if there aren’t too many tourists. One of the benefits of living around here is that she gets to see the beauty of the place all the year around, not just in the heights of summer when everyone north of them decides to descend in their masses.
And, of course, it’s incredible in the summer, with the sun beating down, the sand golden and the sea a striking azure against the sky. But she loves it even more now, she thinks – late March, the wind blowing strong from across the sea and the waves tossed with spray, even if the big boat in the way blots the landscape a bit. There’s been storms in the last few days, swept in from across the Atlantic. The sea has been spewing out debris constantly – right now, Gyllyngvase Beach stretches before her, and even from across the street she can see the plastic bottles and driftwood and twine of green rope that litters the shoreline. Her faces twists slightly at the sight of it, but she looks away. It’s just how it is, isn’t it?
But besides that, she loves the storms – loves the power of them, and the way that it draws the crowds away from the sea. Leaves the beaches empty for no one but her and Gabriela.
She’s already planning to take a set of photos about the storms for her coursework. She’s been working on it over the last week or so, braving the worst of the weather in order to do it. That’s why she’s down here in Falmouth. She doesn’t really live in the town – she’s living just north of here, at the Falmouth University campus. Gabriela’s there too, of course – studying Film, rather than Marine and Natural History Photography like Jamila is. Anyone who says they have nothing in common seems to conveniently forget their shared love for photography, filming, and the world around them.
“Hey,” the astronaut says, and Jamila looks at him. He’s still looking at the sky, but now he’s frowning. “Do the birds normally do that?”
She follows his gaze – and then frowns in tandem. The gulls…they’re all flying together, twisting and curving through the air in a large flock. It’s almost like a murmuration of starlings, although there aren’t nearly enough of them to truly recreate such a thing. But still…it is odd behaviour.
“Must be something on the beach they want to eat,” she decides. That’s the only thing seagulls ever care about, after all. But they don’t seem to be diving after anything. Adam doesn’t say anything, so she turns to look at him again. He’s still staring at the birds.
She opens her mouth to say something, but it’s then that Gabriela reappears, strolling back up the pavement towards the pair of them. Her bag rustles behind her, large on her back, and her hair waves in the wind as she walks. “Ei, cara!”
Jamila turns at the call the attention – ‘ei, cara’, after all, essentially means: hey dude, come talk to me!
“Get what you wanted?” she asks.
“Stocked up,” Gabriela responds, looking pleased with herself. She leans around to look at Adam, who’s still looking at the sky. “Hey! Spaceman! We’re going now.”
Adam glances down at her, looking a bit distracted, but he gives her a polite wave. “Enjoy yourselves.”
“You sure you haven’t heard of our show?” Gabriela asks, and Jamila sighs.
“Gabriela, not everyone watches it,” she chides.
“Yeah but a lot of people do,” she returns, opening her mouth to say something else that’ll undoubtably send the whole interaction diving into the realm of irredeemably awkward – which is not somewhere Jamila wants to go. And so, she grabs Gabriela’s hand and tugs her along in the direction of the coastal path they’re supposed to be taking. “Hey! Jamila –!”
“Hope your bus comes soon,” Jamila calls back over her shoulder to Adam. He doesn’t react. He is, with an intensity that’s starting to confuse her, still looking up at the birds.
“Come on,” she says to Gabriela, increasing her pace a little. There’s something…off about the whole thing that she can’t put her finger on, and she doesn’t want to stick around and find out. She turns to look at Gabriela beside her, giving her hand a squeeze. “We’ve got a few miles to walk yet to get to your special beach.”
Gabriela’s face immediately brightens, her annoyance at being pulled away forgotten. “Yeah, I know! You’re gonna love it, Jamila – I can’t believe you’ve not been down there yet. It’s right on our doorstep!”
“Yes, I know, you told me,” Jamila replies, an endeared smile quirking at her lips. It’s true. Maenporth Beach is only a few miles out of the town’s limits, and yet she’s always finding herself travelling further afield. Gabriela, on the other hand, has made a habit of visiting it frequently over the last couple of years.
“It’s beautiful, Jamila,” Gabriela breathes, as they head towards the path that’ll take them along the headland. “Trust me – and right now, there’ll be no people. March is the best time for this sort of thing, I swear. And no stupid boat in the way!”
“I’m with you there,” she replies.
“And with a sunset too, if we get there on time. It’s going to look amazing on camera,” Gabriela enthuses, before knocking their shoulders together with a grin. “Bet you’re glad it’s not storming right now though.”
And ah, there it is – Gabriela, the sun-lover, and Jamila, the storm-watcher.
“I always love a storm,” she says, but she can’t help but smile at the girl beside her. “But a sunset is also perfect.”
Gabriela beams at her, before settling into a comfortable rhythm beside her. “Still can’t believe we saw Adam Lang.”
“How do you even know about him?”
“Don’t you watch the news?”
She gave her a look. “You know I don’t.”
“But you knew about that navy boat!”
“That’s because it’s hard to miss when it’s sitting out in the bay.”
Gabriela rolls her eyes. “I can’t believe he doesn’t watch the show. Imagine if he did, then we could say –” she gasps – “first vlog watched in space!”
Jamila laughs. “I’m sure it wouldn’t be the first.”
“You don’t know that! We should ask him!”
“Maybe we’ll see him again tomorrow,” she says – and that strange feeling comes over her again. She looks back over her shoulder. They’ve travelled quite a way, but she can still make out the figure of the astronaut. He’s no longer standing by the bus stop, she realises – instead, he’s wandered across the road, over the sea wall and onto the sand. Above him, the gulls twist and dart through the air. There’s so many of them now, it’s almost like there’s more birds than air.
A shiver ripples across her skin, and she finds she has to look away.
It takes them about fifty minutes to walk along the path to the beach. They’d checked the tide times about a week ago, planning the perfect day to take the trip so that the sea would be out when they arrived, giving them the most spectacular view that they could get. But the journey itself is beautiful – the path cuts around the edge of a small wood, and the sky steadily burns towards sunset, orange light shining through the branches and catching the edges of the leaves like they’re on fire.
Gabriela stops them just before they reach their destination so she can pull out her phone to film with. Then, because it’s Gabriela, she insists that Jamila closes her eyes.
“Why?” Jamila asks, even as she does what she’s told.
“Why not?” Gabriela says, pulling her along by the wrist. Jamila has no doubt that she is filming now – a thought she doesn’t find too comforting, seeing that she’d rather the person guiding her not be walking backwards and more focused on keeping the framing right than looking at her feet. Still, she can’t help but laugh as they stumble together. It is, after all, sort of what they do all the time. “Trust me, this is one of the most beautiful beaches in the world.”
Jamila can’t help the smile that tugs at her lips. “You’re exaggerating.”
“I’m not!” There’s a pause – Gabriela might actually be focusing on where they’re treading. It feels to Jamila like they’re going down a slope, before they come to a stop. “Okay – open your eyes!”
Jamila does as she’s told, and finds Gabriela right in front of her, camera filming, awaiting her reaction to –
The beach behind, which would probably be absolutely stunning in the sunset, if it wasn’t for the rubbish everywhere.
“What?” she says, nose crinkling. Gabriela frowns, immediately turning – and her face falls.
It shouldn’t come as a surprise – it’s the storms, isn’t it? Throwing up all the plastic from the sea up onto the beach. But it’s worse than at Gyllyngvase – it looks like people might have been fly-tipping too. It doesn’t look beautiful – it just looks –
“It’s wrecked,” Gabriela says, her face crumpling. “I don’t know what’s happened. Three weeks ago, this was paradise.”
Jamila sighs, looking up. There are seagulls overhead here too, circling. It must be the rubbish, she thinks, that’s attracted them – but there’s a lot of them. Just like they were back in town. She sees one swoop down low – before dropping to the ground without warning. It lies completely still, and she realises with a lurch that she just watched it die in mid-flight.
Another wave of goosebumps ripple across her skin.
“Gabriela, there's no way in hell we're camping near here tonight,” she declares.
Of course, that’s exactly what they end up doing.
They pitch their tent just a bit further along, near the headland – they’d planned the spot in advance, somewhere a bit more sheltered from the coastal winds, but still within sights of the beach. Not that it really matters, Jamila had thought, since they’ll be sleeping. And it definitely doesn’t matter now, considering the state of the place.
Gabriela is sound asleep and snoring. It’s almost funny – there’s never been a place where Gabriela can’t sleep. On a bus or a plane, in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of a lecture…no matter what the circumstances, she can nap. It’s probably the reason she always has so much energy – she’s always actually managing to rest.
Jamila, on the other hand, is not usually so lucky.
Even in their sheltered spot, the wind shakes their tent, rustling the canvas. The waves are crashing beyond their thin, fabric walls, and then the gulls – they’re making so much noise. Why are they even awake right now? Don’t birds ever sleep?
Apparently not. It sounds like they’re having a whole party out there – or, maybe, a feast is the more accurate term. She’s willing to bet they’re tucking in to all the rubbish on the beach.
But then she thinks of the gulls before, back at Gyllyngvase – of Adam Lang, staring up at them.
As much as she’d tried not to think about it at the time, there had been something weird about –
BAM!
Something hits the side of the tent, and she jolts upright, tangled in her sleeping bag, heart thumping in her chest like she’s just run a marathon.
“Gabriela,” she hisses. “Gabriela, acorda!” Wake up!
But Gabriela just snores on.
For a moment, Jamila considers shaking her awake. Then, she considers just lying back down and trying to sleep again.
She does neither. Instead, she carefully unzips her sleeping bag, extracting herself from it as quietly as she can, before pulling on her shoes and her jacket. She unzips just enough of the door of the tent to push herself out, and quickly closes it again before squinting into the darkness. She can barely see anything, stumbling through the tough grass, but she can just about make out the swirling shapes of the birds wheeling above the beach. There’s so many of them – it’s like a swarm. It doesn’t look right – it can’t be right. It must be the darkness and her own exhaustion playing tricks on her. That’s got to be it.
And she can fix at least one of those things. She scrambles to pull her phone out of her jacket pocket, turning on the torch and shining the light on the ground around the tent, trying to figure out what hit it. But the only thing she finds is the prone body of a bird, looking twisted and dead.
It must have dropped right out of the sky. Just like that one she saw earlier.
Her pulse pounding in her throat, sickening.
She’s suddenly overcome with an unspeakable sense of wrongness.
She’s got to get out of here.
The thought grips her, not entirely rational, and she just turns, stumbling through the darkness towards the beach, terror chasing at her heels. Her trainers catch on plastic debris and bin bags, and she nearly falls over multiple times, but her panic is twisting every sensible thought in her mind, torquing them into something else entirely. She’s got to go – to get away. The coastal path – it can’t be far, just on the other side of the beach. If she can just get to the other side, she can find it, head back to the safety of the town –
She hears it first – the rush of air resistance like a harbinger, before the bird that harkens it swoops low over her head, catching her scalp. She stumbles, gasping, ducking instinctively – but more are coming. The next whips past her face, wing tips hitting her cheek, and then the next flies right into her face, crying and flapping wildly against her. A scream rips itself from her throat, and she tries to bat it away with her arms, flailing desperately, but all it seems to do it attract more of them until they’re all around her, their wings slapping against her and their beaks slashing at her skin, fierce enough to draw blood.
She can’t fight them off – and so she just runs, staggering up the beach until her feet find the comforting sturdiness of tarmac. It offers her no sanctuary – the birds just keep coming, keening cries ringing in her ears, but the fact she’s not on sand anymore gives her the edge she needs. She sprints as hard as she can, nearly falling over in her haste, but she just about manages to keep her balance as she heads up the road, away from the beach and into the dark, the light of her phone torch flashing back and forth in her hand.
The birds, after a minute or two, start to peel away from her, returning to the flock on the beach. She tries not to sob with relief, and just keeps on running, too terrified to consider stopping. It’s only a few minutes after that, when she’s gasping for breath and her body is screaming at her for rest, that a sense of rationality and clarity begins to return to her panic-addled mind. She stumbles to a stop, leaning forward with her hands on her knees, panting, and slowly begins to grasp the reality of her situation.
She’s run off into the dark.
Abandoned Gabriela in the tent, with those birds.
She’s alone, on a dark road at who knows what hour of night –
She doesn’t even know how far she’s run.
But it can’t be far, right?
She turns, looking back down the road. But all she sees is the darkness beyond the light of her phone torch.
It’s then that she notices her arms. She gasps, shaken and horrified, before shining the light over herself so she can see the damage properly. The skin on her forearms is torn and bloodied from where the gulls slashed at her manically, and now she’s seen the injuries, a sharp spike of pain hits her through the adrenaline that’s flooded her bloodstream. The skin on her face prickles too, uncomfortable, and she brings her hand up to her cheek, only to be hit with more biting bursts of pain. Her face – they must have cut at her face too –
A sob escapes her throat.
She –
She needs to get help.
With shaking hands, she fumbles with her phone, dialling 999. She’s not sure whether she’ll get signal out here – but she’s not completely in the middle of nowhere, is she? Falmouth is only a few miles away, she thinks, as she holds the phone to her ear, still breathing hard.
The call immediately gets picked up.
“Emergency, which service do you require? Fire, Police or Ambulance?”
“Ambulance,” she says, mouth opening to say more – but there’s a click as they redirect her.
“Ambulance service – is the patient breathing?” a new voice says.
“I need help,” Jamila gasps. “I got attacked – there were these birds and they’ve cut up my arms and I ran and now I’m lost and –”
“Try and stay calm for me,” says the operator. “Can you describe to me where you are?”
She forces herself to breath. “I’m – I’m on the road. Between Falmouth and – and Maenporth Beach.”
“Sorry, could you repeat that?”
For some reason, the question sends terror lurching in her gut. Can’t they hear her? “I’m on the road. Between – between Falmouth and –”
But before she can finish, the dial tone is ringing in her ear, loud and piercing.
“Hello?” she still can’t help but plead into the receiver, even though she knows it’s useless.
No one can hear her.
A sob rips itself from her throat.
Never in her life has she felt so alone.
For a long moment, she is frozen with indecision. Then she tries again, jamming in the three numbers with stuttering hands. The blood from her arms has begun to drip down over her fingers, smearing the screen with red. She tries to ignore it, pressing the green button and holding the phone to her ear.
“Funciona,” she whispers to herself, to the air, to the dark. “Funciona funciona, vai–!”
But all she gets is a dial tone, ringing in her ears like a death knell.
Ok. Ok.
She hangs up, and tries desperately to think through the pain and the panic. She needs to get help. So either she goes back to Gabriela, walking back the way she came –
NO, some feral, terrified part of her screams, the feeling of the birds’ wings against her face still fresh in her mind.
– or…
She turns to look the other way.
The lights of Falmouth glimmer in the distance.
It had taken them nearly fifty minutes to walk out here.
Go back and get Gabriela, some part of her hisses. You can’t just leave her there –
Another sob rips itself from her throat.
She doesn’t want to leave her. She doesn’t want to.
But the idea of going back there is absolutely intolerable to her.
She’s in the tent, she tries to tell herself. She’s safe in there. I was safe until I got out of the tent.
And she’ll stay there until morning. Gabriela will sleep through anything. She’ll sleep, and when she wakes up and finds Jamila missing, she’ll text or call her. And wherever Jamila gets to, she’ll tell her where she is and Gabriela will be able to find her.
Yes.
Yes, that’s what she has to do.
The wind blows a gust, and a shiver wracks her body – but she turns, and starts walking towards the town, holding her phone torch out before her, guiding the way.
Just fifty minutes. And you already ran part of it.
And then – she’ll find someone. Anyone. Or she’ll ring 999 again. And then –
Something moves in the sky above her. She flinches, jumping back, a cry bursting from her lips. She shines her torch at the sky, moving it around desperately, her whole body shaking.
But there’s nothing there.
Just the shadows playing tricks on her.
Just the dark.
She still stands frozen for at least a minute, scanning the sky above her. There’s nothing there – but she can’t convince herself that the moment she moves her torch down, something will return.
But she has to keep going forward.
The blood is dripping down her arms, steady and unrelenting.
Get help, her body is telling her. Go and get help.
She swallows back a sob, and forces herself to keep walking.
It’s sometime later – it could be ten minutes or thirty, she has no idea – when she hears it. A car engine, coming along the road. She can’t quite tell which direction it’s coming from until the headlights coming behind her starts to cast her shadow along the road, stretched out and distorted until the car comes closer. A flicker of hope grows in her chest, and to her incredible relief, it slows down as it passes her and the window rolls down. She breaks into a run, closing the distance between her and the dark-coloured vehicle. When she’s close enough, she can just about make out the features of the driver in the torch light – a young woman with sharp, narrow features, long hair tied up in a pony tail and dark eyes. Her brow is crinkled with kindly concern.
“Are you –” and then she does a double take as she takes in Jamila properly, probably seeing the injuries on her arms, her face. The concern quickly shifts to blatant alarm. “Do you need taking to a hospital?”
Oh, Jamila could cry with relief. “Yes – yes, please –”
“Get in. I’ll take you right away,” says the woman.
“Thank you – thank you.” The words come out almost in a sob, and she doesn’t even hesitate to run around to the passenger’s side, fumbling with the handle before she manages to get the door open, practically collapsing into the seat. She pulls the seatbelt over herself and clicks it into place, before letting all the tension leak from her and leaning her head back, letting her eyes fall shut. She feels the engine rumble, and then there’s the slight shift as the car begins to move again. She doesn’t even care that she’s just jumped into a stranger’s car – she’s just grateful that someone came by. Someone non-threatening, who didn’t even hesitate to offer to help.
“Are you alright?” asks the woman, sounding unnerved, but mostly just worried. “What happened to you?”
“I –” she starts, but her voice cracks, and she swallows. “I was camping, near Maenporth. Something hit the tent and woke me up, and so I went out to have a look, and – I was attacked –”
“Attacked?” says the woman, sounding aghast. Jamila still hasn’t opened her eyes again, but she can imagine her expression from her tone. “By another person?”
“No – no, it was – the birds…” She falters, suddenly realising how it sounds now that she’s said it out loud. “I know that sounds impossible, but – there were so many of them –”
“And they did this to you?”
“Yeah – yes,” she says, swallowing. “There were so many, and they – they wouldn’t stop coming.”
“Shh, it’s alright,” says the woman. “You’re safe now.”
You’re safe now, she repeats to herself, and finds that, finally, she’s able to believe it. There’s something about this woman, she thinks – and maybe it’s just because she saved her from the emptiness of that dark, lonely road. But in her presence, she feels calm for the first time since she left the tent. Like everything will be ok, now that she’s here. It must be something about her demeanour – but Jamila finds she doesn’t care about figuring it out. She just cares that she’s on her way somewhere safe.
She doesn’t even think to ask what she is doing, driving along that stretch of road at such an ungodly hour.
She’s just tired, and hurt.
It takes them just under ten minutes to reach the town – she can tell the moment they hit the outer limits by the way the light of the lampposts flare and fade against her eyelids as they pass. She doesn’t even both trying to follow where they’re going based on the movements of the car – she just lets herself float, trying to ignore the pain in her arms, the pain in her face. She feels almost distant from reality – it’s so strange. Like she’s on the edge of falling asleep, that stage of not-quite-awake where you’re aware that the world around you is moving still, but you are completely still, frozen in a moment.
A few minutes later, the car begins to slow. She imagines the woman carefully navigating the smaller, more difficult roads that make up the centre of Falmouth. Then, later still, she feels the car roll into a parking space, gently coming to a halt.
She still doesn’t open her eyes – just a moment longer. She hasn’t slept at all yet tonight, after all.
“Are you awake?” asks the woman, her hand giving her shoulder a careful shake.
Ugh. Ok. She screws up her face, but forces herself to move, her eyes opening a squint.
“…‘m awake,” she says, sitting up a little, and looking out of the front windscreen.
In that instant, she realises something is very, very wrong.
They’re not at the hospital.
Beyond the window is just the ocean, black and roaring the night.
“Wh – what?” she chokes, any sense of safety she’d felt evaporating. She looks to the woman beside her in the dim, yellow light of the car, and can’t help the way her breath hitches. Whilst nothing about her physically has changed, everything about her looks different, somehow. Her eyes hold no hint of kindness or concern, her brow is not creased with worry – instead, a dangerous smile quirks at her lips, and her gaze –
There’s only one way Jamila can think to describe it.
Like a predator looks at her prey.
“I’m sorry,” the woman says, sounding like she’s not sorry at all, reaching towards Jamila’s neck with what looks like a small syringe that she wants nowhere near her. But she can’t stop her – she’s hurt, and she’s scared, and she has nowhere to go – and the moment she turns to scrabble for the door handle, she feels something pierce her neck, and an unfathomable wave of exhaustion washes over her. “But there’s been a change of plan.”