Kingfisher

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Charley eventually spoke into my head. ‘He’s left me something.’ She walked towards me. I realised she was still holding her toy bunny. She bent down low beside me and guided my hand to the seam on the rabbit’s back. Halfway down, the stitching appeared to have been ripped slightly. Something sharp was against my fingers. I withdrew my hand, and from the gap in the seam she pulled out a small piece of paper. Neither of us spoke. She flattened it out. Dad’s writing was clear. There was a single word to read. ‘KINGFISHER.’

I was about to switch it all off when my eyes stopped on a photo of Gil Zimmerman, the Disciples’ leader. It was a family shot taken three years before . . . Gil was ten years older than me. Dark hair framed his face, and his brown eyes seemed to look beyond the picture . . . Grainy footage existed of the Disciples breaking into Enrosphere’s refining plant, and Gil was there. I watched him turning his face from the camera and holding up two fingers in the victory sign. It was an act of defiance, taunting the police; he wasn’t afraid . . . My eyes flipped between the family shot and the footage of his hand in the victory sign. A shiver ran down my spine. Somehow, he seemed familiar, as if I knew him. But how could that be possible? He was the leader of a terrorist group.

The osprey suddenly dived down, hit the water’s surface and flew up again with a fish in its claws. It was over in seconds, but something about the bird’s obvious strength, agility, and sheer killer instinct grabbed me. . . . ‘I’d do anything to have power and strength like that bird,’ I said. It struck me I’d be fearless. Nothing would hold me back. ‘Would you?’ ‘Yeah. A bird of prey like that, it knows what it wants and it gets it. That was like watching a missile come out of the sky.’

‘You could ask it to give you some of its strength,’ she said matter-of-factly. ‘If it’s feeling generous, it might lend you some.’ I looked at her a long moment. ‘Mary, that’s the craziest thing anyone’s ever said to me.’ ‘Is it? I don’t think it’s crazy. It’s common sense.’