The Whistleblower
On a western island lived a woman who was said to be older than anyone else. She walked on the balls of her feet, and her hair was as long as she was tall, dyed in green. She spoke in lullabies. She was a healer and a sea forager, grilling clams and oysters for her supper, painting their shells, which she crafted into jewellery before selling the wearables at the weekly market. She was a cold fire whom the islanders had nicknamed Mum. She bothered folks with her unkempt appearance and her memory that never forgot; she was notoriously unforgiving, but she was loved. Mum was good fortune.
Until the morning when a strange man landed on the most western shore of the island. His body was lengthy and bony like a broom, and his hair was straight, thick, and rough, the colour of wheatfields in autumn. Locals nicknamed the solitary lad the Feather Man. He was spotted hovering on the edge of the cliffs often, his gait awkward and near gale speed; birds quarrelled above his head. Everyone in town talked about the Feather Man, but few folks had met him in the flesh.
Mum had found him face down on the beach below her house. His skin was covered with rashes and ulcers, so she had brought him inside her house and fed him. This was a criminal offence since on this island immigrants were required to register their arrival at the customs office, pay for a visa, and undergo a medical examination. But Mum did as she pleased.
The next day, she headed to town and reported the Feather Man, so the officer sent a public health nurse to Mum’s house. Mum stood by the man’s side. He was young and flighty, his skin wrinkling like a damp and oversized wetsuit. She didn’t flinch at the state of his bruised arms, or when his hand clenched deep into her shoulder with the spike of a hawk. The nurse recorded his details and declared him unfit to live on his own, let alone on this remote island: the Feather Man suffered from a cardiac murmur. But Mum did as she pleased once more. She would look after the lad, she insisted, and the man quarantined outside of town, his heart whooshing and spooking locals from his hut at the back of Mum’s house. He wasn’t allowed to apply for jobs; he wasn’t entitled to receive benefits.
Mum had always lived alone before. Islanders relied on her rituals to find purpose beyond the mundane, and the ring in her voice meant that she could deliver news gently; she was a wise woman, not a witch. When folks were worried about their finances and farming, their livestock and work, felt lonely, or when a relative was sick, they came to seek Mum’s advice. Never when they were happy.
Her home was quirky, overcrowded with framed still life paintings and recycled objects. She prepared food and infusions for anyone who knocked. But Mum was nobody’s mother. One day, she stopped answering the door.
The Feather Man had arrived the morning after a hurricane had stripped the island naked, and the sky had never been blue again. Drained, Mum was vexed by the migraine the weather had forced on her. She complained about her clogged lungs, swishing as she trotted to the weekly market to sell her shellfish, which were lesser in numbers but more detailed and precious in appearance. She began using crab claws too, which were suckled empty by voracious birds and available by the hundreds when the tide was low. She foraged at night. The pain in her joints and lack of sleep made her short tempered and impatient, which translated into briefer interactions with folks in town, who missed the soothing sound of Mum’s voice. She continued to sell her jewellery to the handful of hopeful tourists who had travelled to catch a sight of the few seabirds that still bred on the island’s stacks. Once upon a time, there were thousands of them diving at breakneck speed into that end of the world.
Stray dogs and cats started rallying outside of the Feather Man’s hut, which was located at the northernmost point of the island, where the sea was the choppiest and the coastline the colour of iron. He built a shelter for furry animals, then a fenced garden for the chickens and the rabbits, as well as a vegetable allotment, which thrived with curly kale, long carrots, Brussels sprouts, and garlic. Grass this green had never been cultivated this fast on that mercurial face of Earth; only seaweed. Mum sold the eggs and the vegetables at the market too, collecting enough money so the Feather Man could keep up with his council tax and utility bills and stay out of trouble. He could be a loner. He could be demonised. Yet he was a common man of this century. Islanders paid for their shopping baskets and turned a blind eye to the provenance of the products: the stomach’s passions had always fooled mankind’s principles.
Weeks into that summer, it hadn’t stopped raining. New shoots elsewhere than in the Feather Man’s allotment drowned before they had a chance to push through the ground, seedling and growing and, storm after storm, new convictions rooted. Islanders blamed the Feather Man for their ills. He alone was standing in the way of their wealth and happiness. The heat was unbelievable, the year was riding free and seasonless, and Mum stopped answering the doorbell.
The islanders grew barley and farmed molluscs in great quantity and quality, which they exported to the mainland, and they would never train a farmer or a fisherman from elsewhere. It had been common knowledge to them, for centuries, that the opening and closing of oyster shells correlated with lunar cycles. So, when a stranger fell from the sky but on their island, and the tidal patterns derailed, the Feather Man was blamed for the heavens’ whims.
When he had arrived, moons ago, the Feather Man’s legs were bowed like an arc and his spine was aching, so he crawled. As daylight only dimmed in July, Mum had seen him from afar, and the boy had stretched towards her, the sole survivor of a shipwreck, his face seemingly confused and his clothes obviously soaked.
‘The lad had no accent when he first spoke to me.’ Mum had introduced the stranger to the islanders in dialect. ‘He looked at me with eyes as deep and dark as a loch, and he said: “The weather will kill us one day.” Aye, I told him, I’m planning to be dead before that. And I served us both some tea.’
If not Mum’s order, fear kept a cordial distance between the strange man and the islanders.
Everything that was ever believed about him was hearsay. He lived as a recluse and wore a woolly green hat which Mum had knitted for him. It covered his eyebrows, hard and thick hair prickling between knits, and he dressed in denim dungarees and matching green wellies. He didn’t speak, and he didn’t sign either. But he whistled. His lips puckered and his tongue curled, pushing his jaw line forward until strident notes hatched, which he peaked and held at the back of his throat.
The winds shifted with the next solstice, and the crescent moon disappeared in favour of a forceful star. The sun plumed with rage as it was being cast out, heavy downpours battering roofs and lands. The waves powered with gravity, rising then rolling, until the tides became obsolete.
It began with gusts slapping the southern cliffs of the island. Then the gale vacuumed the land in a single inhale, until a storm strengthened by an unforeseen energy breathed out, and the weather purged the earthlings. And Mum didn’t have one allegory left inside her to beat up an islander’s heart. Words failed descriptions when the civilised world collapsed. The vegetation drowned under the infinite rain and the currents buried shellfish at the bottom of the sea, so the island sank inside a monochrome landscape. And the Feather Man whistled. His cheeks were as hot as boiling water, his tonsils inflamed and swollen, as red as an emergency. Mum minded him. She laid wet, cotton flannels over his forehead, simmered a seaweed broth and cooked some clams in cider, but the fever didn’t end there. A high-pitched noise, which he had steamed off from his diaphragm, filled the air, and the lad blew and blew and blew. His breathing was jagged, and yet he whistled. He whistled and whistled, as if he had a lisp, a shiver caged by his thorax, sweating and sick.
The doctor was summoned, but he returned to town clueless about the man’s condition. The Feather Man whistled and whistled and whistled. A group of teenagers set fire to his hut, and Mum bought him a tent, which he pitched over the ashes of his dispersed home. And the Feather Man whistled and whistled and whistled. The cats and the dogs and the chickens and the rabbits never left his side. Birds circled clockwise over his head, squawking and defecating on him. He received death threats, in writing and verbally, and everything he owned was either broken or spoiled with graffiti. It was winter by the calendar then, but everyone had their eyes set on spring, itchy and fragrant with blossoms. And the Feather Man whistled and whistled and whistled. Storms didn’t rest; a fresh breeze felt like a tender touch at the back of the neck, with each new blizzard intensifying under the whistling of the Feather Man. He looked scared but unwavering.
Islanders pressed their hands on either side of their skulls, covering their ears, and they scratched their eyes, going far deep under the skin, but for as little they could see or hear anymore, the present didn’t vanish. In the middle of a winter’s night, when clouds had the texture of charcoal, a group of islanders ripped the Feather Man’s tent apart. They kicked and slapped and punched the man, whose skin had greyed and trenched under the harshness of time. They hurt him again and again. It was said that the Feather Man didn’t bleed, but he died as humans do, and Mum cried tears so salty that her cheeks scabbed underneath their waterfall.
As soon as the Feather Man had stopped whistling, the islanders organised a bonfire to celebrate the peace they had fought for. They drank pints of cider and roasted the Feather Man’s poultry, serving the dish with a side of boiled vegetables. The milkmaid donated some butter to glaze the potatoes, and the baker spared some flour and dried fruits, so the wives could make clootie dumplings. And they feasted, happy as wild clams. The dogs yowled and the cats roared, but the islanders were too loud amongst themselves to hear the animals cry wolf.
Until the sun rose as a twin of the moon and a hurricane blasted over the island. The sky had woken up low, flirting with the thatched roofs over family homes, and the heavens opened above them, and Mum grew a mane on her chin and nails as sharp as claws, her hair greener than sea kelp as she howled below the full moon. Millions of flies landed on the cliffs and in the fields. The insects flapped their wings so fast the air had the touch of papier-mâché, humid and scorching hot like fire until crops burnt. Water drained, the land dying. Sea salt crystallised over rocks and the healing woman was never called Mum again. Sea grass spread over the land and by dawn the next day, the island was packed with birds. Even tropical breeds had joined the choir, their feathers colourful and their beaks as sharp as pencils, and the birds chirped anew together. They sang for days and nights without interruption, drawing breaths in a reacquainted language, until the island turned into a bare moon.
Until the morning when a strange man landed on the most western shore of the island. His body was lengthy and bony like a broom, and his hair was straight, thick, and rough, the colour of wheatfields in autumn. Locals nicknamed the solitary lad the Feather Man. He was spotted hovering on the edge of the cliffs often, his gait awkward and near gale speed; birds quarrelled above his head. Everyone in town talked about the Feather Man, but few folks had met him in the flesh.
Mum had found him face down on the beach below her house. His skin was covered with rashes and ulcers, so she had brought him inside her house and fed him. This was a criminal offence since on this island immigrants were required to register their arrival at the customs office, pay for a visa, and undergo a medical examination. But Mum did as she pleased.
The next day, she headed to town and reported the Feather Man, so the officer sent a public health nurse to Mum’s house. Mum stood by the man’s side. He was young and flighty, his skin wrinkling like a damp and oversized wetsuit. She didn’t flinch at the state of his bruised arms, or when his hand clenched deep into her shoulder with the spike of a hawk. The nurse recorded his details and declared him unfit to live on his own, let alone on this remote island: the Feather Man suffered from a cardiac murmur. But Mum did as she pleased once more. She would look after the lad, she insisted, and the man quarantined outside of town, his heart whooshing and spooking locals from his hut at the back of Mum’s house. He wasn’t allowed to apply for jobs; he wasn’t entitled to receive benefits.
Mum had always lived alone before. Islanders relied on her rituals to find purpose beyond the mundane, and the ring in her voice meant that she could deliver news gently; she was a wise woman, not a witch. When folks were worried about their finances and farming, their livestock and work, felt lonely, or when a relative was sick, they came to seek Mum’s advice. Never when they were happy.
Her home was quirky, overcrowded with framed still life paintings and recycled objects. She prepared food and infusions for anyone who knocked. But Mum was nobody’s mother. One day, she stopped answering the door.
The Feather Man had arrived the morning after a hurricane had stripped the island naked, and the sky had never been blue again. Drained, Mum was vexed by the migraine the weather had forced on her. She complained about her clogged lungs, swishing as she trotted to the weekly market to sell her shellfish, which were lesser in numbers but more detailed and precious in appearance. She began using crab claws too, which were suckled empty by voracious birds and available by the hundreds when the tide was low. She foraged at night. The pain in her joints and lack of sleep made her short tempered and impatient, which translated into briefer interactions with folks in town, who missed the soothing sound of Mum’s voice. She continued to sell her jewellery to the handful of hopeful tourists who had travelled to catch a sight of the few seabirds that still bred on the island’s stacks. Once upon a time, there were thousands of them diving at breakneck speed into that end of the world.
Stray dogs and cats started rallying outside of the Feather Man’s hut, which was located at the northernmost point of the island, where the sea was the choppiest and the coastline the colour of iron. He built a shelter for furry animals, then a fenced garden for the chickens and the rabbits, as well as a vegetable allotment, which thrived with curly kale, long carrots, Brussels sprouts, and garlic. Grass this green had never been cultivated this fast on that mercurial face of Earth; only seaweed. Mum sold the eggs and the vegetables at the market too, collecting enough money so the Feather Man could keep up with his council tax and utility bills and stay out of trouble. He could be a loner. He could be demonised. Yet he was a common man of this century. Islanders paid for their shopping baskets and turned a blind eye to the provenance of the products: the stomach’s passions had always fooled mankind’s principles.
Weeks into that summer, it hadn’t stopped raining. New shoots elsewhere than in the Feather Man’s allotment drowned before they had a chance to push through the ground, seedling and growing and, storm after storm, new convictions rooted. Islanders blamed the Feather Man for their ills. He alone was standing in the way of their wealth and happiness. The heat was unbelievable, the year was riding free and seasonless, and Mum stopped answering the doorbell.
The islanders grew barley and farmed molluscs in great quantity and quality, which they exported to the mainland, and they would never train a farmer or a fisherman from elsewhere. It had been common knowledge to them, for centuries, that the opening and closing of oyster shells correlated with lunar cycles. So, when a stranger fell from the sky but on their island, and the tidal patterns derailed, the Feather Man was blamed for the heavens’ whims.
When he had arrived, moons ago, the Feather Man’s legs were bowed like an arc and his spine was aching, so he crawled. As daylight only dimmed in July, Mum had seen him from afar, and the boy had stretched towards her, the sole survivor of a shipwreck, his face seemingly confused and his clothes obviously soaked.
‘The lad had no accent when he first spoke to me.’ Mum had introduced the stranger to the islanders in dialect. ‘He looked at me with eyes as deep and dark as a loch, and he said: “The weather will kill us one day.” Aye, I told him, I’m planning to be dead before that. And I served us both some tea.’
If not Mum’s order, fear kept a cordial distance between the strange man and the islanders.
Everything that was ever believed about him was hearsay. He lived as a recluse and wore a woolly green hat which Mum had knitted for him. It covered his eyebrows, hard and thick hair prickling between knits, and he dressed in denim dungarees and matching green wellies. He didn’t speak, and he didn’t sign either. But he whistled. His lips puckered and his tongue curled, pushing his jaw line forward until strident notes hatched, which he peaked and held at the back of his throat.
The winds shifted with the next solstice, and the crescent moon disappeared in favour of a forceful star. The sun plumed with rage as it was being cast out, heavy downpours battering roofs and lands. The waves powered with gravity, rising then rolling, until the tides became obsolete.
It began with gusts slapping the southern cliffs of the island. Then the gale vacuumed the land in a single inhale, until a storm strengthened by an unforeseen energy breathed out, and the weather purged the earthlings. And Mum didn’t have one allegory left inside her to beat up an islander’s heart. Words failed descriptions when the civilised world collapsed. The vegetation drowned under the infinite rain and the currents buried shellfish at the bottom of the sea, so the island sank inside a monochrome landscape. And the Feather Man whistled. His cheeks were as hot as boiling water, his tonsils inflamed and swollen, as red as an emergency. Mum minded him. She laid wet, cotton flannels over his forehead, simmered a seaweed broth and cooked some clams in cider, but the fever didn’t end there. A high-pitched noise, which he had steamed off from his diaphragm, filled the air, and the lad blew and blew and blew. His breathing was jagged, and yet he whistled. He whistled and whistled, as if he had a lisp, a shiver caged by his thorax, sweating and sick.
The doctor was summoned, but he returned to town clueless about the man’s condition. The Feather Man whistled and whistled and whistled. A group of teenagers set fire to his hut, and Mum bought him a tent, which he pitched over the ashes of his dispersed home. And the Feather Man whistled and whistled and whistled. The cats and the dogs and the chickens and the rabbits never left his side. Birds circled clockwise over his head, squawking and defecating on him. He received death threats, in writing and verbally, and everything he owned was either broken or spoiled with graffiti. It was winter by the calendar then, but everyone had their eyes set on spring, itchy and fragrant with blossoms. And the Feather Man whistled and whistled and whistled. Storms didn’t rest; a fresh breeze felt like a tender touch at the back of the neck, with each new blizzard intensifying under the whistling of the Feather Man. He looked scared but unwavering.
Islanders pressed their hands on either side of their skulls, covering their ears, and they scratched their eyes, going far deep under the skin, but for as little they could see or hear anymore, the present didn’t vanish. In the middle of a winter’s night, when clouds had the texture of charcoal, a group of islanders ripped the Feather Man’s tent apart. They kicked and slapped and punched the man, whose skin had greyed and trenched under the harshness of time. They hurt him again and again. It was said that the Feather Man didn’t bleed, but he died as humans do, and Mum cried tears so salty that her cheeks scabbed underneath their waterfall.
As soon as the Feather Man had stopped whistling, the islanders organised a bonfire to celebrate the peace they had fought for. They drank pints of cider and roasted the Feather Man’s poultry, serving the dish with a side of boiled vegetables. The milkmaid donated some butter to glaze the potatoes, and the baker spared some flour and dried fruits, so the wives could make clootie dumplings. And they feasted, happy as wild clams. The dogs yowled and the cats roared, but the islanders were too loud amongst themselves to hear the animals cry wolf.
Until the sun rose as a twin of the moon and a hurricane blasted over the island. The sky had woken up low, flirting with the thatched roofs over family homes, and the heavens opened above them, and Mum grew a mane on her chin and nails as sharp as claws, her hair greener than sea kelp as she howled below the full moon. Millions of flies landed on the cliffs and in the fields. The insects flapped their wings so fast the air had the touch of papier-mâché, humid and scorching hot like fire until crops burnt. Water drained, the land dying. Sea salt crystallised over rocks and the healing woman was never called Mum again. Sea grass spread over the land and by dawn the next day, the island was packed with birds. Even tropical breeds had joined the choir, their feathers colourful and their beaks as sharp as pencils, and the birds chirped anew together. They sang for days and nights without interruption, drawing breaths in a reacquainted language, until the island turned into a bare moon.