That Seagull Book

‘You’re a herring gull, Lazarus. Act like one.’  

Father’s stare—granite-hard. 

Divers screamed from clouds, stupid fast, white streaks into the deep. 

Zip-zip-zip—for the sardines, the silver. 

His belly tightened. 

Not yet. Maybe never. Not after what happened. 

Leg still messed up. Head still patchy, feathers wouldn’t grow there. Mother turned her beak from it now. Peck in the gut or what? 

Time to leave this stink-o’-sardine flat roof. 

He loved Father, the stupid old fool. But the gull had no idea what Lazarus had found out. 

Gulls didn’t have to dive.  

Not anymore. 

One year later. Chips and pasty on the wind. St Ives—gull paradise. Harbour. Proper one. Flappin’, filchin’, flyin’. 

That’s how Lazarus had bigged it up. To the brown-feathered gull that flew in, calling him brother. 

Brother—Lazarus hadn’t known he had one. 

‘In town—Sives, we say—I’m known as Flick,’ he told the little sprat. ‘I fly fast, edgy. My crew name— 

Leave off with the Lazarus.’ 

They split with a plan: rub feathers in the morning. 

Flick hadn’t slept well. Moonlight—bright as Father’s stare—wouldn’t clear his head. Belly a proper bait tub, squirming. 

Samoel. 

His parents could’ve warned him. 

Now he perched on the easy-angled roof of the lifeboat house. The early sun warmed his legs. Out at sea, past Smeaton’s harbour wall, gulls dove to fill their bellies. 

Show-offs. 

Not better’n him. 

A whiff of salt caught in his throat—cold, old memory. He squirted onto tile, tried to sort himself. 

High above his beak, the black-and-white cloth rippled against a sky streaked like a mackerel’s back. Coffee, the human-bitter stink, drifted, mixing with warm bread-whiff. 

Below, in a narrow street, still cool and grey, a human fumbled food and drink, shouldered a door. Flick, watching for spillage and scraps, jabbered a squark. 

Twitch arrived with a light touch-down and hop. Small body. Eyes fixed on a nearby roof. Feathers tight. ‘That thing again. Flappin like that—’ 

‘Just a kite crashed in. Plastic. Divvent fret…’ said Wencastle, round and ruffled this morning: fed, washed, fast-dried on the church roof by a blustery blow. 

Flick was seeing his friends through Samoel’s eyes, judging. 

Wencastle. Parents mashed: one pecking roadkill, the other flapping useless over her. He rarely jabbered about it. But when the mizzle pressed—sky or spirit—he went far-off in the eyes. 

Down on the street, a cat darted from something unseen. Three beaks dipped. No drama. 

Twitch. Fell asleep top of a mast. Awoke in a harbour not her own—Sives. No idea where she was, or who the gull was who. Happens more than you think, she said.   

Below, early rising humans strolled, or rolled in their road-crabs, on the hard path that weaved between their blocky nests, towards the harbour, its water bright as sea glass.