Migrations(13)

I search my memory, and take a stab. “Is that Keats?”

“You get bonus points for that one.”

“It sounds perfect. Why don’t you?”

“I have a lot of children to feed.”

I consider this. It’s not the pathless woods or the lonely shore that guides him from his home, then, but necessity.

“Does he find much anymore?” I ask.

Samuel shrugs, uncomfortable. “He used to. Everyone wanted to work for Ennis Malone. Herring aplenty. Now it’s no easy task. The turning o’ the world, right there. Things grow dire.” He looks at me. “Don’t have time to be chasing birds all over the world.”

I don’t repeat myself: I’ve already told them the birds will lead them to fish. They don’t believe me. They believe in superstition, and in routine. They believe in knowing the oceans you sail.

“Today with that berg—that was nothing,” Samuel says. “It’ll get much worse as we reach the Gulf Stream.”

“Why’s that?”

“It connects with the Labrador Current, which’ll give us a lift south. They’re two of the great currents of the world, moving in opposite directions.” He takes a drag of his cigarette, the butt glowing red in the dark. “When you reach that spot, where they brush against each other…” Samuel shakes his head. “You can’t count on much. It’s a beast of an ocean, the Atlantic. Ennis told me once that he’s sailed it for most of his life and he still knows next to nothing about it.”

“Ennis seems to say a lot of things to everyone except me.”

Samuel looks sideways at me, then reaches to pat my shoulder kindly. “You’re brand-new, kid. And he’s focused.”

“He’s pissed.”

“If he regrets his decision he won’t take it out on you. He’s not that petty. Look, what I mean to be asking is if you’re really sure about all this, lass. Quick way to the grave, hopping aboard a deep-sea vessel without the skills to survive it. Even if you do have the skills, come to think of it.”

“You’ve survived.” I suspect he’s hiding nimble feet under that rotund figure.

“And I expect Lady Luck to change her mind about that most every day.”

I shrug. “Well, Samuel, what can I say. If I die on this boat, then I guess it’s just my fate, isn’t it.”

“Huh.”

“Huh what?”

There’s something gentle in his eyes as he looks at me. “What makes a young thing like you so tired of life?”

When I don’t answer he hugs me. I am so surprised that I don’t remember to return the embrace. There are very few people, in my understanding of the world, who offer tenderness so freely.

I don’t follow the old sailor back inside. Instead I think about what he has perceived in me and know it isn’t true. It’s not life I’m tired of, with its astonishing ocean currents and layers of ice and all the delicate feathers that make up a wing. It’s myself.



* * *



There are two worlds. One is made of water and earth, of rock and minerals. It has a core, a mantle and a crust, and oxygen for breathing.

The other is made of fear.

I have inhabited each and know one to feel deceptively like the other. Until it is too late, and you are watching the eyes of the other inmates to see if there is death in them, watching every face you pass, listening to the angry hum for a hint you are its next target, clawing at the walls of your cell to get free, to get out, for air and sky and please, not this shrinking tomb.

The fear world is worse than death. It is worse than anything.

And it has found me once more, way out in the Atlantic, inside this rocking cabin.

Tonight is the first night I haven’t been able to sleep.

“Primary coverts,” I whisper through chattering teeth, “greater coverts, median coverts, scapular, mantle, nape, crown—shit.” I lurch upright because even the mantra isn’t helping me tonight, it’s not calming or centering me, there’s no distraction from the queasy terror of this skyless room.

I click on my travel torch and wedge it on top of my pack so its beam lights my notebook.

Niall, I scribble. I have to forestall a full-blown panic attack. Where are your lungs when I need them? Where is your sense, your perpetual calm?

It’s been over a week and we’ve escaped the ice. We’re headed for the Labrador Current, which Samuel says is dangerous. He says this whole ocean is dangerous. I’m not sure you’d like it. I think you enjoy having your feet on solid ground too much, but the sea is like the sky and I can’t get enough of either. When I die don’t bury me in the ground. Scatter me to the wind.

I stop because tears have blurred my eyes. This won’t be one of the letters I send. It would frighten him to hear me speak of dying.

“Turn that fucking light off,” Léa snaps at me from her bed.

I riffle through my pack until I find the sleeping pills. I’m not meant to take them with alcohol but at this point I don’t give a shit. I swallow one and then squeeze my eyes shut. Primary coverts, greater coverts, median coverts, scapular, mantle, nape, crown—



* * *



I wake hanging two inches above the sea. It roars black and bottomless, its spray icy against my face. For a moment it must be the most perfect dream and then the moment passes and I realize I’m awake and my body lurches with such shock that I nearly fall.