Migrations(21)

I’m not the only one who’s spent as much time as possible on deck. Last night Malachai became convinced he needed to wrap the terns in blankets and take them into his cabin to keep them safe and warm. I had to assure him captivity was no way for the birds to spend their last migration and that it’s early yet, they’re still strong, still happy to be in flight. I caught Léa singing to one, and, despite orders, Basil has been sneaking them bread crumbs they have no interest in, even though feeding the birds is moronic since we’re meant to be following them on their hunt for food.

The crew appears now. I warned them that when the weather changed the birds would leave, so they’ve come to say goodbye.

The first to rise is mine. I have taken to thinking of her as mine because she has burrowed inside and made a home in my rib cage. With the sun setting golden, she lifts and spreads her wings, hovering. Testing the air, her hunger, perhaps, her desire. It’s right, whatever she feels, because she flaps once and it’s as if she floats up into the sky, effortlessly higher and higher and unbound.

As the others of her kind follow her, the crew members wave, call their farewells, wish the birds a bon voyage.

Samuel uses meaty fingers to dash away his tears. When he sees me looking, he spreads his hands and says helplessly, “If they’re the last…”

He doesn’t need to finish.

“Don’t go too far,” I hear Anik tell one of the terns softly as it takes flight.

I find mine in the sky again, leading the way. She is smaller and smaller, halved and halved again.

Don’t, I whisper, inside. Don’t leave.

But I know she must. It’s in her nature.





7

NUI, GALWAY, IRELAND TWELVE YEARS AGO

“You skipped my class,” a voice says as I’m scrubbing the bowl of a toilet.

I glance over my shoulder, then get back to work.

“What’s the point of cleaning this shithole if you’re not even attending your lectures?”

“It’s called a job. There are worse places to clean.”

“Why clean at all?”

I flush the toilet and straighten, annoyed at his privilege. He’s blocking the stall door, taller here before me than he was behind his lectern. “Excuse me.”

Professor Lynch tilts his head to better study me. His eyes probe the way they must probe a specimen he can’t figure out. He’s wearing a lilac bow tie with his suit today. It looks stupid, but I think that might be the point. “If you skip again I’ll have to mark you absent and your credit goes way down.”

I smile. “Good luck with that. Now move or I’ll smear my shitty gloves all over you.”

He rears back. “What’s your name?”

My gloves come off with a snap and I throw them in the rubbish, before removing the whole bag and carrying it in the direction of the bins.

“What are you doing here?” he calls.

It’s a damn good question.

The next time I see him I’m sweeping the courtyard outside the university café. He’s with several of his colleagues, drinking Americanos in a rare moment of sunshine between the clouds. His eyes fix on me across the courtyard; I don’t know how I know because I’m very careful not to look at him. I just feel it. I start sweeping closer because it’s my job, I have to, and so I reach the table next to his, where a mound of hot chips has been spilled. I stoop to sweep them up, laughing as a seagull lands and tries to pinch them from me.

“All right, then, you win, greedy guts.” I leave the chips for the bird, realizing as I do that it’s been quite a while since I’ve seen one in this courtyard, when once you could barely eat a meal out here without getting invaded by a flock of them. It’s much quieter now, without their raucous battling for scraps.

“Excuse me,” a woman’s voice says and I look up to find a plate being shoved in my face. It’s one of the women from Professor Lynch’s table, and her plate is covered in half-eaten food. I’ve seen her around—she’s another professor in the science department, thirties, charming, apparently racked with impatience.

“I’m not a waitress,” I say. Plus everyone knows they have to take their own tableware inside.

“What are you?”

“A cleaner.”

“So … here.” She thrusts the plate even more forcefully so I have no choice but to take it.

“I’ll take it inside for you, shall I?”

Her eyes swivel back to me, surprised. They narrow, as if she’s only just noticing me for the first time and not liking what she sees. “That’d be great.”

“Want me to accompany you to the toilet, too? I’m great at wiping arses.”

Her mouth drops open.

I carry her plate inside, and I don’t know what possesses me but I wink at Niall Lynch as I pass him. His expression, for the briefest moment, is utterly mystified and makes the whole thing worthwhile.



* * *



My front tire is punctured, which is why I’m walking my bike along the headland tonight when I see him for the third time in one day. Seated on the bench I love, he holds a pair of binoculars with which to watch the seabirds caterwaul and fish for their dinner. The diving cormorants, forcing their way bravely through the dark water.