Migrations(29)
He doesn’t spot me in the hallways or rounding corners, or lurking behind a tree in the evening sunlight. He unlocks his bike, spares a moment to chat with a student, then mounts and pedals away.
I unlock my bike and follow.
The professor rides at a good pace, but I have no trouble keeping up. On the contrary—several times I’m forced to slow so I won’t draw too near. He leads me through the city, pausing at traffic lights and then dismounting to walk his bike through the cobblestoned outdoor mall, catching the vibrant snippets of musicians taking advantage of the sun. Then he rides out beyond the city’s edge to where the grass is long and the sky is wide. Farther from the sea, but there’s beauty out here nonetheless, in the gold-drenched green of the fields. He slows around a winding hill and each time I lose sight of him I come to my senses and decide to turn back and then each time I see him again I just keep following. Who else can I honestly say has had this effect on me? Who else, ever? It’s the fantasy he’s created, no more. I know this, and still I follow. Huge trees appear to line the narrow road, blocking the paddocks on either side. They turn the world darker. A tunnel with no end in sight.
Niall reaches an arched gate, unlocked, and rides through onto a driveway. I stop and lower a foot to take it in. Before us is some sort of brick manor, a castle, almost, with several stories and enormous grounds and a Lexus parked out front.
He could turn around now and see me plain as day, framed by the curled iron and ivy. I wonder how I could explain it, if I could bear to try. But he doesn’t turn, and curiosity gets the better of me. I ride through the gate, embracing my insanity and ensuring humiliation. Up the winding driveway and around the stone fountain, all the way to the side path down which I saw Niall disappear. I leave my bike hidden behind a large, perfectly manicured hedge and creep along the perimeter of the house.
The back of the property is unlike the front. Out here it’s overrun, uncontained. There are tall trees and unruly plants and too-long grass. A lake spreads silver, at its edge a gently rocking dinghy. Niall disappears into a small building in the distance, hidden by draping vines. Up close I see that its roof is made of cobwebbed glass, and the windows on all sides are almost too dusty to see through. If I squint I can make him out, moving through plants and workbenches. There he is now, between hanging succulents, now gone, and now there again, appearing and vanishing. He draws me to the back of the greenhouse; I am so magnetized to his passage that I step into a ditch and twist my ankle. Biting my lip to keep from swearing, I clutch the windowsill and find him again, and I forget about the pain because at the back of the greenhouse is a tremendous cage, and it is filled with birds.
All the blood rushes to my cheeks and I step away from the window, trying to catch my breath, only I can’t, so I walk back to the entrance of the greenhouse, and then inside, through the vibrant colors as though in a dream, and the sound of the birds, what must be dozens of them, is echoing inside me and I can feel the flap of their feathers against my ribs. Niall doesn’t hear me over the racket of chirps and squawks. There are finches and robins and blackbirds and wrens and those are just the ones I can identify at a glance. He’s inside the cage feeding them grain, and the flutter of their colored wings is a whirlwind around him, and then suddenly, as though I haven’t decided it myself, I too am inside the cage, and he’s looking at me, surprised and also not surprised, and then I am kissing him amid the feathers.
We cling to each other, feverish. Perhaps it’s the recognition of a second will, one to rival my own, but in his certainty I find mine awakening, I find true adventure, at long last, one that might just be enough to keep me.
He pulls away to say, “Let’s get married,” and I burst into laughter and he does, too, but we are kissing again and again and I am thinking that we have lost our minds and that this is ludicrous, foolish, absurd, but I am also thinking that this must finally be it: the end of loneliness.
The Saghani, NORTH ATLANTIC OCEAN MIGRATION SEASON
* * *
“Be easy,” Ennis says a while later when the storm has lulled us both into an uneasy stupor. “It won’t come to that.”
“To swimming?”
He nods. “We’ll be all right.”
He’s sitting in his captain’s chair because it’s bolted to the floor. Every few seconds he braces himself against the lurch and sway. I kept being toppled off my seat so now I’m lying on the floor in order to avoid injuring myself. My feet break my forward impact, and Ennis has put a life vest behind my head for when I slide backward. He doesn’t want me here, but he wouldn’t risk me trying to get belowdecks.
The cabin feels small with the dark rain lashing at its windows and the two of us trapped here until the storm passes. There is a sky beast outside, intent on our destruction. Or maybe it doesn’t notice us at all, small as we are.
My eyes are fixed on the laptop screen, on the red dot in the storm’s path. How the terns will survive this is beyond me, but I know they will. I can feel it. I’ve never been more certain of anything.
Ennis reaches for the computer, moving it so he too can watch the dot.
“How’d you lose your kids?” I ask.
He doesn’t reply.
“What happened between you and their mother?”
Ennis gives no sign that he’s heard me, until—a slight shrug. Progress.