Migrations(54)

Then Anik’s lone hand, lifting into the air. “We’re in it now,” he murmurs. “So let’s finish it.”

One by one the other hands follow suit. I dash tears from my cheeks, hands shaking with exhilaration.

Last night it was over, all of this. Today we are deeper within the wilderness than we’ve ever been.

“So we head south,” Ennis says, “and hope our fuel lasts, ’cause they’ve put out an alert about the Saghani so we won’t be able to dock until it’s done.”

“And we hope our engines hold,” Léa says.

“And we pray for fish,” Dae says.

“And birds,” Anik says.

I nod.

And birds.



* * *



I take my bedroll onto the deck to sleep. I won’t stay in that cabin, despite Léa’s protests. As a concession I tie my wrist to the railing, which prevents me from going overboard in bad weather or during sleepwalking. It’s cold and lovely out here. A clear sky full of stars.

Later Ennis comes down from the helm and sits on the wooden boards beside my sleeping bag. He doesn’t say anything, as is his wont.

So I speak.

“Why did they vote to keep going?” I ask, because I’ve been asking myself the question all evening. The others aren’t bound as Ennis and I are.

“You’re one of us,” Ennis says. “We don’t hand our people over.”

It hurts to hear that, hurts in that way that feels frightening and good at the same time. I rest my head on my knees and look up at the moon. She’s nearly full tonight, and more golden than white.

“I didn’t mean to kill him,” I murmur. Then, “That’s not true. I did. I meant to kill him very much. And I think that’s why I shouldn’t have stabbed him.”

Ennis doesn’t move or speak for a long time. Night turns above.

It’s been an age when he says, “Maybe not. But I’m glad you did.”





20

GALWAY, IRELAND TWELVE YEARS AGO

“The world was a different place, once,” Niall says into the microphone. “Once there were creatures in the sea so miraculous they seemed straight out of fantasy. There were things that loped across plains or slithered through tall grass, things that leaped from the boughs of trees, which were plentiful, too. Once there were glorious winged beasts that roamed the sky-world, and now they are going.” He stops and looks for my face in the lecture hall. “They aren’t going,” he corrects himself. “They are being violently and indiscriminately slaughtered by our indifference. It has been decided by our leaders that economic growth is more important. That the extinction crisis is an acceptable trade for their greed.”

He said it’s hard, sometimes, to finish. The bile rises in his throat and he could break the lectern beneath his hands, overcome with a profound sense of loathing for what we are, all of us, and the poison of our species. He called himself a hypocrite for always talking, never doing, and he said he hates himself as much as anyone, he’s as much a perpetrator, a consumer living in wealth and privilege and wanting more and more and more. He said he’s fascinated by the simplicity with which I live, and envious, and I thought it curious because I’ve never thought of it that way. When he asked me what I really want, deep down, all I could think of was to walk and swim, so I guess he’s right.

I can see him struggling to continue with the lecture today. It’s been months since I’ve attended one of his classes, and I’m concerned to see the level of despair that leaks into his voice, the anger patent in his deliberateness, his pointed accusations and need to make us understand. I can hear in his voice the rage he experiences at his own futility, and I wish I could ease it for him somehow, smooth it away with the touch of my fingers or the whisper of my lips, but it’s bigger than I am, it’s an anger to swallow the world.

After the class I wait for him in his lab. I make myself look at the gull carcass, stretched and pinned still, though I don’t know why. Maybe because it returns me to the moment we first touched, the intimacy and the fear of it.

“The world’d be a better place if it was humans we could stuff and pin up and study,” Niall says as he enters.

I can’t help smiling a little. “No, it wouldn’t.”

“Can I show you something?”

I follow him to a projector screen. He turns down the lights but without showing me anything he looks at my face, at my eyes, and murmurs, “You look so tired, darlin’.”

Less sleepwalking lately, more nightmares. It’s usually one or the other. I’m a little frightened of sleep, a little frightened of my body and what it will do. But it’s not what’s worrying me now.

“You look so hopeless,” I tell him. “Are you okay?”

He kisses my eyelids tenderly. I breathe out and lean into him, knowing he’s not okay at all.

The video runs, thrown large onto the screen. There is no sound. Only a sudden expanse of white that blinds us both. When we look again, there are hundreds of snowy breasts and crimson beaks and the movement of elegant, sharp wings.

I move closer to the screen, hypnotized.

“Arctic terns,” Niall says. And then he tells me of their longest of all journeys, he speaks of the survival of them, the defiance of them, and finishes with, “I want to follow them.”