Migrations(6)

As an afterthought, I ask, “What’s your boat called?”

And he says, “The Saghani.”

I can’t help laughing.

“I’m Ennis Malone,” he adds, offering me his hand. It’s the largest hand I’ve ever shaken. Weather-bitten, like his cheeks and lips, and there is a lifetime’s worth of dirt tattooed under the fingernails.

“She saves your life and you don’t even tell her your name?” Basil says.

“I didn’t save his life.”

“You meant to,” Ennis says. “Same thing.”

“You shoulda left him in there to drown,” Samuel says. “Serve him right.”

“You could tie stones to his feet—that would drown him quicker,” Anik offers, and I stare at him.

“Don’t mind him,” Samuel says. “Macabre sense of humor.”

Anik’s expression suggests there is no humor about him whatsoever. He excuses himself.

“He also doesn’t like to be on land too long,” Ennis explains as we watch the Inuit man’s elegant passage through the pub.

Malachai, Daeshim, and Léa join us. The men look annoyed, sitting with identical frowns and folded arms. Léa is amused until she sees me, and then something wary chases its way through her brown eyes.

“What now?” Samuel asks the boys.

“Dae likes to pick and choose the rules he obeys,” Malachai says with a broad London accent. “And when he’s feeling really poorly he’ll make up his own.”

“Boring otherwise,” Daeshim says in an American accent.

“Boredom’s for people without imaginations,” Malachai says.

“Nah, boredom’s useful—it makes you innovative.”

They look sideways at each other and I see them both fight not to smile. Their fingers entwine, argument concluded.

“Who’s this then?” Léa asks. Her accent is French, I think.

“This is Franny Lynch,” Basil says.

I shake their hands and the boys seem to brighten.

“The selkie, huh?” Léa asks. Her hand is strong and stained with grease.

I pause, surprised by the reference and all the echoes in a life.

“Seal people who take to the water, only they don’t rescue folk like you did, they drown them.”

“I know what they are,” I murmur. “But I’ve never heard of a selkie drowning anyone.”

Léa shrugs, letting my hand go and sitting back. “That’s ’cause they’re tricksy and subtle, no?”

She’s wrong, but I smile a little, and my own wariness is kindled.

“Enough about that,” Daeshim says. “A question for you, Franny. Do you obey rules?”

Expectant eyes rest on me.

The question seems sort of silly, and I could almost laugh. Instead I take a mouthful of wine and then say, “I’ve always tried to.”



* * *



At one point Ennis goes to the bar for another round, Samuel disappears to the toilet for the fourteenth time (“When you get to my age, you won’t find it so funny”), and Basil, Daeshim, and Léa go out onto the cold deck to have a cigarette, so I find myself cornered on the sofa next to Malachai, even though I’d prefer to be outside smoking. The bar has thinned out a bit—the piano player has knocked off for the evening.

“How long you been here?” Malachai asks me in his deep voice. He has a fidgety quality about him, like an excited puppy, and dark brown eyes, and fingers that tap along to music even when there’s nothing playing.

“Only a week. You?”

“We berthed two days ago. Be leaving again in the morning.”

“How long have you been with the Saghani?”

“Two years, Dae and me.”

“Do you … like it?”

He flashes me the white of his teeth. “Ah, you know. It’s hard and it hurts and some nights you just wanna cry ’cause you’re so sore and there’s no way off and it feels really small, fuckin’ small. But you love it anyway. It’s home. We met on a trawler a few years back, Dae and me, but it didn’t go down too good when we hooked up. This crew don’t mind a bit, they’re family.” Malachai pauses and then his smile turns amused. “I’m telling you, it’s an insane asylum.”

“How’s that?”

“Samuel didn’t settle down ’til he’d had a child in every port from here to Maine, and he recites poetry because he wants people to know he can. Basil was on some cooking show in Australia but he got kicked out ’cause he couldn’t make anything normal—just that weird micro stuff you get in fancy restaurants, you know?”

I grin. “Does he cook for you?”

“He’s banned everyone else from the galley.”

“At least you must eat well.”

“We eat at midnight ’cause he spends hours stuffing around in there and then it’s usually a plate of something that looks like sand covered in flower petals and there’s only enough of it to leave a foul taste in your mouth. He can be a right prick, too. Then there’s Anik, Christ, don’t even get me started on him. He’s our first mate—did you meet him? Yeah, well, he’s like a reincarnation of a wolf. Except if you ask him on a different day he’s an eagle, or a snake, depending on how shitty he’s feeling. Took me ages to figure out he was making fun of me. He doesn’t like anything or anyone. Like, for real. But that’s what skiff men are like, you know? They’re outsiders, every one of them.”