Migrations(82)

Niall returns my smile.

THE AMUNDSEN SEA, WEST ANTARCTICA MATING SEASON

The cold is deep but I am calm. I haven’t submerged my head yet. I won’t need to, not until the very end. The water will do its work on the rest of my body quickly enough. And I’d like to watch the terns for as long as I can, that I might try to take them with me.

I will take a piece of you with me, Mam. You stole the breath from your own body just as I am doing. You gave me books and poetry and the will to see the world and for that I owe you everything. I’ll take the sound of the wind keening through our little wooden hut, and the smell of your salty hair and the warmth of you pressed around me. I will take a piece of you, too, Grandma, for you gave me quiet and you gave me strength, and I’m so sorry I didn’t recognize them sooner. I’ll take some of you, John, I’ll take the photo you kept on your mantel, and all the love you left inside it, waiting there long after they were gone. I’ll take each of the gifts the crows brought me, each of the treasures. I’ll take the sea with me, deep in my bones, its tides making their way through my soul. And I’ll take the feel of my daughter in my belly, I’ll take all of her, and keep her always.

But I need take nothing from you, Niall, my love. I’d rather give you something.

The nature of me. The wilderness inside. They are yours.



* * *



I sink beneath the surface.

My fingers and toes have gone white as my body furiously pumps blood away from them, trying to keep it at the center of me, where it’s still warm, struggling to keep my heart beating.

The sun makes patterns through the water above. I think I dreamed this, once.

The birds are silhouettes now, circling high. I watch them and watch them, and then I close my eyes.

We can nurture it, too.

My eyes snap open. Fish dart past, glittering in the sun. I’m so cold.

What did you say?

You showed me. We can nurture it, if we are brave enough.

But I’ve nothing left.

There’s still the wild.

Quiet.

And then,

Could you wait for me? Just a little longer?

Always.

I surge to the surface, crash to it and burst through it, the air violent in my lungs. I hardly know how it happens but things are moving, bits of me clawing at life, at the sea’s floor, dragging free of it yet, dragging free of this endless drowning shame.

I can’t move to pull on my clothes except that somehow I do, and I can’t stand on two feet except that somehow I do, and I can’t walk, there’s no way I can walk, except I do. I take step after step after step after step.

We are not here alone, not yet. They haven’t all gone and so there isn’t time for me to drown. There are things yet to be done.

I don’t know how long it takes. It could be hours, or days, or weeks. But eventually I see a vehicle approaching over the ice, and I hear the distant whoomph whoomph whoomph of a helicopter’s flight, and I allow myself to sink to the ground.

I won’t promise you anything. I’ve given up on promises. I’ll just show you.





EPILOGUE

LIMERICK PRISON, IRELAND SIX YEARS LATER

It’s raining the second time I am released from these walls, and this time, unlike the first, I am not empty with the thirst for an ending, I am full to the brim and carrying things with me, things like a degree hard-won and the memory of a vast untouched habitat on the other side of the world.

I am not expecting anyone to be waiting for me.

A dark smudge through the curtain of rain. Leaning against his truck. No umbrella.

I draw closer, thinking it must be Ennis, or maybe Anik—they all know I get out today but I never expected them to come so far …

It’s none of the Saghani’s crew. I haven’t met this man before. Perhaps he’s not waiting for me at all.

But I walk over to him, anyway.

He is tall and thick and gray, with an oil coat just like the one Edith used to wear when she went out into the paddocks in the rain, and he has dirty boots and lines around his wide mouth and his eyes—and I recognize him.

“Hello,” says my father.



* * *



Dominic Stewart’s truck smells of old coffee, and I see why when I put my feet down on about thirty old takeaway cups.

“Sorry,” he grunts.

I shrug and close the door.

We sit in silence, listening to the fall of rain on the roof.

“Where to?” Dom asks. His Australian accent is broad and fills me, astonishingly, with a sense of home.

I try to think of where he could give me a lift to but come up with nothing. Instead I think of the years I spent hating this man for what he did and where he was sent, and the years I spent ashamed of how like him I turned out to be, and the years I spent simply wishing I had family, even one single member, just one.

“Have you ever been to Scotland?” I ask him.

“No.”

“Wanna go?”

He glances at me, then back to the rain. Without a word he starts the car. And I see perfectly the old, faded tattoo of a bird on his hand.

Dom sees me staring at it and smiles shyly. “Iris used to like that one best.”

I return the smile.

Mam used to tell me to look for the clues.

“The clues to what?” I asked the first time.