The Light Pirate(63)
Hidden beneath the canopy, Wanda dreams in restless fragments. A feeling of having forgotten something flits in and out of her consciousness. She dreams of Bird Dog, a faceless presence, just out of sight, urging her on as she dives into the lagoon. The manatees are waiting for her somewhere in the depths. She cannot see them, can only feel them, but they’re down there, gigantic and slow, floating deep in the caves. The lights surround her, urge her on. She dives and dives, deeper and deeper, swimming for so long that she forgets which way is up and which is down, realizing it doesn’t matter—what matters is that she keep swimming. She’s getting closer. But it’s not the manatees she’s looking for; it’s something else, something she can’t explain. The lights whisper—A little farther, a little deeper, almost there. The exertion is beginning to take its toll; she can’t go on swimming much longer. Her muscles burn. Her heart races. The temperature has risen while she slept. Her body reaches its limit in both places.
When she wakes, she hasn’t yet found the thing she was looking for, but there is a new problem. She discovers that she is burning, her skin dry and pulsing. It’s the beginning of the end when a body ceases to excrete sweat. Phyllis taught her that. She lies still, taking stock of her own organs, aware of how easy it would be to die of heatstroke right here, in her sleep, to dive so deep into a dream that she’d find a sweltering, stifling blackness and never manage to resurface. She stays very still while she waits for the afternoon to cool, for the sun to set.
Even just a few degrees can bridge the gap between life and death, but that’s nothing new. She has been living on this brink for many years. The idea of drenching herself in the drinking water she’s just rowed so far to collect is difficult, but she must lower her body temperature now, before it rises any higher. It can’t wait. She can feel the urgency in her pores, in her veins. Then, unexpectedly—a dot of coolness on her face. Another on her arm. Rain. A breeze comes, dislodging the scorched air that has settled over her. And there it is: a reprieve. For now.
The clock of her lifetime is round and bright. There is so much they want her to know, more than she can possibly understand. There are eons to share, in both directions—past and future make no difference to them; both matter, both are needed. But now is always the center.
Chapter 53
Over the next few years, Phyllis heard little from the outside world. She occasionally cranked her radio and listened to the broadcasts that managed to carry, but the signals were faint, her interest even fainter. Eventually, she stopped listening entirely. There was a lightness in not knowing. A clarity. There was no need to follow the goings on of a world she and Wanda were no longer part of. In the years before the border closed, she had been consumed by a constant undercurrent of anxiety: lists that were never finished, home improvements that were never good enough, plans full of holes. What if, what if, what if. But then all that ended and something else took its place. Something quiet and rich and straightforward. The life she’d been planning for arrived and she gradually settled into it.
Phyllis and Wanda began to let the wild determine their days. It was strange at first, to allow such simplicity. Days of the week ceased to hold meaning. The time stopped being a number and became a question of light and tides. Months lost their shape. The water level went on rising, past their ankles, to their knees, to tickle their thighs. Storms came and went. Some creatures died out completely and some thrived. Plants and trees, too. And wasn’t that the point of all her years of preparation—to count herself among those who thrived? She’d planned well. Phyllis and Wanda grew their own food and tended to their own hens and hunted in the swamps and fished in the overflowing water bodies. Life was hard and it was good. They had everything they needed.
Which is not to say there weren’t things they missed. The loss of Lucas’s phone calls hung heavy on Wanda. Phyllis could see it in those months after the cell towers quit. She felt it herself. But Wanda was resilient and Phyllis was old enough to succumb to her grief in the way that only many decades and many losses can teach. The murkiness of years passing eventually allowed them to pretend that he’d left just a moment ago and was bound to return any day. Gradually, her brother became a myth. They told each other stories of what he was doing in California—saving entire forests from the flames, building brand-new cities, rescuing little towns from the brink of collapse. As the years passed, his accomplishments grew bigger and bigger. It soothed Wanda to imagine it all. Privately, Phyllis didn’t believe such things. Not that Lucas wasn’t capable, or special, or talented—she just didn’t believe that the world was salvageable. The last she’d heard was that things were disintegrating faster than ever. The more land that became uninhabitable, the more the crush of refugees overwhelmed kinder climates. It wasn’t sustainable. Everything would have to collapse in order for a new kind of society to be built; or, more likely, for some other epoch to have its day. Humanity was an ecological disaster, as far as Phyllis was concerned. A misstep made by an otherwise magnificently intelligent system of life and death. Evolution could do so much better. Someday, it would.
Wanda was sixteen the day a visitor came. The two of them were working behind the house; they heard him before they saw him. Phyllis could see Wanda’s head snap up from the garden bed she was weeding and took heed. Wanda had grown another six inches by then; she had sharp eyes and sharp ears and a wiry, coiled look to her. She looked more like Frida with each passing season, but harder. Stronger. They both tightened their grips around the gardening tools at hand—a spade for Phyllis, a shovel for Wanda—and waited to see who or what would appear from the rustling tangle of weeds that grew alongside the house. Phyllis had just enough time to admire Wanda’s steady grip on the shovel and the calm, shrewd narrowing of her eyes as she waited to launch her attack at the right moment. Tendons stood out on the backs of her hands. Phyllis had taught her what she could, drilling moments like these again and again, but there are some things that cannot be taught. Some things that a body innately knows—or doesn’t. They both waited to see which it would be.