The Light Pirate(72)
Didn’t Phyllis teach her to adapt over everything else? Didn’t she drill into Wanda again and again the importance of responding to her environment as it changes? As they both change? She tries to make peace with the knowledge that her plan may fly in the face of what Phyllis would have said ten years ago. She would tell her to run. To hide. To start again, somewhere new. She would say, Once you’re found, you can never be unfound. How could Wanda forget? But it isn’t that night they left the blue house. And Phyllis isn’t here to advise her. Dusk falls. Wanda rises, ready. She’ll go after Bird Dog. Not because she trusts her. Not because she doesn’t. But because there is more to discover. What was it Bird Dog called to her as she fled? It didn’t register at the time, but somehow the words are still there in her memory: It’s not what you think. Wanda doesn’t know what she thinks anymore, but these years spent melting into the trees, gliding through the water unseen, eschewing risk of all kinds, must end. Adapt or die. It isn’t clear to her yet what the former looks like, but the latter is vivid.
Wanda couldn’t explain how she knows where to find Bird Dog; she just knows. The lights guide her, even when they’re unlit. The path her canoe cuts through the water is crisp and silent. Her wake closes behind her, as if she were never there. In a way, the place she’s headed no longer exists, either. The Edge once marked the line between water and shore. It was razor thin back then; now, it is everywhere. The landmarks are gone, too. Underwater, or washed away. It doesn’t matter. Wanda knows where she’s going—the swamp is whispering. Telling her what she needs to know. She’s going back to where all of this began. Where this voice found her. Where Brie and Corey found her. That hot afternoon when the lights claimed her as one of their own.
The closer she gets to this place that no longer exists as it once did, the less she breathes. Every drop that falls from her paddle makes her cringe; every ripple that follows her movements is a siren. She is as close to invisible as a person could be, but if someone were waiting—still, quiet, sharp-eyed—she’d be seen. There’s no way around it. It doesn’t matter. She’s come this far. She keeps going.
Sliding through the new growth that has flourished around the place where she sat so many years ago, she slows her craft and finds a place to wait among the rushes. Maybe she has miscalculated. Maybe the little whisper in the base of her skull has led her astray. But no, just as she’s beginning to think that this is the wrong place, she hears Bird Dog’s voice. The breath leaves her lungs. There’s another voice. And another.
In the dim light of a waxing moon, Wanda sees Bird Dog’s raft congregating with another vessel on the open water. A little rowboat, it looks like, riding low in the waves with two people in it. She hears a man and a woman.
“You catch anything?” the woman asks.
“Nope,” Bird Dog replies.
“That’s all right, we got two big guys,” the man says. Wanda can hear the slap of a live fish trying to return itself to the sea. “Whoa there.”
“That’s real nice work, Freddy. Enough for everyone?”
“Enough for everyone.”
The two boats begin to move away, in unison. Wanda dares to edge her way out of the rushes, and when there is enough distance between them, she follows. They keep to the open water, which she would never do. Such an unnecessary risk, being exposed like that. Wanda can’t understand it. But then, maybe because there are three of them they don’t worry about such things. Maybe they have guns with bullets in them. She keeps to the snarled growth of the swamp, but she can’t move as quickly here. There are roots to navigate, weeds to slow her, branches that reach out and grab at her hair. The bottom of the canoe skims across the nose of what she guesses is a sleeping alligator. She can feel him buck, surprised, and then sink, leaving her to this pursuit.
In the end, it isn’t far to go. Bird Dog and her companions cut inland, weaving in and out of the old bungalow ruins on Beachside. Wanda rode these water-filled streets on her bicycle once. Now they are unrecognizable. She follows the others easily, navigating by their low chatter about where to fish and what sort of bait they’ve had luck with. She’s amazed by how much noise they’re making, as if they don’t even care who might hear them. They sound so relaxed. Almost—happy? Wanda isn’t sure she knows what that means anymore. Or what it sounds like. She watches from the shadows as they stop at a two-story ruin, the ground floor completely underwater by now. They lash their boats to the building and climb inside the darkened second-story windows, and soft cries of welcome ring out. More voices. Delight over the fish.
Wanda waits in the nearby ruins, listening. She can’t hear what they’re saying anymore, just a low murmur, a word here and there. Inside the house, a spark. The glow of a small fire, the smell of cooking. She doesn’t quite understand what she’s seeing, what she’s hearing—she has not dared light a fire in years. Her brain rushes to fill in the uncertainty, telling her this hive of remnants is bigger and therefore more dangerous than she could have imagined, but another voice is whispering to her, too.
It says, Help them. It says, Let them help you back.
Chapter 57
The intruders came at night. Back then, nights were still for sleeping. Phyllis was dreaming of her old job as a college professor. She was in the building where she used to work, teaching a class full of bedraggled climate refugees. From her place at the front, she could see rows and rows of shaggy heads and dirt-smudged faces receding into a misty distance. Kudzu vines uncurled across the walls, and delicate orchids threaded their way up the legs of the desks, propagating before her eyes. She noticed that her students were rapt, and Phyllis realized she’d already begun the lesson. She looked to the right and saw the two versions of Wanda she was presenting to the class: the little girl she’d taken in and the woman she’d grown into, as if they were specimens to be displayed. “Evolution,” Phyllis said, “is always occurring.” And on cue, both Wandas burst into light, a glow evident even beneath the fluorescent bulbs.