The Migration, page 13
“But you said traces of the hormone were found in the bodies of people who died from the Black Death. It had changed their DNA. But why? What kind of change is it?”
“I don’t know, Sophie. I don’t know why the body reacts the way it does—or what it means. I wish I did—and I’m trying. We’re all trying.” Disappointment squeezes the air from my lungs.
“But what if something of the host survives the changes?”
“There’s no evidence of that.”
“That you know of.” An echo, me at the hospital, saying the same thing to Dr. Varghese.
Her voice is low. “Maybe, but my subjects have been deceased for too long. There’s nothing I can learn about that. Besides, the problem isn’t what happens after but why the condition is spreading so fast in the first place. That’s how we’ll figure out how to do something about it. The situation is serious, you know that, but I can’t help thinking it’s going to get worse. Much worse.”
The noises in the church seem too loud and they echo weirdly off the stonework. I don’t want to look at what Aunt Irene is scratching onto the page. The last trace of all that misery and death. “Is this it then? This could be the end?”
“Sometimes I think so.” Desperation in her voice. “But then I try to remember this isn’t the first time people have been sick. The Spanish flu killed millions. There was the AIDS crisis. Ebola. Zika. Your generation isn’t the first to suffer, to feel alone and frightened. But I’m doing this for you, Sophie. You’re the reason this matters so much to me.” She touches my shoulder gently with her charcoal-blackened fingers. “That’s why I wanted you to come here and see this place. These people are the children of survivors.”
Trinkets and jams, scarves and cookies and lace. Harmless, petty objects of everyday life.
The people who remain are driven wild and miserable. They are wretched witnesses to the end.
“It’s why we need to take precautions,” she says. “Cremating the bodies. The curfew. I know you don’t like it, Feef, but it’s for your own good. We need to protect you.” A pause. “I don’t trust despair. It’s selfish. It frees you of your responsibilities.”
“But if it’s as bad as you say…” I don’t understand her sometimes. How can she look around at what’s happening and keep going as if nothing has changed?
“Hope is the last—and best—form of resistance. Things change and we endure, we learn from what came before us. We can grow stronger because of it. That’s how we survive.” With a few more sweeps of the charcoal, she contemplates her work. “That’s a good thing to learn, niece of mine. Remember it, okay?”
18
The next morning I wake up with a vice squeezing my temples and an ashy taste in my mouth. I wonder if this is how Kira felt, a constant drag on her energy, her nights filled with vivid, feverish dreams. The HemaPen is flashing beside me, waiting for another sample, but I hold off and try to gather my thoughts.
I was dreaming of Mom and the trip we took together with Kira to the Bay of Fundy last July. It’s one of those magical places where the rules of nature are rewritten. Twice a day an unimaginable flood of water drowns the seabed and the tides are as high as five-story buildings. She had always wanted us to go.
It was before Kira’s diagnosis. She was still stable, still herself. But tensions were high at home between Mom and Dad. Mom thought it would help for us to get away together, just the girls. Without him it felt strange, as if we’d been cast loose.
We arrived at Burntcoat Head later in the day than we planned. From the first landing we could spot the rock formations: islands as if on stilts, their heads shaped like flowerpots. But already the ranger was herding tourists off the red mud flats to safety, warning us the tide would be turning any moment now.
We descended down the iron stairs, found the next viewing point, but ended up in the middle of a crowd of tourists going the opposite direction. After they’d passed, Kira was gone. Mom panicked. White-faced, she searched the shoreline.
“Don’t worry, Mom,” I tried to tell her even though I was anxious too. “You know how she is.”
“Your dad—what if something happens? I only took my eyes off her for a moment, just a moment!”
The ranger was a bearded man with wind-chapped skin. He listened patiently as Mom described Kira. Within a minute the radio crackled with news that she was found. I spotted her waving from the lookout tower.
In the dream though, it happened differently. Bright colours and too sharp smells. The salt of the Atlantic stinging our nostrils, our arms greased with sunscreen. There were no crowds—Mom and I were alone on a seashore where the water seemed to hiss and the elevated islands cast bulbous shadows over the mud and sand. “She’s down there, Sophie. She’s down there, but I can’t see her.” Mom gripped the railing of the lookout, staring. Slowly, the water spread across the seabed, thick and viscous and sepia-coloured. She didn’t move, and neither did I. We couldn’t do anything to stop it. Mom was terrified, but she didn’t budge as the ocean rushed toward us. “Go on,” she whispered, “go with her.”
“I don’t want to,” I told her, but she wouldn’t listen.
She didn’t look at me. “Of course, you want to. Go on then. Go.”
I heard Kira, yelling: “Come with me, Sophie!”
Now as I touch the HemaPen to my finger and wait for it to work its magic, I can hear Aunt Irene moving in her bedroom, drawers opening and closing as she packs up the last of her things for her conference. I roll over onto my back, trying to shake off the feeling of guilt and anxiety brought on by the dream. One of Mom’s sketches is pinned above my headboard. I can make out the smudged charcoal outline of Warwick Castle.
She’ll be coming home soon. She’s been gone for weeks.
On the bedside table, my half-charged phone winks at me. There’s a new message from Bryan: St. Ebbe’s Church. 2:00.
* * *
—
Black has gone out of fashion—no one wears it, no one touches it so funerals have a new dress code. We take out our summer clothes early, dress in bright floral prints, wide hats and sunglasses as if we’re going to the beach. Which means I don’t look out of place at a funeral in St. Ebbe’s wearing a petal print sundress, seated in a pew next to Bryan who fidgets with the hem of his parakeet green shirt.
I didn’t know James Catter, the deceased. Bryan told me they’d gone to grammar school together. “He died from a brain hemorrhage,” he murmurs when I ask him about it, which is code for JI2. Any unusual medical symptoms in a young person is code for JI2.
An elderly priest in violet vestments speaks with fervent authority: “Behold, I tell you a mystery. We shall all indeed rise again: but we shall not all be changed. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, the last trumpet shall sound and the dead shall rise again incorruptible.”
The scent of flowers suffuses the church hall. Dim lights. The congregation shimmers with restless movement like a breeze grazing the surface of a still pond. Bryan is straining forward in his seat to listen. His chin juts out, lips slightly parted. His knee brushes mine with a soft thump, like a bumblebee bouncing against a screen door. Why did he invite me here?
A lump of anxiety sits in my gut. The dream: Go on, Mom had whispered to me. I don’t want to, I had told her. I didn’t take her hand. Of course, you want to. Go on then. Go.
“For the corruptible one must put on incorruption, and the mortal one must put on immortality,” says the priest, his voice rising to a fever pitch. The look on his ancient face is almost ecstatic. As if he has been waiting for this all his life, the end of days.
* * *
—
When service is over, someone opens the doors at the back of the hall, allowing the breeze to whisper through the church. A wide beam of light cuts through the shadows and touches the last row of the pews where already the congregation is rising. We’ve been released.
But as Bryan and I file out through the pews, a shoulder jostles me from behind: an old woman, her legs unsteady. The movement alarms me and I almost shout at her. I’m not used to crowds anymore. At last, we’re outside. “Should we take the bus?” I ask Bryan. I want to flee, let it just be the two of us, him and me out at the cement works. I want to see Kira.
“Hold up a mo,” he says.
There’s a circle of people our age standing in what looks like a smokers’ huddle, foreheads down. No one’s speaking much. When Bryan approaches they open up to admit him.
“Howya?” one of them greets him in a lilting Irish drawl. He has a sculpted face, dark curls, thin lips. Hipbones that jut out beneath a narrow waist.
Bryan shrugs. “Just grand.”
“Oh, aye, grand indeed.” The Irishman laughs a little too loudly and I can smell whisky on his breath. “Come to raise the parting glass with us?” A silver flash glints in his hand. He twists off the cap and takes a quick swig. “Here’s to dear Jamie. May the heavens receive his ashes. Much more of this and we’ll have snow in July.”
“Enough, Reddy,” mutters the girl next to him. She’s a little older than me and infinitely prettier in a sleek, silky dress the colour of champagne.
“Leave off,” echoes another boy, slim with wiry glasses that keep slipping off his nose. I feel a flash of recognition—I saw him in Aunt Irene’s office. He cocks his head slightly, then smiles as if he remembers me too. What was his name? Michael? Melvin? “You can ignore him,” he says. “The rest of us do. I’m Martin. Martin Paisley.”
He offers his hand gently. His palm is warm but oddly dry after being in the humid church.
“It’s not enough. Not by half it isn’t,” the one named Reddy says quietly. “And what about you, Bryan? Where have you been keeping yourself hidden away?” Then his eyes fall on me and his lips curve in a smirk. “One mystery solved at least.”
My face goes hot.
“This is…” Bryan stumbles, “Sophie Perella. She’s just a friend.” Hotter still at that. “Be gentle, Redmond.”
“He isn’t one for gentleness,” says the woman. Her face is angular with high cheekbones and very red lipstick. She has a French accent, crisp syllables and unexpected hesitations. “My name is Liv.” Her voice inflects upward as if this is a question. I smile awkwardly, suddenly feeling young in my floral dress, childish and unsophisticated. But she returns the smile before glancing back to Bryan.
It’s strange to see him with other people. A vague sense of protectiveness grips me. Possessiveness and discomfort. I’m on the outside—again.
Redmond snaps his fingers in distracted thought. “You look familiar, love…yes, that’s torn it. Irene Mooney? I can spot the family resemblance—same eyes, same mouth, I think, and around the eyes, though I confess, untenured though you may be, you are much, much prettier.”
“Let her be, Reddy!” says Martin.
“She’s my aunt,” I mumble.
“I was just talking about her, wasn’t I? You were there, weren’t you, Paisley?” Martin scuffs his feet. “Front row seats to watch your aunt eviscerate Professor Pace, at a seminar back in Michaelmas.”
Martin shrugs and gives me a warm nothing-to-be-done look. “Old Pacey called her a storm-chaser, kept arguing she was reading the chronicles too literally.”
“That’s right! What was it? Warm winds blowing from the south, corrupted by the conjunction of Mars and Jupiter. Something like that. God, she was so angry!” He shakes his head, and takes another swig of his flask.
Martin murmurs: “She’s been testing the bodies from the plague pits, hasn’t she? Digging them up.”
A hush falls over the group as they contemplate this before Redmond breaks in. “Enough of this doom and gloom stuff. At least for tonight, eh? Jamie’s off, god keep him, and we should be too. And you, my lovelies, will you join us? Let’s speak some wise words and drown our sorrows.”
Liv touches Bryan’s hand. “He would’ve liked it if you came. It’s been too long. You keep to yourself too much.”
But Bryan steps back. “We weren’t close, Liv. Not like we used to be. But I wanted to be here for this, to say goodbye.” He shakes his head in apology, glances at me. “Sophie and I—there’s something we have to do.”
Kira is waiting for us at the cement works but I feel so tired at the thought of facing her again, breathing in the sharp tang of her body, cleaning her, reading to her, waiting for some sort of response.
“What do you say?” Redmond turns to me. There was a time when I would have pined for someone like him, too charming for his own good, used to getting his own way. But I’m conscious of the cold circle of my medical ID band around my wrist.
“I…” Nothing comes out. His smile begins to collapse, just a little. But then Bryan nods his head and I follow his gaze, catch sight of the familiar wink of silver at Redmond’s wrist. Liv’s too.
That’s when I think, Yes.
The word resounds loudly in my head.
Yes.
I won’t go to Kira today. There will be tomorrow—tomorrow I’ll go back there. But today I want this very badly. People. Friends. Something else but her. The illusion of a normal life.
I take a deep breath and meet Redmond’s gaze. “What the hell,” I say and Bryan grins.
19
The five of us end up as a sort of advance guard to set up for a party—a wake, more like it. It turns out that all of them are students at New College, which makes me a bit nervous. I’ve seen what it’s like there, the kind of life they must be used to: the affluence and ease, the heady debates and disputes. They’ll grow up to be politicians and lawyers, renowned scientists and artists. It’s intimidating. But they don’t treat me like a kid at all. They include me in their jokes and stories, Martin holding back to explain the bits I don’t understand.
Redmond is in the lead. He takes us over Magdalen Bridge, where we can see the Cherwell floodwaters still lapping up the school playing fields. I hang toward the back as Redmond parts what’s left of the tourist crowd.
It turns out this part of town’s mostly cosmopolitan grunge, a lot like the Annex in Toronto where I used to live. The sticky sweet scents of curry and frying chips pour out of open shop doors and there’s a heavy bass line coming from the speakers mounted over a vintage record shop. As evening starts to lay on, the street fills up with clutches of girls in stiletto heels and thigh-cut dresses heading out to the clubs. Only a couple of hours until curfew, but Redmond and his friends don’t seem bothered, so I tamp down my worry.
“Call it a dispensation for those of us with special privileges,” Martin tells me. “Sometimes the police show up to tell us off for being too loud but that’s it. Say what you want about the university, but they look out for us. On College grounds we can mostly do what we like.”
Some of the girls we pass have white paint smeared on their faces, not like Goths exactly, more like a Greek chorus—elegant, composed. Each of them has a little crystal skull winking in her ear. Liv has the same.
“What are those?” I ask her.
“These?” She tucks strands of sorrel-coloured hair behind her ears to show me. The skull, roughly cut, glitters and reflects the streetlights. “Just reminders. Some of us have started to wear them.”
“It’s a way of knowing death,” Martin says. “Remembering that it’s always close by.”
“You don’t want to forget?”
“We can’t, can we?”
Redmond interrupts. “This’ll be like the last days of Pompeii. We’ll play at a bit of filthy hedonism, shall we? Eat, drink, and be merry—then—then—”
“Arrivederci, citizens,” says Martin.
* * *
—
We head down a narrow footpath and eventually come to an old churchyard on private grounds belonging to Oriel College. Ahead of us looms Bartlemas Chapel, a fragment of the fourteenth century tucked away behind the busy main road. Its walls are the colour of parchment, adorned with slender arches.
“It was a leper hospital, would you believe it?” Martin says quietly while he pours wine for me into a plastic cup. He twists the bottle to prevent the last drop from catching, just like the waiters would at the fancy restaurants Dad sometimes took us to. It makes me laugh.
“Pilgrims came from miles around to touch the relics. Apparently, they have the comb of Edward the Confessor, which cures headaches. They’ve also got the crosses of St. Andrew and St. Philip, and a piece of skin from St. Bartholomew…I saw them once when we went to mass here. I always thought it was strange what they did with the bodies of saints. Collecting the bits that were left over after these horrible things had happened.”
The pale violet dusk is settling into indigo and there is a handful of early stars in the sky. The air is warm even now, redolent of grass and peat and old stone. Liv has laid out a felted blanket for us, settling in next to Redmond. Others have begun to filter into the clearing, faces I recognize from the funeral. More blankets appear and the gloom gives way to a party atmosphere, the sound of Redmond laughing as he uncorks another bottle. Bryan, sitting nearby, glances in my direction and I want to let some part of me lean against him. What if? But I don’t. Instead, I smile, and he smiles back.
Martin passes us a bottle of thirty-year-old scotch that burns as it goes down. This helps. “That cost two-hundred quid,” he moans as the liquid disappears, but no one seems to care.
“Enough of that now, Paisley.” Redmond slaps him on the back. Martin looks back owlishly, but then he shrugs. Someone murmurs to me that his grandparents were landed gentry. I guess two hundred quid doesn’t mean so much to him.
Bryan seems happy enough to be here but a bit uncomfortable too.
“It’s just that they’re students,” he whispers to me when I ask him what’s wrong. “It’s all a bit posh, isn’t it?”
This last makes me start to laugh until I realize he’s serious. I’m still getting used to living in a city like Oxford where so much is controlled by the university and geared toward students. It must be hard for him, not being a part of that.
