The Migration, page 25
“It won’t be so bad,” I tell her. She glances at me, doesn’t answer. She breathes out another perfect circle of condensation and touches her thumb against it.
Later, she clutches my hand as we board. Normally confident, the bustle of people filtering through the narrow aisles has turned her shy. She tugs a small suitcase behind her. Mom settles in the row behind us.
“I’m scared,” Kira whispers to me.
“I know. Me too.” My fingers brush her green flannel shirt, so soft it could be her pyjamas. “Here. Cuddle against me.”
“I’m too old for that,” she says, even though we both know she isn’t. Instead she pulls the hood of the shirt up, and rests her head against my shoulder, shaky with exhaustion. We should have left hours ago. It’s coming up on midnight by now. But the plane doesn’t take off.
“Sorry, folks.” The captain’s voice over the speaker is abrupt, filled with false friendliness. “They need to clear the runway again. We’ll have you in the air as soon as possible.”
“Does that mean we won’t be able to go, Soff?”
“I don’t know. We’ll have to wait and see.”
“Let’s just stay,” she says. “I want us to stay.”
The same bright hope is flaring in my mind. Perhaps the flight will be cancelled. Perhaps the whole thing will be called off.
Slowly, the snow begins to pile up against the window. It gets thicker and thicker as the plane stays motionless. I feel afraid, looking through the fluff of Kira’s hair, watching the world beyond the window disappear. What if we get buried in the snow? Equally terrifying: What if we don’t? What if the runway is cleared, what if the plane takes off, what if it lands at Heathrow just like it was supposed to? I have no idea what our life will look like.
The light of the plows streaks the glass in blue, almost obscured by the snow. Time seems to stand still, everything erased.
“I had a dream we were underwater,” Kira murmurs. The same dream she has always had, since she was very small. “It was scary not to breathe anymore, but it was okay too. You were there.”
“It’s just a dream, Kira.” I touch the fine, staticky hairs on her head, smooth them down again.
“It wasn’t a bad dream.” This last statement is devoured by a yawn, her fear giving way to sleepiness. She’s going back to that place, the dream place. Going back underwater. But she resists, stays awake. “I’m sorry that I hurt you.”
But this isn’t right. This isn’t part of the memory.
“You’ve been so worried about me,” she says.
I’m afraid to look at her. I’m afraid I’ll see black eyes, rimmed in yellow, a body that has already begun to change. Past and present are blurring, merging. Memory and dream.
“I could hear you, Soff. I could hear you whispering to me. Telling me stories. You called me back to myself.”
I force myself to meet her gaze but it isn’t what I thought. She is still herself. Her eyes are the light blue verging on grey they’ve always been. “I didn’t mean to leave you alone like that. I just wasn’t really thinking.” And she smiles the same smile I’ve always known, rueful and apologetic. “I should’ve held onto you longer.”
“You’ve been calling me,” I manage. “Why?”
As if she hasn’t heard me: “Do you remember the story about the birds?”
“Which story?”
“All the stories. You know them, Soff. You told them to me.” Singing. I can hear them singing. Birds like smoke, birds like weather.
“The lark’s mother died…” I begin.
She finishes it for me: “But there was nowhere to bury her body. No earth, only water. And so she lived in grief. Then on the third day she buried her mother in the back of her head.” Then she smiles. “All stories have a seed of truth inside them. Look.”
She reaches over, her finger hovering just between my eyes.
And I can see the world as she sees it. Below is water, a vast ocean stretching toward the horizon in every direction. As the sun rises it smears colours across the surface, orange and yellow, amethyst, pale blue. The light is extraordinary, clear and unimpeded. There is nothing but this, all else vanished, all else sunk beneath the waves. A vision of heaven—but not weightless, not changeless. The sky is teeming with life: great feathered bodies, their wings made to tame the storms. They are buoyed up by rising columns of warm air that move like cyclones across the open space. And they sing to one another of the storm that has passed. An endless note, going on and on and on.
“That is what we are, Sophie. Our bodies have changed but we remember. We’re a way of remembering. So we can survive.”
How do we take what we love with us? Our bodies remember, imprinted by pain and joy. We bury it all inside of us: memories of disaster, memories of joy, shored up against loss. And from those memories, comes what? Change, I think, a way to survive when all hope seems lost. A fresh start. As I watch the waters recede and the earth is revealed again, rocky and black-green beneath us, gleaming in the sunlight.
“Is this what’s coming?”
“None of us know what comes next,” she says. “I’m scared.”
“You don’t have to be.” She’s the big sister now, trying to comfort me. “You can bring everything with you. Nothing needs to be left behind. Whatever you can carry.” She unbuckles herself from her seat, pulls herself up close to me so her face is almost touching mine. Her eyelashes brush lightly against my cheek.
I put my arms around her. I don’t want to say goodbye even though I can feel that she’s leaving me. Sinking away, back into slumber. I watch the shadow of heavy machinery moving outside. I listen to the rising babble of the passengers. They’re trapped, they know it. The delay has made them skittish.
Then the speakers jump to life. “Sorry about the delay, folks. We’re cleared for take-off now. Cabin crew, please prepare for gate departure.”
Kira’s body feels thin and bony through the green flannel shirt. The cabin is shaking. “It’ll be okay,” she whispers. A premonition, a prophecy, a command.
And I hold her close to me as the plane leaps into the air.
39
“Sophie? You have to—”
Bryan’s voice crackles in my ear. “You have to come down now.”
I don’t want to go yet. I still feel them around me, their voices, their thoughts. I could lose myself in the low noises they make, lose myself in everything they are. We are going, they say, we are going. Come with us, come with us, come with us.
Promise. Hope. That’s what Kira wanted to tell me. What’s happening is a way for us to survive. Some of us. Enough for us to continue until something better will come: one day, one day, one day.
But until then I must keep hold of my memories. I must bury them in the back of my skull. My time with Bryan, the sweetest thing. Mom’s trust in me, her artist’s vision. Aunt Irene, always wanting to solve the problems of others. Liv. Redmond. Martin. Jaina. Dad. Everyone who has passed out of sight. Out of sight, but not out of mind. I will take them with me, share them. Nothing will be lost.
Lost like I am lost. Lost like I’m losing altitude, sinking beneath the cloud cover.
The air is clearer, like a cool drink in my mouth, light and misty. But above me the sky has turned into an ink-black gloom, veins of lightning spark and vanish. I hear a noise: something churning very far away—then very close up, almost right on top of me. I can’t see the nymphs anymore.
The wind sends tremors through the sail, dropping me ten feet in one dizzying plunge. Bryan is right. I’ve done what I needed to do.
“Where do I—how am I going to land?” I yell into the radio.
“Here!” His voice is sharp with fear. “Follow the lights. I’ll guide you through it as best I can. But you should cut your engine—now.”
The wing of the paraglider twists and curls and the ground telescopes toward me. Yellow light washes over the flat stretch of farmland below. The wormy line of a hedge illuminated by the headlights from the truck. Bryan’s been following me, trying to track my movements. Poor Bryan. I must tell him, I must…
But there’s a second set of headlights. As I try to make sense of it, the paramotor’s engine chokes off. Every movement I make is translated into sweeping curves. I lurch in the sky, a hundred feet above ground.
“Don’t touch the brakes now, hear? Whatever you do. Just wait for it. See if you can straighten out.”
The ground is coming up at me very fast now, the landscape a blur of yellow, not just the headlights, but golden, a field of rapeseed like an oversized yellow brick road. Follow, follow, follow, sang Dorothy Gale. Memories of childhood, curled up in front of the TV with Kira, memories strong enough they could suck me in the way a current carries a swimmer out to sea. Not yet. The dust is gritty on my tongue, flecks pelting my cheeks. The straps keep me steady, which is good, because the speed makes me dizzy. I slip off the seat so that I’m hanging in the straps alone, able to manoeuvre and catch my weight properly when I hit the ground. But I’m going fast, way too fast. The acid taste of fear coats the inside of my mouth.
“Get ready to pull the brakes. Okay, okay, okay, and go!”
I give a vicious tug, and the wing flares up behind me. Yellow all around me, my feet colliding with the heads of the flowers. Then I snap backwards in the harness and my knees take the brunt of the force as I hit the ground and am thrown forward. I haven’t detached the sail! And the storm has got it, the storm is dragging me up again like a dog with a rope in its teeth. Back on my feet I run to keep up, but the rapeseed is too high. Thousands of tiny blossoms explode damply against me, releasing their dense, mustardy scent.
Then I’m spinning, spinning. Ten feet up, twenty feet up. Mud spirals off my boots in a galaxy pattern. I’m screaming: “Oh god, oh god!” Pulling on the brake line, flailing my arms as the ground begins to rush toward me again. I can’t get my legs up properly this time, so I land heavily and some part of me gives out, breaks open. Like the flowers, too fragile for this. Busted up. The back of the propeller cage hits the earth and ricochets upward, flipping me over. I tuck my head down. The field rolls and jags around me, brown earth, black sky, brown earth. Mud sucks at my cheek, spatters my elbow, squishes between my fingers. A heavy thwooping. The sail has collapsed at last.
My chest aches, like someone punched it. I gag, cough, all of the air behind a locked door I can’t open. I struggle against the straps, finally unhooking myself, rolling out of the twisted cage. Blackness. Then Bryan is beside me. His face is close, the faint line of dark stubble on his chin. Brown eyes, copper streaks around the pupil. His hand cradles the back of my head.
“So much for the landing,” I tell him. A bad joke. He isn’t laughing.
He isn’t alone either. For a moment I think I’m dreaming, that the past and the present have bled into one another. Because Mom is above me, her face a mask of bright light and shadow.
But then she takes my hand and I know she’s real.
“You came,” I tell her, slurring the words. “How did you find me?”
“Your phone, Sophie, I tracked it. But none of that matters now. I’m here,” she tells me. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you. Please don’t let go.”
* * *
—
Rain pings against the roof of the truck and Bryan’s in the driver’s seat, throttling the steering wheel.
In the rear-view mirror I can make out the front of the Renault following close behind but I can’t concentrate on it. There’s a high-pitched squeal as the tires find a stretch of slickness, spin out, touch the ground again. Mom is holding me against her and I’m concentrating on the grit worked into the seams of the seats, how smooth the seats are, shiny as the skin of a grape. Not letting the pain in, not feeling it, or feeling too much of it, feeling everything.
“I saw her. Kira was up there. Did you see?”
“Oh god, there’s so much blood,” Mom says.
I follow her gaze. My cut-offs are soaked through with red, my thighs sticky with it. A bright ribbon of blood loops my wrist where the scarred flesh has gone soft as wax, and peeled away from the veins. I’m coming undone.
“I’m fine,” I tell her, what I say whenever she’s fussing too much.
Except.
40
Temporary shelters have been set up in the park next to the JR Hospital, dome tents made of inflated PVC tarpaulin. They look like igloos, and the rain crackles against them, a sound like deep-frying meat. This is the safest place the city council could think of, high ground.
They’re ready for us. Medical staff and emergency volunteers direct bedraggled evacuees and hand out blue fleece blankets, makeshift bedding. “No space in the hospital,” one of them says, so Bryan carries me into the closest igloo, cradling me. Pain in my abdomen, a wrenching of bone. No good. I leave a red imprint of myself against his body for the second time. A hazy numbness creeping into my limbs, like I’m disconnecting, detaching, drifting away.
Goodbye, fingers. Goodbye, toes.
Bryan is scared, I can tell by his thudding heartbeat. He feels responsible, he found me. Not just here, now, but on Bunkers Hill months ago. He found me. I don’t know how, except the right people always find you, don’t they? That’s what makes them the right people. At the cement works, that first time: wasn’t sure if you were going to make it, you know how it is, pleased you did…
I’m on a cot in a tent, waiting for doctors. Mom is beside me and Aunt Irene too. They fold and unfold their arms in unison, mirrors of grief and worry. The floor is soaked and there’s chaos around us. The pale maniac faces of other children as orderlies restrain them. They want to get out. The storm is calling them. I can feel it too, a surging of adrenaline. Bryan’s eyes are panicked.
Someone tries to pull him away but he won’t leave my side. He settles down beside me, elbows springing into the mattress of the cot. Shielding me.
“It wasn’t your fault,” I tell him.
“Shut up,” he says. “You bloody fool. Just stop it, will you? You can’t die on me!”
“I know.” He doesn’t understand, can’t. This is not me dying. Not dying. Not me.
* * *
—
“Broken femur for sure,” someone is saying. “The right—a compound fracture. Several ribs too.” A nurse? He’s ashy with fatigue, hair close-shaven. “Her BP…she’s lost a lot of blood.” I can’t see who he’s talking to, chanting, incanting. “Let’s assume injuries, likely a liver lac, maybe—splenic rupture?”
Bryan is holding my hand but I can’t feel it. The nurse speaks in a soft voice as if he is talking to a small child. “We’re taking her into surgery.” He sounds like Dad in the living room, telling us goodbye. “There are bound to be complications. In her state, with her condition.” Telling us he loves us, but not enough. Not enough to come with us. “There’s so many of them,” the nurse says, voice breaking with frustration. “I don’t know how we’re going to cope.”
I feel like a telephone line cradling thousands and thousands of crows. Claws hooked into me, the bustle of their wings, voices. A thick residue running through me, a noiseless vibration. New signals filling me up, if I can tune myself to them. Tune in, tune out. Easier to hear them now. As if I was listening through muffling cloth before, through water.
Struggling to speak to Bryan, to tell him: “I understand it now. What Kira said. How she wanted to go even if—oh—” It’s lovely. So bright. “It’s okay, Bryan. You don’t have to be afraid.”
I’m hollow on the inside. You could put your ear to me and hear the ocean, hear roaring. This world is imprinted upon me. Everything nestled inside everything else, everything falling open.
I’m half flesh, half ether. I’m made up of insubstantial things: air, lightness, thought, memory. A different kind of memory, the memory of cells, the memory of bone. My hand in Bryan’s, him gripping me. Sparks cross, little zigzags of lightning. We’re sharing molecules, spreading energy between us. I have caught him inside of me.
I can see him clearly now, him but not just him. He is hollow too, hiding his own secret world. His cells are storerooms, miniature temples. All these pieces of him, his father, his mother, his grandmother.
I travel back, ages and ages, from one cell to another. It’s like turning a page, reading what has been written into him, heartbreak and joy, trauma, recovery. A village called Dowde with roofs of yellow-grey thatch, mud, and furze. A thick peaty smell in the air. The fine ash of a bonfire. I see how the survivors moved in grief and a slow stupor, talking to each other about what they had seen. The dead climbing out of the earth, angels with the faces of their kin. This memory, a seed. A remarkable thing was noticed…everyone born had two fewer teeth than people had had before…He knows, some part of him knows. Some part of it has been imprinted inside his body.
This has happened before…
Further, I could go, eons into the past. Would I see the same thing? A way of surviving, hiding, travelling, starting over, passed on from generation to generation.
Bryan is wrenched away from me, the contact broken. They’re taking me somewhere, through a long tunnel. Mom grips me, running alongside the gurney. Her skin is soft, transparent. It breaks open like an egg. I can sense the silky course of her blood, the yolk of each cell. Those cells and mine, singing to one another. Gifts passed between them. Her, calling out to her sister, to her daughters, both of us.
I remember this. I remember Kira going to the same place, through this hallway. The strange look on her face, the absence of fear. My fingers twitch. “Stay with me!” Mom pleads.
Too late for that. My cells have opened, the doors have been flung wide. I am rushing forward, laughing, to greet whatever lies inside. And then I’m moving beyond them, not forward but upward, into the open air where the rain is moving, lovely, lovely, dissolving me like sugar on the tongue. And all around me, the sound of birds, their wings carving up the night, endless birds. Birds like wind, birds like weather. A swarm of them, glossy in the moonlight, radiant eyes, radiant throats, the music pouring out of them and into me, all of it, everything. I’m pouring out of my body and into the darkness, spread so thin, thin as electrons spinning and spinning, shifting, becoming this: the hidden world, it is me, it is all of us.
