My heart is beating too fast and I will myself to be calm, to breathe more slowly, to really take this in. To savor it and remember every detail because too soon I will be gone from the circle of his perfect words.
The professor moves out from behind his lectern and spreads his hands beseechingly. “The only true threat to birds that has ever existed is us.
“In the 1600s the Bermuda petrel, of the Procellariidae family, the national bird of Bermuda, was hunted for meat so catastrophically that they were thought to be extinct. Until, in 1951, by sheer accident they were found again, only eighteen pairs of them. They were hiding, nesting in the cliffs of small islands. I imagine that day a great deal.” He pauses as though to imagine it now, and I marvel at the command he has over the hall. I am with him on those cliffs, discovering those lonely little birds, the only survivors of their kind. He goes on, and his voice is hard now, demanding. “They did not survive our second attack. This one was crueler, far more pervasive. With the burning of fossil fuels we changed the world, we’ve killed it. As the climate grew hotter and the sea levels rose, the Bermuda petrels were washed from their burrows and drowned. That is one species of a very great many. And it’s not only birds that suffer—as I’ve said, birds tend to be the most resilient. Polar bears are gone, thanks to that rise in temperature. Sea turtles have gone, the beaches where they once lay their eggs eroded by those same rising seas. The ringtail possum, which could not survive temperatures above thirty degrees Celsius, was decimated by a single heat wave. Lions perished in never-ending droughts, rhinos were lost to poaching. And on it goes. Those are simply a few you know of, the stars of the animal kingdom, but if I started listing the creatures destroyed by habitat destruction we would be here all day. Thousands of species are dying right now, and being ignored. We are wiping them out. Creatures that have learned to survive anything, everything, except us.”
He walks back to his lectern and turns on his projector. He is tall and lean, maybe even thin, with short, dark hair and an impeccably tailored navy suit. A lime-green bow tie makes him seem a man of another time, as do glasses that can really only be called spectacles. Despite his strange appearance he is the darling of the university staff. Adored by his students. Almost young enough to be one of them. There is a table with a covering over it, its image projected large onto the wall. He slides the calico off with a magician-esque flourish to reveal a bird.
It takes me a moment to realize that it is real, dead and stuffed and pinned to some sort of apparatus so that it appears in flight. A gull, white and gray and too much. Like that, I am no longer with him; I have fallen behind. I stand and move awkwardly past the other students in my row, causing a mild rustle of annoyance but not caring, needing out.
His voice follows me. “This semester we will be looking not only at the anatomy of birds, but their breeding, feeding, and migration patterns, and how these have been affected over time—both negatively and positively—by human interference—” The door falls shut with a slight bang that they will have heard inside. I run, sandals slapping the lino. Out into the sunshine, down the steps to where I’ve locked my bike. I work the code with unsteady fingers and then I ride as fast as I can, my hair streaming behind me, through cobblestone streets and all the way to the sea.
The bike crashes to the ground and I hop to get my shoes off, flinging them to the grass and sprinting until I hit the water and dive beneath the surface.
Here is the sky. The salty weightless sky. Here I can fly.
* * *
I genuinely consider not going back. I’m growing restless—I don’t like being so close to the house my mother and I once shared. I’m tired of Galway. But being in the university is serving a purpose: it allows me access to their genealogy software, and that is how I’m going to do it, that is how I will find my mother.
“You’re late.”
“My gift to you, Mark, since you take such pleasure in pointing it out.” I dump my bag in the locker and pull on my janitor’s jumpsuit. Mark does not look impressed, so I grab the mop and bucket and get moving.
“You’re on the film buildings.”
“Can’t I do the labs?”
“Franny—”
“I’ll do overtime,” I promise as I wheel my bucket out. “Thanks!”
Someone has made a revolting mess in the male bathroom in the biology building. I pull my T-shirt up over my nose and try not to gag as I clean it. Three young men are waiting to use the bathroom as I emerge, expressions full of distaste and maybe a little disdain, as though I am responsible for the mess. They don’t look me in the eye as I pass, they don’t even glance my way—hardly anyone in this school does. Being a cleaner is like having the power of invisibility. So I make a game of it. I smile at people. Mostly they seem to think I must be a wee bit touched, and hurry on by. But sometimes, occasionally, they return the smile, and those smiles are sweet enough to collect.
I use my key card to enter the lab itself. I can’t see anyone, which would make sense as it’s after hours, except the lab usually contains the huddled forms of the obsessive, those uninterested in the outside world and unwilling to leave here no matter the time of day. I don’t turn the lights on, but move into the quiet, cool space wreathed only in the red glow from the security monitors. Specimens are kept in even lower temperatures, in metal refrigerated drawers that hiss as they are opened and closed. I run my fingers over the edges of them, imagining all the little treasures inside and wanting so much to peek. I can’t risk it—I’d hate to damage something—so I wander on, my cleaning gear forgotten at the door. Mostly the lab is filled with desks covered in different types of testing machinery, but there are also shelves holding hundreds of glass jars and bottles and tubes, and these glitter a little in the dim winking light. I move past the empty glass to the insects and reptiles held in ethanol, as fascinated by them as I am repulsed. They don’t look real, floating motionless in there. Or maybe they look too real.
These are easier to consider than the bird in the lecture hall this morning. I should know better: thoughts conjure their like. As I turn my head a fraction I see it. There, in the corner of my eye.
I have always been frightened of dead things, birds more so than anything else. There is nothing so disturbing as a creature born to flight being bound to dull lifelessness.
I turn from the white shape of it and come face-to-face with a person. A yelp escapes my mouth. “Jesus.” I lift a hand to my pounding heart.
It’s the professor, watching me in the dark.
“The girl who fled my class,” he says. His gaze goes to the cleaning trolley near the door, then back to me. “Come here.”
I am momentarily stunned as he takes my elbow and steers me toward the dead gull. The presumption of his touch makes my mouth dry, but since I will always be a person who craves boldness, I am also thrilled by it. Then I am looking at the creature and I have no thoughts for touch, I am empty of any thoughts except the one telling me to get away from here. I go for the door but he—astonishingly—grabs my arms and holds me in front of him, holds me firm, traps me before this macabre thing.
“Don’t be frightened. There’s nothing here but flesh and feathers.”