Mam told me never to feed them or they’d grow dangerous, but when she went inside I did it anyway. Crusts from my toast or pieces of Mr. Hazel’s orange cake, carefully concealed in pockets and then scattered covertly over the frost. The crows began to expect the offerings and came more often; soon it was every day. They would perch in the willow and watch for my crumbs. There were twelve of them. Sometimes fewer but never more. I would wait until Mam was occupied and then slip outside to them, to where they waited.
The crows began to follow me. If we walked to the shops they would fly alongside and perch on the roofs of houses. When I trailed the stone walls into the hills they circled above. They followed me to school and waited in the trees for me to finish my day. They were my constant companions, and my mother, maybe intuiting that I needed them to be a secret, pretended all along that she didn’t notice my devoted dark cloud.
One day the crows began to bring me gifts in return.
Little stones or shiny sweet wrappers were left in the garden or dropped near my feet. Paper clips and bobby pins, pieces of jewelry or rubbish, sometimes shells or rocks or bits of plastic. I kept each in a box that year by year had to grow bigger. Even when I forgot to feed the birds they brought me gifts. They were mine, and I theirs, and we loved each other.
So it went for four years, every day without fail. Until I left not only my mother but my twelve kindred spirits, too. Sometimes I dream of them waiting in that tree for a girl who would never come, bringing gift after precious gift to lie unloved in the grass.
The Saghani, NORTH ATLANTIC OCEAN MIGRATION SEASON
The birds are tired already, even so early in the journey, so it’s lucky that we’ve come to find them. They make a beeline for us and as though the sky has shattered into falling flapping pieces they land on the boat, all over it, at least twenty of them. They fold their wings and gaze calmly at the passing world, happy to catch a ride. My muscles lock me in place, I’m terrified of startling them, but the longer I stand here, holding my breath, the clearer it becomes that they won’t be startled by anything—they’re utterly unbothered by my presence. Dae comes down from the crow’s nest, and the others stop what they’re doing to join us on the deck and watch the birds, to be near them.
“You forget, until you see one…,” Basil says, and we know what he means. Easy to forget how many there once were, how common they seemed. Easy to forget how lovely they are.
Anik loses interest first and tries to order me back to chores, but when I give him the finger he leaves me to it.
I only go inside when it reaches the coldest part of deep night, but for the rest of their visit I sit with the birds, as close as I can get, and write letters to Niall. It’s my method of logging everything: describing the terns to him in great detail. How they use their beaks to scratch beneath their feathers, and how they call to each other across the boat using a language I would give anything to speak. How, when they feel a draft, they spread their wings and let it lift them off their perches, and they just hover there, airborne, as though for no reason at all but the fun of it. I write it all down for him, so that when he reads the words he will be filled with the courage of the birds just as the wind fills their feathers.
The terns have been with us for twenty-four hours when Ennis emerges to sit beside me on the deck. He alone hasn’t come to spend time among them. The gray at his temples glistens in the afternoon light.
“Guess you were wrong about the storm,” I say.
“Where’s yours?” Ennis asks.
I point her out, sitting on the roof of the bridge, the piece of plastic on her leg poking free of her plumage. Her eyes are closed; I think she’s sleeping. Her mate is probably one of the other birds on the boat—they’re unlikely to attempt the long journey separately.
“Why aren’t they moving?” Ennis asks.
“There’s hardly any wind. They’re using the boat to rest.”
“Can we shoo them along?”
I shoot him a look. “No, Ennis, we can’t shoo them along. They’ll go when they want to, and we can follow.” If I had the power, I’d carry the birds all the way. Protect them from the journey’s difficulty. Then again, it’s a fool who tries to protect a creature from its own instincts.
Ennis leaves without another word, returning to the bridge. I watch him briefly through the salty glass, and then I go back to watching sweeter things.
By dusk the wind has picked up. I haven’t moved from my spot, unable to waste a single precious moment. The crew has been taking it in turns to bring me food, sparing a little time to sit with me and ask questions about the birds. How do they know where to go? Why do they fly so far? Why are they the last, why these ones, what makes them luckier than the others? I don’t know the answers, not really, but I do my best and, anyway, it’s not really answers they want, it’s simply remembering what it feels like to love creatures that aren’t human. A nameless sadness, the fading away of the birds. The fading away of the animals. How lonely it will be here, when it’s just us.
I’m not the only one who’s spent as much time as possible on deck. Last night Malachai became convinced he needed to wrap the terns in blankets and take them into his cabin to keep them safe and warm. I had to assure him captivity was no way for the birds to spend their last migration and that it’s early yet, they’re still strong, still happy to be in flight. I caught Léa singing to one, and, despite orders, Basil has been sneaking them bread crumbs they have no interest in, even though feeding the birds is moronic since we’re meant to be following them on their hunt for food.
The crew appears now. I warned them that when the weather changed the birds would leave, so they’ve come to say goodbye.
The first to rise is mine. I have taken to thinking of her as mine because she has burrowed inside and made a home in my rib cage. With the sun setting golden, she lifts and spreads her wings, hovering. Testing the air, her hunger, perhaps, her desire. It’s right, whatever she feels, because she flaps once and it’s as if she floats up into the sky, effortlessly higher and higher and unbound.
As the others of her kind follow her, the crew members wave, call their farewells, wish the birds a bon voyage.
Samuel uses meaty fingers to dash away his tears. When he sees me looking, he spreads his hands and says helplessly, “If they’re the last…”
He doesn’t need to finish.
“Don’t go too far,” I hear Anik tell one of the terns softly as it takes flight.
I find mine in the sky again, leading the way. She is smaller and smaller, halved and halved again.
Don’t, I whisper, inside. Don’t leave.
But I know she must. It’s in her nature.
7
NUI, GALWAY, IRELAND TWELVE YEARS AGO
“You skipped my class,” a voice says as I’m scrubbing the bowl of a toilet.
I glance over my shoulder, then get back to work.
“What’s the point of cleaning this shithole if you’re not even attending your lectures?”
“It’s called a job. There are worse places to clean.”
“Why clean at all?”
I flush the toilet and straighten, annoyed at his privilege. He’s blocking the stall door, taller here before me than he was behind his lectern. “Excuse me.”