I could walk back into the wooden house by the sea all over again. Call her name all over again. See her body hanging by its neck all over again.
“Oh.” I take a breath and the world blurs.
“She didn’t leave you,” Niall says, but he’s wrong. “She died.”
I nod once. Yes. I know this now. I have always known it, somewhere. As I know the shape of her swollen face and the red of her burst eyes and the blue of her bruised skin. I know how dirty her feet looked, hanging there without shoes or socks. I wanted to cover them to keep them from the chill. It was so cold in that house.
My legs wobble, sitting me gracelessly in the water.
How funny, that such a thing should drop so delicately from my mind. A falling, fluttering leaf.
What else have I lost that has fallen free?
“Franny,” Niall says. I see him kneeling before me. His face is blurry and handsome and no longer a stranger’s.
“I remember now,” I say, and he presses his warmth to my cold and his mouth to my eyes and I feel it so strongly, the knowing. Whether I leave now or in ten years, I am done here, in this place.
23
The Saghani, MID-ATLANTIC OCEAN MIGRATION SEASON
“Before you go,” I say.
The crew turns back to look at me. We’ve just finished breakfast in the mess, all but our inimical captain.
I clear my throat, not wanting to say it.
“Get on with it, will you?” Basil says. “Boat’s falling apart, or’d you forget?”
“The laptop battery’s died again, and this time there’s no power to recharge it.”
Pain crackles upon the air. This was bound to happen, but by saying it aloud I’ve killed what little hope the crew had left.
“It’s not like last time—it doesn’t mean the birds have drowned,” I try to convince them, try to convince myself, “it just means we can’t see them anymore.”
Dae puts his arm around his boyfriend—Malachai’s struggling not to openly lose it.
“Ennis says it doesn’t matter,” I say more softly. “He says we know where they’re going.”
“Ennis has lost his goddamn mind,” Basil says. “He can’t sail seas he doesn’t know. None of us can.”
This is not the first time it’s been said. The crew are wound tight with anxiety, thrown off their game by unfamiliar waters and failing machinery.
I look to Anik for guidance but his eyes are focused somewhere far away.
“It gets worse,” Léa says. “The water pumps have failed, which means we can’t run the desalinator, so we have a couple of days left of drinking water, max.”
“Oh my god.” Dae slumps his head onto the table.
“That does it, then,” Basil says. “We’re stuffed.”
“What do we do?” Mal asks. “Birds or no birds, we need water.”
Basil rises to pace the room, full of aggressive energy. “Are we really too scared of mutiny to save our lives?”
“What are you talking about, Basil?” Léa asks.
“We’ve tried. Nik’s tried, and if he can’t get through to him, then the old man’s cooked.” Basil quivers with frustration. “We should land. We’ll do it ourselves.”
“Skip’s the only one who can do that.”
“Any one of us knows how.”
“That’s not the point—”
“We could lock him in his cabin.”
“No one is locking him anywhere!” Léa says. “He’s our captain!”
Basil shakes his head. “Same as what happens when he gambles, he can’t see when it’s time to surrender.”
“Have you tried?” Daeshim asks and it takes me a second to realize he’s addressing me.
“Me?” I ask. “Why would he listen to me?”
Nobody answers.
“I’m not dying for this boat,” Basil says quietly, and he’s been deflated of air, of anger. “I’m not dying for fish or birds or any fucking thing.”
“Real sailors don’t board vessels without knowing they could—” Léa starts, but Basil says, “Be quiet,” and she stops.
I get to my feet. On the main deck I am rocked by a gust of wind. White streaks in the sky, pulled along like the sea spray we leave in our wake. I pause to think, to seize a single thought, but they are as wispy as the clouds, as insubstantial. I don’t know what to do, how to argue for an end to all of this, for land and police and a cell I swore I’d never return to. And yet how can I not? It is madness to continue on until the Saghani is in pieces and all seven of us have drowned or, more likely, died of thirst.
I look up at the man on the bridge. His untrimmed beard and bloodshot eyes. His conviction. His children. He’s phantom-like. A pursuit only, and no edges left at all. If we go ashore we’ll never leave again. Beached forever. A rearing thing inside me says no. My will makes a monster of me, time and again. Eyes fix on something off to starboard. A couple of kilometers away, maybe less. Shapes in the water, not far off the coast.
“What are those?” I ask Dae, who’s returned to his work on the rigging.
He squints against the sun. “Fisheries. Salmon, probably.”
There is a boat alongside the nets.
I hurry back to the mess. “Anik,” I say. “I need you to take me somewhere.”
The first mate’s eyes narrow.
It happens quickly. Anik and I climb down into the skiff and set off over the water. We don’t tell Ennis; Léa has said that if we slow to a stop we might not get going again, and I don’t want him to have to make that decision. So we need to be quick. As we approach the salmon vessel I can make out people on the deck, watching us. It’s smaller than the Saghani, but not by much.
“Ola,” a man calls. “O que o traz para fora?”
“Do you speak English?” I ask.
“A little, yes,” comes the reply.
“We need water,” I say. “Our generator is down and the pumps have gone. We need drinking water. Could you help us?”
He points to land. “A port, very close.”
“We can’t go there.”
The sailor looks confused. “It is very close. There is water on land.” He says something to his crew members and they return to their duties. The man strides away and that’s the end of the conversation.
“Fuck.”
“Now what?” Anik asks.
“What if we snuck on board?”
“See him?”
I follow Anik’s pointed finger to the man in the crow’s nest, watching us. “Are storerooms generally in the same place on all boats?”
Anik studies the boat and shrugs. “Near enough.”
“You go back to the Saghani. I’ll meet you there.”
“What?”
“I’ll bring the water.”
He snorts with laughter. “It’s nearly two miles away. More by the time you’re swimming. And how will you carry the water?”
There’s rope in the storage box. I haul it over my shoulder, wait for the lookout to turn away for a moment and then I slide quietly into the sea. I stay under as long as I can, resurfacing closer to the hull of the salmon boat. When I circle around, I find that there are multiple ladders extending down to the fisheries—most of the sailors have used them to disembark their boat and spread out around the circular farms, checking their fish.