Ennis reaches me and gives a low rumble of laughter. It’s in this moment that a huge whale fin crowns the surface and waves to us from the distance, and we both gasp half out of our bodies and then we are cheering and jumping and it’s so beautiful, so desperately profound that I can hardly stand it. What else is hiding in these clean, untouched waters, in this sanctuary?
“I’m sorry the Saghani isn’t here,” I say, wiping my streaming nose. “All those fish and no way to catch them.”
He looks at me funny. “I stopped wanting to catch them a long time ago. I’ve just needed to know they’re still out here somewhere, that the ocean is still alive.”
I hug him, and we hold each other for a long time, and the sound of the birds echoes all around.
* * *
“I wish Niall could have seen this,” I say later. God, I wish it so much.
He breathes out deeply. “How long would you like to stay?”
“For always?” I suggest, offering a smile. “We can go. But I have something I need to do first. He wanted his ashes scattered with them.”
Ennis squeezes my hand. “I’ll go ahead, then, shall I? Leave you to be alone with him.”
I nod, but don’t let go. “Thank you, Captain. You’re a good man and it’s a good life you’ve led after all.”
He grins. “It’s not over yet, Mrs. Lynch.”
“No, it certainly isn’t.”
I watch him walk down the slope, back the way we came. Then I turn in the other direction, heading for the water’s edge. From my pack I draw Niall’s letters, and the small wooden box protecting his ashes. I had meant to let the letters fly free but I find that I can’t, Niall would hate the thought of his words littering this untouched environment. So I put them back in my pack, running my fingers only once over his handwriting.
Gently I bring the box to my lips so I can kiss him goodbye as I never did when he was alive.
The wind isn’t as fierce as it has been, but it’s enough to lift the ashes and carry them through the fluttering white feathers until I can’t tell where they end and the birds begin.
I strip off my clothes and wade into the ocean.
29
IRELAND TEN YEARS AGO
“What have you found?”
“It’s an egg.”
He moves to my side and we stare down at the little thing nestled in the grass. The most extraordinary shade of electric speckled blue.
“Is it real?” I breathe.
Niall nods. “It’s a crow’s egg.”
I bend to pick it up, but—
“Don’t touch it,” Niall warns.
“We have to take it back to its nest.”
“If you touch it, the mother bird will smell you on it, and reject it.”
“So we just … leave it there? Won’t it die?”
He nods. “Still. The less we touch, the better. All our touching does is destroy.”
I take his hand gently. “We could look after it. Hatch it ourselves and set it free.”
“It would learn our faces.”
I smile. “How lovely.”
He looks at me. At first there is a shadow of pity. Of understanding the way of things better than I do. Of his pessimism. But I return the look, and let him see my own certainty, let him see perhaps a hint of how we don’t always have to be poison, a plague on the world, of how we can nurture it, too, and slowly something shifts in his eyes.
Niall returns my smile.
THE AMUNDSEN SEA, WEST ANTARCTICA MATING SEASON
The cold is deep but I am calm. I haven’t submerged my head yet. I won’t need to, not until the very end. The water will do its work on the rest of my body quickly enough. And I’d like to watch the terns for as long as I can, that I might try to take them with me.
I will take a piece of you with me, Mam. You stole the breath from your own body just as I am doing. You gave me books and poetry and the will to see the world and for that I owe you everything. I’ll take the sound of the wind keening through our little wooden hut, and the smell of your salty hair and the warmth of you pressed around me. I will take a piece of you, too, Grandma, for you gave me quiet and you gave me strength, and I’m so sorry I didn’t recognize them sooner. I’ll take some of you, John, I’ll take the photo you kept on your mantel, and all the love you left inside it, waiting there long after they were gone. I’ll take each of the gifts the crows brought me, each of the treasures. I’ll take the sea with me, deep in my bones, its tides making their way through my soul. And I’ll take the feel of my daughter in my belly, I’ll take all of her, and keep her always.
But I need take nothing from you, Niall, my love. I’d rather give you something.
The nature of me. The wilderness inside. They are yours.
* * *
I sink beneath the surface.
My fingers and toes have gone white as my body furiously pumps blood away from them, trying to keep it at the center of me, where it’s still warm, struggling to keep my heart beating.
The sun makes patterns through the water above. I think I dreamed this, once.
The birds are silhouettes now, circling high. I watch them and watch them, and then I close my eyes.
We can nurture it, too.
My eyes snap open. Fish dart past, glittering in the sun. I’m so cold.
What did you say?
You showed me. We can nurture it, if we are brave enough.
But I’ve nothing left.
There’s still the wild.
Quiet.
And then,
Could you wait for me? Just a little longer?
Always.
I surge to the surface, crash to it and burst through it, the air violent in my lungs. I hardly know how it happens but things are moving, bits of me clawing at life, at the sea’s floor, dragging free of it yet, dragging free of this endless drowning shame.
I can’t move to pull on my clothes except that somehow I do, and I can’t stand on two feet except that somehow I do, and I can’t walk, there’s no way I can walk, except I do. I take step after step after step after step.
We are not here alone, not yet. They haven’t all gone and so there isn’t time for me to drown. There are things yet to be done.
I don’t know how long it takes. It could be hours, or days, or weeks. But eventually I see a vehicle approaching over the ice, and I hear the distant whoomph whoomph whoomph of a helicopter’s flight, and I allow myself to sink to the ground.
I won’t promise you anything. I’ve given up on promises. I’ll just show you.
EPILOGUE
LIMERICK PRISON, IRELAND SIX YEARS LATER
It’s raining the second time I am released from these walls, and this time, unlike the first, I am not empty with the thirst for an ending, I am full to the brim and carrying things with me, things like a degree hard-won and the memory of a vast untouched habitat on the other side of the world.
I am not expecting anyone to be waiting for me.
A dark smudge through the curtain of rain. Leaning against his truck. No umbrella.
I draw closer, thinking it must be Ennis, or maybe Anik—they all know I get out today but I never expected them to come so far …
It’s none of the Saghani’s crew. I haven’t met this man before. Perhaps he’s not waiting for me at all.