I’ll have to be quick, the meeting could end any minute now, so I try to focus as I climb the stairs. There’s thousands of dollars’ worth of equipment in the edit suite, but everything is either too bulky or pointless in resale terms; how much would I even get for used gear that’ll be obsolete when the new model comes out next year? Anyway, I have to travel light.
I start up the computer and click through some images for the folder marked superseded. Little Sophia is there, cute and round in corduroys that don’t fit, trying to smile between those puffy cheeks. She hasn’t been to China, not yet. Hasn’t developed near-perfect Mandarin or a taste for ducks’ tongues and snail porridge. Just a sweet kid still under her mother’s thumb. She looks back at me, not really alive, not really breathing, but nearly; chubby little Sophia Tyburn seems to say there’s nothing here for me.
I consider what to do with Mrs. Tyburn’s archive. I’ve only gotten through a fraction of it. Would destroying the rest be the next best thing to finishing the job? Slap-dash but kind, or unspeakably cruel? But I decide that even she can light a match, and the next batch of photos and letters to burn will have to be her own doing. I’ve done enough so that her past can be whatever she wants, and left the rest in case she thinks remembering is actually worthwhile. I’m still not sure it is.
Past-making isn’t my business anymore. I leave Mrs. Tyburn’s keys on the table by the door, her past still imperfect in the attic, where it’ll probably stay that way. Between Nick’s IT “malfunctions” and banking errors, and the Duchess’s ID, I have everything I need to mix myself up a new future.
Little rowboats nestle together, red bottoms pointed up to the big blue sky between the tide and the Oceanic. I pull one away from the huddle, turn it upright, and rescue the oars from the ground. I’ll row myself out to Appledore and wait for the tourist boat to hitch a ride back to Portsmouth.
This is the break. It’s my turn to make a promise, and try my best to keep it. I’ll live with not knowing, like other people live with grief. I’ll let the part of me that’s suffering shut its aching throat and die. I’ll let it wash over me. This will be my retirement, the time when I’ll learn to want something new, even if nothing ever wants me back.
My face twists like someone with hard, muscular hands is wringing out the tears; they’re flowing all over and down into the tense folds. I’m going to have the wrinkles of someone who’s been in a lot of pain. By then, none of this will have mattered. When my hair is white and my body’s broad and round, the islands will all be different. The maps in my head will look ridiculous.
With the sun showing off behind my back I make a black silhouette on the little waves at the ocean’s edge like penguins or babies, innocently disrupting my shape, over and over, never getting tired of the game. In a moment I’ll get my feet wet, and that’s how they’ll stay, in a little boat rowing over to the next doomed little island. I’m as tired as someone ten times my age, but the day’s still young.
Acknowledgments
My heartfelt gratitude to my US and London families for all of your love and support; for the artistic and practical guidance, meals, coffees, crashes on couches, and confidence you offered me, I’m overwhelmed. And Brian Lobel, there are just no words; for everything, forever, thank you.
To Emma Paterson, Sharmaine Lovegrove, Erin Wicks, and Blake Morrison, thank you for the years of guidance and support in bringing this project to fruition.
For their generosity in hosting my research, many thanks to Kane Cunningham and The House in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, and to the Pelicans on Star Island, New Hampshire, whose camaraderie, warmth, and feistiness I deeply admire.
Thank you to Dan Paz, Chipp Jansen, Martin Chapman, and Christopher Halliwell for sharing your expertise in analog and digital technologies, software, hardware, malware, and all things blockchain.
Finally, I am so grateful to Arts Council England for their generous support of this project.
About the Author
SEASON BUTLER is a writer and artist born in Washington, DC. Season also works as a dramaturg, and as a lecturer in performance studies and creative writing. She lives and works between London and Berlin. Cygnet is her first novel.
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Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
CYGNET. Copyright © 2019 by Season Butler. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Originally published in the United Kingdom in 2019 by Dialogue Books, an imprint of Little, Brown UK.
FIRST U.S. EDITION
Cover design by Milan Bozic
Cover illustrations © Don Blanding Art/Pacific Stock/Media Bakery
Digital Edition JUNE 2019 ISBN: 978-0-06-287093-3
Version 05112019
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-287091-9
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