Migrations

by Charlotte McConaghy

  * * *

  The Saghani powers slowly through thick ice off the coast of Greenland, splintering it into huge chunks that will be expelled from our path. The sound is like nothing I have ever heard. Great cracks rend the sky, huge whooshes, and always the persistent rumble of sea and engine combined.

  I pull my windbreaker tighter about me; even with three thermals underneath I’m still cold, but it feels good. Freezing wind bites at my cheeks and lips, drying them, cracking them. I am being allowed a rare break from my duties to witness the passage. Up in the bridge stands Ennis, carefully navigating his vessel through the dangerous ice. I can see him through persistently salt-rimed glass and under an angry gray sky, just the thick dark beard. In fluorescent orange Samuel stands beside him, reading the gauges. The others make a steady route from stern to bow, monitoring the ship’s passage and watching for chunks big enough to cause damage to the hull. They shout in a language that seems foreign to me, as everything they say on board does. Things like abeam and forepeak and belay.

  The terns haven’t left Greenland yet. I’ve been watching the little red dots on my laptop obsessively, knowing it will be soon. Until they do we are staying in the Saghani’s normal waters, hoping for luck.

  Ennis decides the route we take; he is the one who finds the fish, and so the livelihood of his crew depends entirely on his ability to scour this enormous ocean. I haven’t spoken to him since I came aboard. I rarely see him, except at a distance behind the helm. He doesn’t eat with us. Basil said this is normal—he’s likely up there studying charts and weather reports and sonar tracking devices, the weight of his responsibility lying heavy upon him.

  “He’s in the heart of the hunt,” Anik told me on my first day, as though I should have known this. “It makes him separate. Other.”

  “He’s just making sure we don’t all die, and thank the Lord for that,” Samuel muttered, lighting two cigarettes at once and passing the second to Anik.

  This is how I am learning about the captain of the Saghani—from afar, in the snippets his crew members offer up. He has skipper’s quarters, whereas the rest of us share a cabin between two, the rooms all adjoining the small mess room and galley. I’ve been placed in Léa’s cabin, and she’s unused to having a roommate, to say the least. She doesn’t speak to me, except to bark orders, and the cabin is barely big enough for both bunks. The only reason its tiny size has been endurable so far is because I’ve been too tired to lie awake in the heavy dark and imagine I am in a coffin.

  “Franny, outta the way!” Dae shouts as he thunders past. I jump clear in time to hear him holler, “Berg at two degrees port!”

  I peer over the railing to see what he’s talking about. There’s an iceberg jutting out of the layer of flat ice surrounding it, and we are angled directly for it. Presumably its shape means the bulk of it extends much deeper into the sea, whereas the rest of the ice sits mostly atop the water. The icebreakers can’t cut through a berg. It doesn’t look big enough to do proper damage but I suppose that’s what everyone on board the Titanic thought. And given the noises being made by the crew, I’d say we’re in trouble.

  “Brace for impact!”

  Basil wrenches me into his chest, pressing us roughly to the deck. The juddering impact sends us sprawling, and my shoulder connects heavily with the wall. I wince as the boat corrects itself once more. If Basil hadn’t grabbed me I might have been flung overboard. He’s already bolting off down the ship. I struggle to my feet and keep a firm hold of the railing. We’re past the iceberg and angled away—we must have clipped the edge of it. I can see ice-free ocean up ahead and my hammering heart doesn’t know whether to speed up or slow down.

  It’s not that I want us to sink or anything, but that was exciting.

  “Clear!” Ennis booms from his balcony once we’re out of the ice.

  “Aye, Skip!” Léa calls.

  “Nicely done!” Mal shouts.

  Ennis heads down the stairs and I watch him stride to the point of impact, throwing a heavy rope ladder over the side. I lean over to watch him climb down and check the damage to the hull, completely at ease on that rope. Water sprays his body, but he only climbs lower, reaching to touch the long scrape and judge its depth. When he’s satisfied he swings up and over, landing with a heavy squelch of boots. “Cosmetic,” he tells the waiting crew, who let out a stream of relieved curses.

  “You all right, love?” he asks me, the first words he’s spoken to me since the night we met.

  “Look at her face,” Mal says, and as they all clock my expression, whatever it is, they crack up laughing. Even Léa is chuckling, though Anik only rolls his eyes.

  Ennis smiles as he passes me, clapping me on the shoulder. “It’s got ahold of you now.”

  * * *

  “Hey, Franny, wake up.”

  No.

  “Come on.”

  Someone is dragging me from my bed. It can’t be dawn already. I blink blearily and see Dae.

  “What are you doing? Let me sleep.”

  “Dinner’s on.”

  “I’m too tired.”

  “You’ll never survive if you don’t eat.”

  I can see he’s not going to be deterred so I haul myself to my feet and stumble into the mess. Malachai makes room for me to slide in next to him at the corner table. The booth seats are a sticky, peeling brown leather and when all seven of us are wedged in it’s a tight fit. A small brick of a television is mounted on the wall above us and we all crane our necks to watch one of the four DVDs they have on board—tonight’s screening is Die Hard, which they can all, without exaggeration, recite word for word. I rest my head on the back of the seat and let myself nod off.

  “What the hell are you doing in there?” Dae shouts at one point, wrenching me from my doze.

  “What time is it?” I ask groggily.

  “One a.m.!” Dae shouts, not for my benefit.

  “Patience!” Basil’s voice comes from the adjoining galley.

  “Can’t I please just go to bed?” I ask.

  Mal and Dae find my sleep-addled state highly amusing.

  “Not coping too well, princess?” Léa asks me coldly.

  I sink lower in my seat and ignore them all.

  Samuel sits heavily, placing a shot glass in front of me. “This’ll help, lass.”

  I don’t have it in me to argue, so I do the shot. It burns so outrageously that I spit half of it over the table and cough until my eyes water. Which makes them all laugh even more. I eye Samuel suspiciously. “Was that revenge?”

  He grins. “I am a peaceful man. An eye for an eye will only make the whole world blind.”

  Samuel pours shots for the others.

  “I hate the stuff, too,” Malachai sympathizes as he lifts his to his lips.

  “Good luck,” I mutter.

  Someone gasps. “Putain de crétin!” Léa snarls.

  “What?”

  “Don’t say good luck, moron!”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s bad luck.”

  They’re all staring at me. I spread my hands. “Well, how was I meant to know?”

  “You don’t know shit,” Léa spits.

  “So tell me.”

  “First lesson,” Samuel announces.

  “Don’t ever step onto the boat with your left foot first,” Léa says with a horrified shudder.

  “Don’t leave port on a Friday,” says Dae.

  “Don’t open a tin upside down,” says Samuel.

  “No bananas,” Léa says. “Or whistling.”

  “No women on board,” says Basil as he emerges from the galley with a plate in each hand. He winks at Léa as he says it. “Don’t worry, we live dangerously on the Saghani.”

  Samuel and Dae stare at the plates they’ve been delivered. And rightly so. There is a small, slender S-shaped curl of spaghetti, artfully painted with delicate swirls of red and yellow sauces and finished off with shards of what looks like parmesan, wedged perfectly between the pasta so
they stand aloft. To be honest I’m surprised there’s much fresh food at all, but we’ve only just begun the journey—according to Dae the menu will go steadily downhill over time.

  “What…” Mal can’t even finish. He appears to be swallowing the urge to scream, or possibly having a stroke.

  “What’s this meant to be then?” Samuel demands.

  “Spag Bol,” Basil says as he returns with more plates. “You said you wanted something normal so here you bloody go.”

  “But … how?”

  “It’s deconstructed.”

  “Well … can it please be reconstructed?”

  I can’t help it. I cover my mouth and laugh.

  Dae manages to grab all the leftover bits and pieces and heap our plates with a normal-sized serving, while Basil grumbles about overeating in the American populace. I’m handed a bowl with plain spaghetti because they know by now that I’m vegetarian. “Not even fish?” Basil demanded when he found out.

  “Not even fish.” This piece of information was met with a great deal of suspicion.

  After dinner I do the washing up and wipe down the kitchen, and then, because the food has woken me up a bit, I pour myself a few fingers of whiskey to quiet the noise in my head, and go up onto the main deck to smoke.

  We’ve left the midnight sun behind. Night has found us.

  I wander to the bow so I can watch the endless stretch of black sea. It’s calm now, mostly, and quiet but for the engine’s rumble and the ocean’s shhhhh. We glide along at a cracking pace, headed south. I light a cigarette, knowing that when I start I can’t stop, and that I’ll likely stand here and smoke an entire packet, one after the other in an effort to survive the night. The poison of the smoke feels good in my lungs; it feels damaging.

  “Ennis says this is the only true wild left.”

  Samuel appears beside me.

  I gaze at the dark expanse of it and know what he means. I’m glad now that Dae woke me—I haven’t had a moment to think since I boarded a week ago.

  “Do you think your wife will forgive you for being away longer?” I ask.

  “Sure. Not so likely to forgive you, though.”

  I’m unsure what to say. I could apologize, but I’m not sorry.

  “So she doesn’t like you leaving?”

  “No.”

  “Then why do you do it?”

  “There is pleasure in the pathless woods. There is rapture on the lonely shore. There is society where none intrudes, by the deep sea, and music in its roar.”

  I smile. “Byron.”

  “Bless you, dear, I do love the Irish.” He pauses and grins. “And by God I love to fish.”

  But why? I want to ask. Why?

  I can understand wanting to be at sea. Of course I can. I have loved the sea all my life. But fishing? Maybe it’s not exactly the fishing these people love, but the freedom, the adventure, the danger. The respect I have for them wants to believe that.

  “I could do without the coming and going, though, and the months away. You know what I’d really like?” Samuel asks.

  “What would you like?”

  “I’d like to take my reel down to the beach on my little stretch of land and spend all my hours with a line in, drinking wine and reading poetry.”

  “Any in particular?”

  “Do you not see how necessary a world of pains and troubles is to school an intelligence and make it a soul?”

  I search my memory, and take a stab. “Is that Keats?”

  “You get bonus points for that one.”

  “It sounds perfect. Why don’t you?”

  “I have a lot of children to feed.”

  I consider this. It’s not the pathless woods or the lonely shore that guides him from his home, then, but necessity.

  “Does he find much anymore?” I ask.

  Samuel shrugs, uncomfortable. “He used to. Everyone wanted to work for Ennis Malone. Herring aplenty. Now it’s no easy task. The turning o’ the world, right there. Things grow dire.” He looks at me. “Don’t have time to be chasing birds all over the world.”

  I don’t repeat myself: I’ve already told them the birds will lead them to fish. They don’t believe me. They believe in superstition, and in routine. They believe in knowing the oceans you sail.

  “Today with that berg—that was nothing,” Samuel says. “It’ll get much worse as we reach the Gulf Stream.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “It connects with the Labrador Current, which’ll give us a lift south. They’re two of the great currents of the world, moving in opposite directions.” He takes a drag of his cigarette, the butt glowing red in the dark. “When you reach that spot, where they brush against each other…” Samuel shakes his head. “You can’t count on much. It’s a beast of an ocean, the Atlantic. Ennis told me once that he’s sailed it for most of his life and he still knows next to nothing about it.”

  “Ennis seems to say a lot of things to everyone except me.”

  Samuel looks sideways at me, then reaches to pat my shoulder kindly. “You’re brand-new, kid. And he’s focused.”

  “He’s pissed.”

  “If he regrets his decision he won’t take it out on you. He’s not that petty. Look, what I mean to be asking is if you’re really sure about all this, lass. Quick way to the grave, hopping aboard a deep-sea vessel without the skills to survive it. Even if you do have the skills, come to think of it.”

  “You’ve survived.” I suspect he’s hiding nimble feet under that rotund figure.

  “And I expect Lady Luck to change her mind about that most every day.”

  I shrug. “Well, Samuel, what can I say. If I die on this boat, then I guess it’s just my fate, isn’t it.”

  “Huh.”

  “Huh what?”

  There’s something gentle in his eyes as he looks at me. “What makes a young thing like you so tired of life?”

  When I don’t answer he hugs me. I am so surprised that I don’t remember to return the embrace. There are very few people, in my understanding of the world, who offer tenderness so freely.

  I don’t follow the old sailor back inside. Instead I think about what he has perceived in me and know it isn’t true. It’s not life I’m tired of, with its astonishing ocean currents and layers of ice and all the delicate feathers that make up a wing. It’s myself.

  * * *

  There are two worlds. One is made of water and earth, of rock and minerals. It has a core, a mantle and a crust, and oxygen for breathing.

  The other is made of fear.

  I have inhabited each and know one to feel deceptively like the other. Until it is too late, and you are watching the eyes of the other inmates to see if there is death in them, watching every face you pass, listening to the angry hum for a hint you are its next target, clawing at the walls of your cell to get free, to get out, for air and sky and please, not this shrinking tomb.

  The fear world is worse than death. It is worse than anything.

  And it has found me once more, way out in the Atlantic, inside this rocking cabin.

  Tonight is the first night I haven’t been able to sleep.

  “Primary coverts,” I whisper through chattering teeth, “greater coverts, median coverts, scapular, mantle, nape, crown—shit.” I lurch upright because even the mantra isn’t helping me tonight, it’s not calming or centering me, there’s no distraction from the queasy terror of this skyless room.

  I click on my travel torch and wedge it on top of my pack so its beam lights my notebook.

  Niall, I scribble. I have to forestall a full-blown panic attack. Where are your lungs when I need them? Where is your sense, your perpetual calm?

  It’s been over a week and we’ve escaped the ice. We’re headed for the Labrador Current, which Samuel says is dangerous. He says this whole ocean is dangerous. I’m not sure you’d like it. I think you enjoy having your feet on solid ground too much, but the sea is like the sky and I can’t get enough of either. When I die don’t bur
y me in the ground. Scatter me to the wind.

  I stop because tears have blurred my eyes. This won’t be one of the letters I send. It would frighten him to hear me speak of dying.

  “Turn that fucking light off,” Léa snaps at me from her bed.

  I riffle through my pack until I find the sleeping pills. I’m not meant to take them with alcohol but at this point I don’t give a shit. I swallow one and then squeeze my eyes shut. Primary coverts, greater coverts, median coverts, scapular, mantle, nape, crown—

  * * *

  I wake hanging two inches above the sea. It roars black and bottomless, its spray icy against my face. For a moment it must be the most perfect dream and then the moment passes and I realize I’m awake and my body lurches with such shock that I nearly fall.

  I’m clinging to the rope ladder I saw Ennis use. Swaying precariously against the ship’s hull. My knuckles are white and frozen in their grip, and I am not wearing enough layers, not even close.

  I have sleepwalked here.

  I am about to haul myself the hell up when instead I stop. I’ve found myself in strange places before, but never this extreme, this perilous. I feel abruptly alive, for the first time in years. For the first time, if I’m being honest, since the night my husband left me.

  To be fair, I left him first, more times than I can count.

  “Yours is a terrible will,” he told me once. And that is true, but I have been a casualty of it far longer than he has.

  The rope’s ascent drags me from the sea. Someone has turned on the crank and now I rise without having decided to do so. For a second I hate whoever is pulling me up. Then thoughts blur as the cold finds its mark. Hands haul me over into a bundle of limbs. The flash of moonlit skin tells me this is Léa, her long frame strong enough to support my useless body. My legs can barely hold me upright, so she does that for me.

  “What the fuck.”

  “I’m okay.”

  “You’re goddamn freezing.” She starts pulling me over the deck, catching me when I stumble. “What the fuck are you doing, Franny,” she says, but not really like a question. “What is wrong with you.”