“Humanity is a fucking plague upon the world,” Niall says.
That’s when he looks up and spots me. Our eyes meet across the space. I see relief in him, which creates the same in me, and then I see something cooler.
He moves to kiss my cheek. “You’re here.”
I nod, all the words I rehearsed on the train having evaporated.
“There’s a riot going on because some piece-of-shit poachers snuck into a sanctuary and carved off the tusks of the last elephants,” he says heavily.
My heart hurts. I can’t bear to hear it. Because we keep hearing it. And nothing changes. I could weep but for Niall the pain is much colder. I think he is really starting to lose hope.
Before I can think what to say, he shakes his head. Exhales long and slow, then pours me a mug of wine from a nearby table. “Come on,” he murmurs, leading me over to his colleagues. “Friends, meet my wife, Franny.”
There are two male professors whose names I forget immediately, a lab assistant called Hannah, and the blond lecturer who shoved a dirty plate at me—Professor Shannon Byrne. I meet her shocked eyes—she thinks she must have misheard. “Wife?”
“Wife,” Niall confirms.
“Nice to meet you,” I say.
“Lovely,” Shannon manages, shaking my hand briefly. “When did this happen, Niall?”
“Six weeks ago.”
“You’re kidding. Why weren’t we invited?”
“No one was invited.”
“You certainly kept that quiet! How long have you been together?” she presses.
Niall smiles a sharp kind of smile. “Six weeks.”
There is an awkward silence among the group.
“Madness,” I say. The tension breaks and they all make noises of amusement or understanding.
“All of love,” one of the men says, “madness.”
“My wife calls it a fever dream,” says the other. I decide to like them both.
I look at Niall and nod. “That sounds right,” and I think I can hardly recognize this person I am married to.
“I never imagined Niall could be interested in anything other than his job,” Shannon says.
“Neither did I,” Niall says.
“It’s fearless, isn’t it,” Hannah says, cheeks flushed pink.
I meet her shy gaze in gratitude. “It’s something.”
“Shannon’s head of biology,” Niall tells me. “You should sit down with her. Shannon, I’m telling you—Franny has a staggering passion for ornithology, and she’s very smart.”
Shannon’s eyes flick down to my muddy jeans. She’s wearing a navy woolen dress and heels. Her blond hair is elegantly tousled. My black mane is in a sweaty, messy braid that makes me look twelve years old. I don’t have the inclination to care, but I dart a look at Niall’s face to see if he’s noticing the discrepancy. He’s not.
Without warning he says, “A flock of crows fell in love with her as a child.”
Heat floods me.
“What do you mean?” Shannon demands.
When it’s clear I’m not about to reply, Niall explains. “She fed them every day and they started following her, bringing her gifts. It went on for years. They adored her.”
“Not every day,” Shannon says. “Not during winter.”
I look up at her. Nod.
“Not true,” she says simply. “Crows migrate.”
“Birds go where the food is,” Niall says. “Birds of the Corvidae family have the ability to recognize individual human faces. Franny became their food source so they had no need to migrate.”
Shannon shakes her head as though the very idea offends her.
Don’t, I wish, sending it out as loudly and silently as I can. Don’t take the magic from it. I feel dirty, like something precious has been sullied, like I want to get the fuck out of here, or throw my mug of wine in her face, and maybe Niall’s, too.
“It’s why I wanted you to meet with her,” Niall goes on.
“Do you have an undergrad?” Shannon asks me.
“No.”
“You haven’t studied at all? How old are you?”
“Twenty-two.”
Her eyebrows arch. “What’s that—a ten-year age gap?”
Niall and I glance at each other. Nod.
Shannon shrugs. “Well, you’re young, you have plenty of time. Give me a call and we’ll sit down and talk about what you’ll need to apply.”
Instead of explaining that I have no interest in doing that I just say thanks. They are all too happy to move the conversation back to things they’re comfortable with—currently the paper Shannon is about to publish on interspecies breeding programs—so I use the moment to edge out of the circle, place my untouched wine back on the table, and head for the door. It swings shut behind me and the sound from within is muted almost to silence. I take a breath of relief. The lift button turns yellow for down.
The door behind me opens and the sound of voices floods out once more. I don’t turn, but a hand takes mine and pulls me sideways into another room, a dark one, an office space, I think.
“Too pompous for you?” my husband asks. I can’t see him very well in the dark. I think he might be a wee bit drunk. “What are you doing here?”
“I came to find you.”
He spreads his hands: here I am.
“Was that payback?” I ask.
“What?”
“The crows. Giving away something precious.”
He is silent, and then he sighs. “No. Not consciously.”
“I don’t know how to do this,” I say, and my voice breaks.
“Nor do I.”
I move through the dark, wanting to distance myself from him. There are tall windows along one wall, and I peer through them to the grounds below. The park looks ghoulish in the darkness, its trees casting strange moving shadows. A car drives slowly past, flashing its headlights into my face and then disappearing. Something uncomfortable lives in the moment, waiting. I’m crawling out of my skin because I have never had to be responsible to another person, never had to tell anyone where I’m going. It is a kind of binding. “I warned you,” I say, and then hate myself for it.
“You did,” he says, moving closer. “And I still wasn’t … expecting it. Just tell me, darlin’, that’s all. Just let me know you’re off somewhere, and that you plan on coming back.”
I turn around. “You didn’t think I’d gone for good?”
“It crossed my mind, aye,” he admits. “You gave me a fright, Franny.”
The unease seeps out of me. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I’d never leave you for good.” With the words I realize it’s true, and a different kind of binding takes hold, a deeper, more ruinous one.
Niall moves close and holds me, his mouth to the crook of my neck. “I hate myself for the crows, for giving them away. I knew I was doing it. I think sometimes I’m conditioned for destruction.”
We don’t move, but outside the world is still shifting and breathing and living. The moon lopes her path over our heads. I live in his words, and in the vastness of his contradictions.
“But you’re holding me so tenderly,” I say.
“Does it feel like a cage?”
My eyes prickle. “No,” I say, and I feel that deep and terrible binding for what it is, I know its face and its name, and it’s not a binding at all, but love, and maybe that’s the same kind of thing after all.
“Will you go somewhere with me?” I ask him.
“Where?”
“Anywhere.”
Niall’s arms tighten. He says, “Aye. Anywhere.”
19
The Saghani, NORTH ATLANTIC OCEAN MIGRATION SEASON
I wake from my delirious sleep feeling blurry. It takes good long minutes for me to work out where I am (Ennis’s cabin, his bed) and what happened last night (I stabbed a man). I don’t remember it well.
Niall, why haven’t you come to find me?
The crew’s in the galley, perched on various benches an
d leaning against walls, watching Basil stir a huge pot of oats on the stove and talking in hushed tones. All but Ennis. He’s never here, always apart.
There is fear in them as they spot me. I can sense it, just the flicker of it. An animal thing. A wariness of the unhinged woman they now share a small space with.
“How are you feeling?” Anik asks me.
“Fine.” I can’t access what I feel about last night. It’s already gone to live elsewhere. “So we’re on the boat. And it’s moving.”
Nobody replies to that. Their gazes say it all.
“Well, shit,” I mutter.
Basil hands me a bowl of porridge with a sprinkle of cinnamon and lemon rind on top. He doesn’t meet my eyes. I go out to the mess and sink into the leather booth. They follow me with their own bowls, sitting around me as though everything is normal. I miss Samuel’s big smiling presence.
Nobody speaks until Ennis strides in, folds his arms, and says, “Right, here it is. We’ve illegally left port. I’ve had a radio call from the maritime police telling us to immediately turn around and they’ll look leniently on us because the announcement’s only just gone out and we could argue we hadn’t clearly understood the new laws.”
I put my spoon down.
“There’ll be another giant reason the cops want to chat with us now,” Dae points out, and all eyes turn to me.
“Yeah, and maybe we should help them out with that,” Basil says. When nobody replies he speaks more loudly. “A woman we hardly know murdered a man last night. And instead of staying to report what happened, we just ran.”
“He was one of those protesters—” Mal starts.
“So? So fucking what? This isn’t The goddamn Godfather. We don’t kill people. She killed a man in cold blood.”
“Cold blood?” I say.
“She might not have killed him,” Léa says. “We don’t know.”
“How did you even do it?” Dae asks me, confused.
“She had a blade,” Anik says.
“Why would she carry that?” Basil demands, still not looking at me.
“Maybe because women get attacked,” Léa snaps.
“Oh, here we go—”
“I’ve carried the pocketknife since the day I was stabbed in prison,” I say.
The crew falls silent.
“I spent four years in a cell in Limerick. It was violent. I learned to fight. I learned to fear other people. When I got out I started carrying the knife.”
The air is thick with shock.
Ennis is searching me. I can’t read his expression and I don’t think he can read mine. The others are trying to process.
“Oh, my days,” Mal says faintly.
“What the fuck.” Basil is staring at me now and there’s something hard in his gaze. “So we have a violent criminal on board who stabbed some poor guy to death. Why’s that okay?”
“Poor guy?” I say.
“What—did he touch you a bit so you had to murder him?”
“You chauvinist piece of shit,” Léa snarls but I barely hear her.
“You know what?” Basil asks. “I’m so sick of feminism being the excuse every time a woman behaves badly. A chick is violent and she blames it on men. It’s pathetic.”
I should be angry. There is a resounding surge of it from those who surround me. But instead I feel only contempt for Basil, and a kind of pity that he has let himself be formed into such a small man. He sees it on my face, I think, because he flushes with humiliation and his rage is kindled even further.
It’s Ennis who rounds on him. “He attacked her,” the captain says and I am startled by his fervor. “He attacked her because of us and she didn’t say anything about where we were, so he fucking assaulted her and you don’t think she should have defended herself?”
Basil makes an angry helpless sound. “What did you go to prison for?”
“I killed two people.”
“Jesus,” he snaps. “This is fucked.”
“Calm down, Bas,” Dae says.
“No! We need to radio the police! If we turn back right now—”
“Go cool off,” Ennis orders.
Basil starts to protest until—
“Go!”
The cook storms off, swearing angrily under his breath. Ennis turns back to us. His eyes find mine, gray as dawn.
“I apologize,” he says.
I don’t know what to say.
Mal asks softly, “Is that why you didn’t want to go ashore?”
I nod. “I broke my parole to come here. Wasn’t supposed to leave Ireland for another five years. My passport’s false. And—” Here I go, why not all of the truth and be damned? “I’m not an ornithologist. Or any kind of scientist.”
They stare at me.
“I beg your pardon?” Mal says.
“I never studied. I don’t have a degree. I just read lots.”
There is another long silence as they try to work out what to do with that.
“Fucking hell, Franny,” Léa says eventually.
“Let’s not tell Basil that bit,” Mal suggests.
“How’d you get the tracking stuff?” Dae asks.
“It’s my husband’s.”
“But why are you doing all of this if you’re not involved in it?” Anik asks.
“I am involved. We all are.”
Then, “It doesn’t matter,” Ennis says, and he’s calm, and something about it makes the thought enter my mind that he must have known, but that’s silly. “There are two birds still tracked. I can intercept them. Follow them to fish.”
I breathe out, feeling my eyes prickle. I have an urge to hug him.
“They’re way out west,” Léa argues. “And headed south fast. You don’t know those waters, Skip.”
“I can find them,” Ennis repeats, and he sounds sure enough to believe.
“What does it matter if we’re just gonna get arrested the second we land with a freezer full of fish?” Dae asks.
“I know a guy,” Anik says. “Could move the catch under the radar, if we needed him to. If we can find a catch.”
“Oh, Lord,” Malachai breathes, then can’t help laughing in disbelief. It is ludicrous enough to make anyone laugh, this criminal world in which we’ve found ourselves. Léa’s head is shaking continuously, while Dae keeps rubbing his eyes as though to wake himself from a dream.
“So let’s take a vote,” our captain says. “Anyone for turning back and handing over the boat?” And handing over Franny, is what he doesn’t need to add.
I hold my breath.
Nobody raises a hand.
“All those for carrying on, come what may?”
Silence.
Then Anik’s lone hand, lifting into the air. “We’re in it now,” he murmurs. “So let’s finish it.”
One by one the other hands follow suit. I dash tears from my cheeks, hands shaking with exhilaration.
Last night it was over, all of this. Today we are deeper within the wilderness than we’ve ever been.
“So we head south,” Ennis says, “and hope our fuel lasts, ’cause they’ve put out an alert about the Saghani so we won’t be able to dock until it’s done.”
“And we hope our engines hold,” Léa says.
“And we pray for fish,” Dae says.
“And birds,” Anik says.
I nod.
And birds.
* * *
I take my bedroll onto the deck to sleep. I won’t stay in that cabin, despite Léa’s protests. As a concession I tie my wrist to the railing, which prevents me from going overboard in bad weather or during sleepwalking. It’s cold and lovely out here. A clear sky full of stars.
Later Ennis comes down from the helm and sits on the wooden boards beside my sleeping bag. He doesn’t say anything, as is his wont.
So I speak.
“Why did they vote to keep going?” I ask, because I’ve been asking myself the question all evening. The others aren’t bound as Ennis and I are.
> “You’re one of us,” Ennis says. “We don’t hand our people over.”
It hurts to hear that, hurts in that way that feels frightening and good at the same time. I rest my head on my knees and look up at the moon. She’s nearly full tonight, and more golden than white.
“I didn’t mean to kill him,” I murmur. Then, “That’s not true. I did. I meant to kill him very much. And I think that’s why I shouldn’t have stabbed him.”
Ennis doesn’t move or speak for a long time. Night turns above.
It’s been an age when he says, “Maybe not. But I’m glad you did.”
20
GALWAY, IRELAND TWELVE YEARS AGO
“The world was a different place, once,” Niall says into the microphone. “Once there were creatures in the sea so miraculous they seemed straight out of fantasy. There were things that loped across plains or slithered through tall grass, things that leaped from the boughs of trees, which were plentiful, too. Once there were glorious winged beasts that roamed the sky-world, and now they are going.” He stops and looks for my face in the lecture hall. “They aren’t going,” he corrects himself. “They are being violently and indiscriminately slaughtered by our indifference. It has been decided by our leaders that economic growth is more important. That the extinction crisis is an acceptable trade for their greed.”
He said it’s hard, sometimes, to finish. The bile rises in his throat and he could break the lectern beneath his hands, overcome with a profound sense of loathing for what we are, all of us, and the poison of our species. He called himself a hypocrite for always talking, never doing, and he said he hates himself as much as anyone, he’s as much a perpetrator, a consumer living in wealth and privilege and wanting more and more and more. He said he’s fascinated by the simplicity with which I live, and envious, and I thought it curious because I’ve never thought of it that way. When he asked me what I really want, deep down, all I could think of was to walk and swim, so I guess he’s right.
I can see him struggling to continue with the lecture today. It’s been months since I’ve attended one of his classes, and I’m concerned to see the level of despair that leaks into his voice, the anger patent in his deliberateness, his pointed accusations and need to make us understand. I can hear in his voice the rage he experiences at his own futility, and I wish I could ease it for him somehow, smooth it away with the touch of my fingers or the whisper of my lips, but it’s bigger than I am, it’s an anger to swallow the world.
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