Migrations

by Charlotte McConaghy

“He wanted to be buried?” I ask, staring at the tombstone.

  “Yes,” Penny says. “You never talked about it?”

  “No. For some reason I assumed cremation…”

  “Because he was a man of science, not religion?”

  I shrug. “Guess so.”

  There is a long silence, and then something in Penny gives way. She moves forward until she is standing beside me in the sunny graveyard. “He wanted his body to offer itself back to the earth, and the creatures in the earth. He wanted the energy of his life to be used for something good. It was in his will.”

  I breathe out. “Of course.”

  Niall Lynch, beloved son and husband.

  “Thank you,” I whisper. “For writing that. You didn’t have to.”

  “It’s true, isn’t it?”

  I swallow tears. “Very much so.”

  * * *

  Afterward, in the mansion that is supposed to be my home for the remainder of my parole, I sequester myself in Niall’s childhood bedroom and sleep for nineteen hours. I wake in the middle of the night, disoriented and unable to go back to sleep. I look through his collection of trilobites, touching each one tenderly. Then the pages of a book hiding a treasure trove of delicate pressed flowers. A journal containing endless observations of animal behavior, a photo album of feathers, rocks of all shapes and sizes, beetles and moths frozen forever in hairspray, fragments of speckled eggshells … Each tiny thing is more precious than I could imagine, and I realize that even though Niall believed his mother was never really able to love him, here is the proof: keeping all these treasures so perfectly preserved for all these years.

  Boxes sit in the corner, labeled Recent. Inside I find reams of paper, his publications and teaching notes and journals. I know these things. I have watched him working on them for years. One of the journals is unlike the others, and not one I recognize. It has been titled Franny.

  I am nervous as I open it. Short, meticulous entries make up a study of a woman who has my name but seems alien at first.

  9:15 a.m., she’s just thrown a used condom into the hallway outside the men’s bathroom, screaming with outrage about the vileness of men.

  4:30, she is reading Atwood in the quad again, the essays I quoted.

  Roughly 1:00 a.m., she calls her mother’s name and I have to shake her awake.

  It is a logbook of my life. My actions. As I read, the entries become less scientific, more insightful, more poetic. And as my initial panic fades, I begin to recognize this for what it is. More a study of my husband than it is of me. This is how he teaches himself to know something, to love something.

  The last entry I read is this.

  * * *

  Before my wife was my wife, she was a creature I studied.

  Now, this very morning, her fingers were splayed over the lump by her belly button, the elbow or fist or foot pressing itself toward us, wriggling to the sound of my voice, reaching to be closer. It moved, this tiny person, and Franny’s eyes shone a light so bright as she looked at me, looked in astonishment, in fear and in joy.

  She loves this child, and it’s her cage. I think she only agreed to keep it because she wanted me to be left with something when she breaks free. The thing that calls to her, whatever it is, will call again. But she has forgotten my promise. I wait, always. Our daughter will wait with me. And maybe one day she too will leave, off on an adventure. And then I will wait for her, too.

  * * *

  After unearthing everything in his room I make my way barefoot into the backyard, around the pond, and into the greenhouse. The cage up the back is empty still—Penny never did replace those birds I freed—but I stand inside it, anyway, and remember so vividly the feel of feathered wings brushing against my face and the taste of his lips.

  “Franny?”

  I turn to face Penny, realizing that I have been standing frozen in this cage for hours like a lunatic. An uneasy déjà vu drapes over me. We’ve been here before, she and I, just like this. “Sorry,” I say.

  “Would you like breakfast?”

  I nod and follow her inside. Arthur’s spot at the end of the breakfast table is empty and has been now for years. He left after Niall’s death, unable to remain in the house where his son was raised. So now Penny is alone here in a hollow mausoleum and anything negative I’ve ever felt toward her melts away. I want only to shelter her from this impossible loss.

  We eat quietly until she asks, “Why did you say you meant to do it?”

  I put down my spoon. We haven’t spoken since before, I never wanted to face her in the prison, so it makes sense this would be her question, the one that matters most.

  “I just … wanted to be punished. As harshly as possible.” It wasn’t hard to convince the court of my guilt, not after the blood alcohol level or the forensics of the car, the tires that didn’t swerve or brake, but charged straight for the oncoming vehicle as though seeking annihilation, or even, after, the damage I did to Greta’s body.

  “What about the tire marks? You veered onto the other side of the road and you didn’t brake. Why didn’t you brake, Franny?”

  “There was an owl,” I say, and my voice cracks. My head falls to rest on my arms as a tidal wave consumes me.

  It feels an age later when a hand gently strokes my hair. “I have something to show you.”

  * * *

  Penny takes me into her office and pulls a file from a drawer. She hands it to me and I read Last Will and Testament. I’m not ready, but I sink onto the carpet and turn the pages until I see it.

  If there are no terns left, I would like to be buried, so that my body can give its energy back to the earth from which it derived so much, so that it might feed something, give something, instead of only taking.

  If there are terns left …

  I close my eyes for a long moment. Preparing myself.

  If there are terns left, and it’s possible, and not too difficult, I would like my ashes to be scattered where they fly.

  The tumbling ocean calms. I rise to my feet, certain at last.

  “Can we have his body exhumed?” I ask.

  Penny is shocked. “What—But there’s no way to … They’ve all gone.”

  “No,” I say. “Not yet. And I know where they’ll fly.”

  “How?”

  “Niall told me.”

  Sterna Paradisaea, SOUTH ATLANTIC OCEAN MATING SEASON

  * * *

  The stretch of ice before us is resplendent and magnificent, overwhelmingly so. It claims command of an entire wintry world, the true heart of its universe. It is imperious and crude and completely impervious, all.

  And it is empty.

  Even though I let them go, even though I told myself it was over, I must have still somehow been expecting to see a sky filled with birds, or a stretch of ice covered in seals, or something, anything alive. Because as the Sterna Paradisaea tacks her way slowly toward shore, past great floating chunks of ice, and I cannot make out movement anywhere in the great expanse, my heart breaks anew.

  “Do you know where we are?” I ask Ennis. Extraordinary cracks rend the air, the ice breaking off the shelf and falling with a noise greater than any thunder into the ocean. I never expected such sounds.

  “Coming up on the Antarctic Peninsula now. We’ll make our way east into the Weddell Sea.”

  I stare at the approaching land.

  Something feels wrong, abruptly. The Weddell Sea is where they have always flown. It was always the stretch of Antarctica most filled with wildlife, followed by Wilkes Land on the northeast side, where the terns land if they have cut right across to Australia before turning south, as they sometimes used to.

  “Wait,” I say. “Can you slow down a bit?”

  Ennis gently eases the throttle lever back a little, looking at me quizzically.

  I’m not sure how to express the sudden uncertainty. “This is where they’ve always gone. Weddell or Wilkes.”

  “We’ll never make it round to Wilkes on
this much fuel or supplies. That’d take a good couple of months.”

  I shake my head. That’s not what I mean, I don’t think. My mind is working swiftly, worrying its way back through all I can remember of Niall’s meetings and research and the thousand bloody papers he wrote on this. Weddell and Wilkes have both been closely monitored because it’s where the animals migrate to. We know birds haven’t been reaching either of these places—any of the species capable of making it so far have died off, except the terns.

  Harriet always said there would come a time when they’d stop somewhere closer and eat something different. But Niall believed they would fly to the ice, because it’s what they know, and that they’d keep going until they found fish or they died.

  “Turn right,” I say swiftly. “Starboard.”

  “What? There’s nothing west—”

  “Go west, now!”

  Ennis curses a storm but he changes direction and rushes about to adjust the mainsail. We carve a path through the ocean that places the peninsula and the South Shetland Islands on our left, and maybe I have lost my mind, maybe to think I could make a punt like this is insanity, maybe I have just killed us both.

  People have been lost in the Ross Sea. There is very little shelter, no protection from the elements, and from February onward it freezes over, so there is no way in or out.

  It is January third today. We’re likely never getting out of here.

  Ennis turns to me. For seemingly no reason he grins and gives me a swift salute. I give him one back. Fuck it. Why not?

  Because it seems to me, suddenly, that if it’s the end, really and truly, if you’re making the last migration not just of your life but of your entire species, you don’t stop sooner. Even when you’re tired and starved and hopeless. You go farther.

  * * *

  Our steel yacht, battered and bruised from the journey, makes its way doggedly along the coast of the Antarctic, and we spend our time staring into the dazzling snow and the stretch of sky, afraid to blink lest we miss anything. The weather turns quickly. Temperatures drop to minus two degrees Celsius. The waves rise. Ennis has his work cut out for him avoiding the dangerous chunks of ice that were once attached to land but now crack and float free. The sound they make as they land in the sea is a mighty whoomph. He calls them growlers and any one of them could capsize or sink us.

  On day four of our westerly path the wind rises to seventy-five knots, which, according to Ennis, can be fatal in temps this low. I don’t understand why, nor do I ask, but I find out soon enough, on day six.

  The rigging begins to crust over with ice. Ennis and I dart back and forth trying to hack it off more quickly than it can form, but it’s useless, and so Ennis tacks us port toward the shore. We’ve reached the Amundsen Sea, which has a gentler coastline than the Ross, so maybe it was fate we didn’t get as far as we meant to. I go below and start packing what remains of the supplies into my pack. The yacht holds compartments full of thick winter thermals, coats, and boots, which may be the difference between life and death. I am frightened, but what does that matter? If anything, it makes me feel more alive.

  “What are you doing?” Ennis asks me. He’s at the helm, setting off the EPIRB—some sort of emergency radio signal to identify our position to rescuers. The boat’s done. It won’t carry us any farther.

  “I’ll keep going on foot,” I say. “Wait here. I’ll come back.”

  He ignores me and packs his own bag.

  So we set out together, into the ice.

  * * *

  It is very hard going. It’s been some time since I’ve been able to feel any of my extremities. Yet it is warmer than it used to be. Everything is warmer, and melting, and changing, and dying. This may be the only reason we haven’t frozen already.

  We rest in the day, buried under the surface of the snow, and we walk at night to stay warm. Keeping the sea to our right always, so we can find our way back. We hold hands sometimes, because it helps to feel less alone. I think of all my lost ones, of my mother and my daughter, of Greta, of Léa, hoping against hope that she is not among them, and Niall, of course, almost with each step.

  On the third day of walking I’m pretty sure Ennis is done. His steps have slowed dramatically and he’s struggling to hold a conversation. We stop and sink onto the cold ground. I pass him a tin of baked beans from my pack, and we share it in silence, watching the still world around us. I don’t think I will be able to keep walking without him. Not if all I’m going to find is more ice.

  “Why are you here, Ennis?” I ask.

  He doesn’t answer, just eats his beans, concentrating on the effort it takes to swallow.

  But after such a long time, he says, “I didn’t want you to have to do it alone.”

  It takes hold of my chest. The generosity of this, and the love. We’ve shared love, the two of us, that cannot be denied. I’m so grateful for it, and for not having to be alone. It’s how I come to know that whatever pretense I’ve been clinging to is done now. There’s no point, not now we’ve reached the end.

  “He died,” I say softly. “My husband.”

  And Ennis says, “I know, love.”

  A slow turning of the world.

  “We’re alone out here,” I murmur. “Aren’t we?”

  He nods.

  “They’re all gone.” I put the empty tin back in my pack, along with our two forks. But I can’t yet rise. I don’t have the strength. “I was almost there with him,” I say. “I was so close by. But I wasn’t there, in the end.”

  “You were there.”

  “No. I left him and left him. That’s what his spirit will take with it.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “I should have been with him.”

  “You were. And he still went alone. We all do. Always.”

  “It’s too far for him to go alone.” I press my eyes with trembling fingers. “I can’t feel him.”

  “You can. Why else would you still be walking?”

  With that he stands up, and I stand up, and we keep walking.

  * * *

  It only takes another couple of hours. I am trudging up a particularly grueling slope, worrying about Ennis, who has fallen a long way behind, turning back to make sure he’s still moving, and then I glance ahead.

  And stop.

  Because something just flew across the sky.

  I break into a run.

  More of them appear, swooping and diving and then I am cresting the slope and—

  Oh.

  Hundreds of Arctic terns cover the ice before me. Squealing and creaking their cries, dancing upon the air with their mates, caterwauling joyously. Sea swallows, they are called, for the grace of their dips through the water, and I see it now as they dive hungrily for fish, in a sea thriving with what must be millions of scales.

  I sink awkwardly to the ground and weep.

  For the journey they have made. For the loveliness left behind. For you, and for promises, and for a life that was given to fate but could not comprehend your death’s inclusion in that.

  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?”

&
nbsp; “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.”