by Anne Corlett
“You go.” Her stepmother reached up to touch Jamie’s arm. “I usually have a sleep around this time.” She leaned back and closed her eyes.
Jamie hesitated, then started toward the door. Just as she reached it, her stepmother spoke from behind her. “You’ll come back?”
“Yes. I’ll come back.”
• • •
Lowry didn’t ask Jamie what had passed between her and her stepmother, and Jamie didn’t volunteer any information. It still felt unreal. All the vastness of space, and somehow they’d found their way back together.
As they walked down the slope to the beach, Jamie scanned the shoreline. For a moment she couldn’t see anyone at all, and then she caught sight of a figure sitting at the bottom of the dunes. Rena, with her knees drawn up to her chest and a distant expression on her face. The bags were piled beside her. But where was Finn? Had Rena let him wander off?
“Rena.” There was a tension in Lowry’s voice that told her he’d had the same thought. “Where’s Finn?”
Rena kept her gaze fixed on the horizon, a tiny smile playing about her lips.
Jamie stared along the beach, shielding her eyes with her hand. She could feel the first stirrings of fear.
“Finn?”
Lowry grabbed her arm. “There.” He pointed toward the harbor wall, just where Jamie knew it jutted out into the deeper water. There was a figure clinging to the wall, one hand reaching up to scrabble uselessly at the rough-cut stone.
Jamie ran to the water’s edge and plunged in, wading deeper and deeper until the sand beneath her feet fell away, just a few meters from the wall. She swam the few strokes to his side and threw an arm around his shoulders. He twisted against her, his mouth gaping in a silent gasp of panic.
Drowning is quiet. She remembered someone telling her that.
“Finn. I’m here.”
He was flailing, and she was struggling to hold them both against the wall. She said his name a couple more times, but her voice didn’t seem to be registering with him.
“Here.”
She looked up to see Callan above her, reaching down. Between the two of them they managed to haul Finn up onto the harborside, where he lay clutching at the stones, still oddly silent.
Callan reached down again and helped Jamie scramble up. She knelt beside Finn, her hand on his back, saying his name again and again until it seemed to penetrate. His breathing steadied, and after a moment he pushed himself up onto his knees and looked at her.
“Too deep,” he said.
Jamie fought back the urge to yell at him.
You could have drowned.
She took a deep breath. “Yes, it’s deep. You have to stay near the shore. You can’t swim.”
He nodded. “Okay.”
“You promise?” Jamie said. “And not without me here?”
“I promise.”
When the three of them made their way back to the others, Rena hadn’t moved. She looked up as they approached, her expression untroubled, as if they’d just been for a walk.
Jamie felt a surge of anger. “Why didn’t you stop him?”
Rena’s gaze slid straight over Jamie, settling on Lowry.
“Are you ready?” she said. “We have to keep going.”
Jamie took a step toward her, but Lowry gripped her arm in a surprisingly strong grasp. When she twisted around to glare at him, he shook his head sharply before turning back to Rena.
“It’s been a long day,” he said. “Maybe we should stay here tonight.”
Rena’s face was backlit with an unshakable certainty as she climbed to her feet. “No. We need to go on.”
Jamie opened her mouth, but Lowry shook his head at her again, his expression clearly readable.
No point.
“Do you really want to head straight off?” Callan said. “It’s another three miles.”
Lowry had his hand pressed to his ribs, and he looked tired. The kind of tired that isn’t caused by just one day of hard activity, and won’t be cured by just one day of rest.
“My stepmother must have a car,” Jamie said. “You could drive.”
“No.” Rena’s voice was calm and flat. “We have to walk. Like the old pilgrims. We have to strip it all away. All the mess, all the things that get in the way.”
“It’s three miles,” Jamie said again. “And Lowry—”
“—is fine,” the old man interrupted. “If that’s what you want, Rena.”
“Pointless,” Gracie said, abruptly. “Pointless nonsense. Wearing yourself out because she’s set on being some sort of martyr.”
There was an odd light in Rena’s eyes as she turned to the engineer. Jamie felt her anger fall away, to be replaced by unease. “It’s all right,” Rena said. “You don’t understand yet. But you will. It took me a while too. There’s a path, and we’ve all been on it for years now. Hundreds of years, maybe.” She frowned and rubbed at her eye, her serenity cracking for the first time. “I can’t quite see it.”
“Rena.” Lowry’s voice was gentle, and Rena turned to him, her face clearing.
“It’s all right, Marcus,” she said, tenderly. Jamie thought she saw Lowry flinch. “It doesn’t matter how long this has been going on. It’s where we’re going that’s important.”
“And where are we going?” Callan’s tone was almost conversational, and Rena turned to him, her eyes bright with disclosure.
“To God,” she said. “He’s waiting for us, out there in the space between the stars.”
“So remind me.” Gracie was studying Rena with detached curiosity. “Why are you going to Lindisfarne? If God’s waiting somewhere else?”
Rena nodded, as though the engineer had confirmed something. “It’s a jumping-off point,” she said, then chuckled, an odd, off-kilter little sound. “A launchpad, you’d probably say.” She gave Gracie another unsettling smile, then turned to Lowry. “We should go. Time and tide, time and tide . . . you know.”
She bent and picked up her pack. When Lowry went to shoulder his own rucksack, Callan stuck out a hand to stop him.
“No need to carry all your stuff,” he said. “Even if you’re set on this damn fool pilgrimage, or whatever it is. We can bring it up tomorrow.”
Lowry hesitated, then dropped the bag with a grunt of relief. “Thank you.”
Rena shook her head, an odd, frightened look flitting across her face as she clutched the straps of her pack. “I need to carry it.”
Callan shrugged. “Your choice.”
Rena turned away and started to walk down the lane. “Time to go.”
As Lowry moved to follow her, Callan caught his arm. “You sure about this? Just you and her stuck out there together?”
“There are some others.” Jamie suddenly remembered. “Two monks.”
“Some of them made it, then?” Lowry smiled. “There’s obviously something to be said for the religious lifestyle.”
“My point stands,” Callan said. “She’s not exactly firing on all cylinders. What if you need help?”
“This is about helping her,” Lowry said. “I just need to get her away. Somewhere quiet, away from the things that set her off.”
“Why you?” Jamie said. “What makes her your responsibility? You’ve got her here. Surely that’s enough.”
The look Lowry turned on her was heavy with something that looked like regret. “It’s not enough. And I can’t just walk away.”
“Why not?”
Lowry gave a slow, sad smile. “Because some of it’s my fault.”
“What do you mean?”
“Ask me another time,” he said, and turned to follow Rena along the lane.
It’s summer and the world is ending in a long, drawn-out fade-to-gray.
No fire, no flood. Just a slow-settling silence, drifting in on the airwaves an
d spreading across their little frontier world.
They all know what’s coming. It’s in their blood, in their bones, in the air inside their lungs. Sometimes Jamie thinks she can feel it: a flutter behind her ribs, a quick stab of pain at the base of her spine. She’s never been so aware of what lies beneath her skin. Not even when her body was stretching and reshaping itself around the baby.
She can feel the movement of blood through her veins, the soak of oxygen through the walls of her lungs. When she moves, it’s with a clear picture in her mind of the way her bones shift against one another. There are so many hiding places inside her, so many dark corners where death might lurk like a piece of grit in the gut of an oyster. But there’ll be no burgeoning pearl at the end of all this. There’ll be nothing but dust.
When she thinks of it she finds it hard to breathe, as though that dust is already inside her, coating her throat and choking her lungs. But her reaction stops at the physical. She doesn’t feel anything. It’s as though her emotions have been quarantined.
If she’d ever imagined this, she’d have imagined panic, terror, people screaming and clawing at the world around them. Instead, the cattle station is still ticking along. Jim Cranwell still comes out in the morning and runs through the list of tasks for the day. The farmhands still feed and water the herd, and Jamie still takes blood samples and checks the results.
But they don’t talk if they don’t have to, and they don’t look at one another. The syringe feels like it’s the wrong shape in her hands, and when she rests her palm against the warm flank of one of the young steers she can’t quite work out what she’s doing there, in this place, in this moment.
The world is broken. It’s cracked and splintered and numb and slow and muffled and lost. And it’s ending. Long and silent and falling and fading and there’s nothing beneath her feet and nothing around her and nothing in the sky and nothing inside her. Just some statistic she heard one of the farmhands say.
Zero point zero zero zero one.
CHAPTER
26
Jamie stood with Callan, Gracie, and Finn, and watched until Rena and Lowry were out of sight.
“Then there were four,” she said.
“You’re assuming we’re all staying,” Gracie said, turning to survey her surroundings. “I’m not sure I’m ready for early retirement by the seaside. I might go see what the fuel situation is.”
Callan looked contemplative. “The damage was pretty bad, but if we could get some fuel in, I might be able to limp it to a landing site. Get it patched up and flying again.”
“If the network’s still up, you should be able to figure out fuel dump locations,” Gracie said. “I might call on Elsie and see if she can help.”
“How would you get the fuel to the ship?”
“Transport wherry?” Gracie said. “If we can find a port, I may be able to override the codes. You want to come with me?”
The pause seemed to stretch out.
“No hurry,” Callan said, eventually. “A few days’ downtime won’t hurt.”
“Where will we sleep?” Finn asked, suddenly.
Jamie glanced up the lane. “You can stay . . .” She stopped. She didn’t know how her stepmother’s illness would progress. She pushed the thought away. She’d worry about it when it became an issue. “You can stay with me. With my stepmother.”
“You sure?” Callan said. “Lowry said she didn’t look well.”
“Yes, I’m sure. What about you?”
He picked up his pack, nodding toward the row of holiday cottages by the lime kilns. “I’ll try one of these.” He glanced at Gracie. “You want to take the place next door?”
Gracie swung her bag up onto her shoulders. “I might head straight off. No point unpacking, then packing up again.”
Callan looked at her for a few seconds. “Okay. You know where we are.”
Gracie nodded and lifted her hand to Jamie and Finn. “Take care.”
Callan watched her walk away. When she was out of sight, he gave a quick shake of his head and turned back to Jamie and Finn.
“Just like that?” Jamie said. “No good-byes, or anything.”
Callan smiled slightly. “You did get a take care.”
“But after all we’ve been through, I thought . . .”
He grinned. “Trust me. That was an outpouring of emotion as far as Gracie’s concerned. And just because we crash-landed together, it doesn’t make us all soul mates.” He started toward the cottages. “I’m going to get settled in.”
“Come on.” Jamie turned to Finn. “Let’s find somewhere for Emily.”
“Can’t he stay with us?”
“I’m not sure he’d fit through the door.”
Finn gave her a narrow-eyed look.
“Sorry.” Jamie smiled at him. “I knew what you meant. But probably not a good idea. It’s not fenced and there’s a fair drop from the garden down onto the shore. There’s a field just down the lane.”
Finn was shivering a little, his wet clothes clinging to him. But she thought he’d probably settle better if he knew the horse was safe.
The field had a ramshackle shelter and a lopsided notice saying Please don’t feed the pony. He’s getting fat! Finn walked around the edge while Jamie waited by the gate with Emily.
“Okay?” she said when he’d completed his circumnavigation.
He nodded. “Okay.”
Back at the house, they found her stepmother asleep in her chair, with the dog snoring across her feet. Jamie took Finn upstairs and helped him unpack his few belongings into the chest of drawers in the spare room. By the time they’d both changed and headed back downstairs, Jamie’s stepmother was stirring. When Jamie introduced Finn, the older woman gave him a quick, appraising look, then smiled.
“Hello, Finn.”
“Hello.”
“It feels funny,” her stepmother said. “Saying hello. It’s one of those things you never really think about. When I first got back here I found myself talking to the seagulls.” She dropped her hand down, and the dog gave it a quick hard lick. “And I had this one, of course. But no good mornings or how are yous.”
Her stepmother rubbed at her knuckle. Jamie had a quick flash of memory: that same gesture on younger hands. She’d never clocked it before. Did her stepmother have a catalog of Jamie’s own little tells and giveaways, that she’d never quite pieced together to find the truth that lay behind?
The older woman gave a quick shake of her head. “But we’re not alone anymore. We’re both here. And Finn.” She turned her gaze back on the young lad, who was taking in his surroundings in a series of quick, furtive glances. “Are you hungry?”
He shook his head.
“Why don’t you take him along the headland?” her stepmother said. “Show him the coves. I just need a few more minutes, then I’ll make us some dinner. Maybe the others would like to join us. The gentleman I met said he and another lady were going on to Lindisfarne. But he mentioned a man—the captain of the ship, I think he said. And someone else. A lady. Grace?”
“She’s gone,” Jamie said. “Back to see someone we met on the way.”
“There’s another survivor?”
“There’s several.”
Her stepmother contemplated this. “So they were wrong,” she said. “That one-in-a-million statistic was wrong.”
“I think so,” Jamie said. “In some places anyway.”
“Then the world might just go on. Beyond us, I mean.”
“Perhaps.” Jamie thought of telling her about the administration’s fears, but it seemed wrong, talking about new life to a woman who had so little left of her own.
“Go on.” Her stepmother gestured toward the door. “It’s a beautiful evening, and the tide’s almost out. Take him down to the coves.”
• • •
The lan
e ran parallel to the ocean, forging a straight line northward, ignoring the tug of the headland. Jamie kept up a running commentary, pointing out old landmarks. A rocky cove—that’s where I used to go to eat fish and chips. The little path that followed the wandering line of the headland—I used to race my sisters there. The cottage where old Mrs. Jameson lived—she made the best muffins, but you had to keep on her good side.
“What was on her bad side?”
Jamie laughed. “Just an expression.”
They wound their way down a narrow track onto a rocky shore, where great tongues of black rock protruded far out to sea.
“There.” Jamie pointed along the shoreline, toward a cluster of humpbacked rocks, sheltering a network of shallow pools. “That’s where you find most of the sea glass and pottery.”
Finn took a few steps that way, glancing back at Jamie.
“It’s okay,” she said. “We’ve got time for a bit of a hunt around.”
At first Finn went too fast, eyes everywhere. Jamie kept having to call him back. She was moving in baby steps, nudging at mounds of pebbles, watching for the telltale glint of glass. Within a matter of minutes she had a fistful of fragments. The pieces were mostly clear, but there were a couple of tiny nubs of deep blue, and three pieces of china in faded rose pink and off-white.
Finn kept glancing at her, his face twisting with frustration, but he gradually found a slower tempo, falling in beside her. When he caught sight of his first piece of glass, he stopped dead, his gaze fixed on the little fragment.
“That’s a good piece.” Jamie bent down to pick it up. When she held it out, Finn took it reverently, cupping it in his palm. “Nice and smooth.”
After about half an hour, they stopped and spread the fragments out on the surface of a flat rock. Finn pushed the pieces around, his expression intent, but not as frustrated as when she’d first shown him the sea glass, back on the ship. He had a look of someone who was working something through.
“They’ll never go back together,” he said.
“No.”
“But you like them.”