“He doesn’t have family?” I ask, even though I know otherwise.
Samuel sighs mournfully and takes a huge mouthful of his drink. “He does, he does. Very sad tale, though. He’s lost his kids. Been trying to earn enough money to give up this life and get them back.”
“What do you mean? He’s lost custody of them?”
Samuel nods.
I sit back in my armchair and watch the flames crackle and spit.
I’m startled by the low rumble of a voice, and realize that Samuel has begun to sing a forlorn ballad about life at sea. Jesus, I’ve really tipped the poor guy over the edge. I try not to laugh as I realize half the pub is staring. With a signal to Ennis, I struggle to drag the big man to his feet.
“I think it’s time for bed, Samuel. Can you stand?”
Samuel’s voice grows louder, operatic in its intensity.
Ennis arrives to help me with the old man’s considerable weight. I remember to grab my backpack, and then we support Samuel, still wailing, out of the bar.
Outside I can’t help it. I start laughing.
A few moments later I hear Ennis’s soft chuckle join mine.
“Where are you moored?” I ask.
“I can take him from here, love.”
“Happy to help,” I say, and he nods.
It’s not yet dawn, but the light is disorienting. Gray and blue, with a pale sun hanging on the horizon.
We walk along the fjord to the village port. The sea opens up before us, dissolving into the distance. A gull squawks and caterwauls above; they’re rare enough now that I watch it for long moments until it disappears from view.
“That’s her,” Ennis tells me, and I see it. A sleek fishing vessel, maybe thirty meters long, its hull painted black and scrawled with the word Saghani.
I knew it the second I read the name. That this was the boat meant for me. Raven.
We help Samuel stumble on board and guide him below deck. The corridors are narrow, and we have to duck to get through the doorways into Samuel’s cabin. Small and sparse, with a bed on either side. He wavers and then crashes like a lopped tree onto his mattress. I wrestle with his shoes while Ennis goes to get him a glass of water. By the time it’s next to his bed Samuel is already snoring.
Ennis and I glance at each other.
“I’ll leave you to it,” I say softly. He leads me back up onto the main deck. The smell of the ocean fills me as always and I stop, unable to walk away.
“You all right, love?” he asks.
I take a deep breath of salt and seaweed and I think of the distance between here and there, I think of their flight and mine, and I see in the captain something different, something I couldn’t recognize in him before I knew about the children.
I reach into my pack for the map and go to sit by the railing. Ennis follows me and I spread the map between us.
With an invisible dawn approaching I quietly show him how the birds have always set out on separate paths, and where they come back together, each of them following a different route to the fish but always winding up in the same places, always knowing exactly where to meet.
“The spots are a little different each year,” I say. “But I know what I’m doing. I have the tech. I can take you to them. I promise.”
Ennis scrutinizes the map, and the lines carving their paths through the Atlantic.
Then I say, “I know how important this is to you. Your children are at stake. So we go for one last haul.”
He looks up. I can’t tell what color his eyes are in the light. He seems very tired.
“You’re drowning, Ennis.”
We sit for a while in silence, but for the gentle lapping of the waves against the hull. Somewhere distant the gull cries out.
“You’re true to your word?” Ennis asks.
I nod once.
He stands and walks below deck, not bothering to pause as he says, “We depart in two hours.”
I fold up the map with shaking fingers. A wave of such deep relief hits me that I could almost throw up. My footsteps sound softly on the wooden plank. When I reach land I turn to look back at the boat and its scrawled name.
Mam used to tell me to look for the clues.
“The clues to what?” I asked the first time.
“To life. They’re hidden everywhere.”
I’ve been looking for them ever since, and they have led me here, to the boat I will spend the rest of my life aboard. Because one way or another, when I reach Antarctica and my migration is finished, I have decided to die.
GARDA STATION, GALWAY FOUR YEARS AGO
The floor is cheap linoleum, and very cold. I lost my shoes somewhere, before walking three miles through the snow carrying a bag of football uniforms. I can’t remember how I lost them. I told the police, and they put me in this room to wait, and they have not returned to tell me.
But I know.
I pass the minutes and then hours by reciting passages of Tóibín in my head, remembering them as well as I can and trying to find comfort in his story of a woman who loved the sea, only it becomes too hard to try for prose, so I reach instead for poetry, for Mary Oliver and her wild geese and her animal bodies loving what they love, and even that is difficult. The effort of compartmentalizing is a steady scraping away at my mind. The long snaking curl of an orange being peeled in one skillful piece: that is my brain. What about Byron, the heart will break—no, maybe Shelley, what are all these kissings worth—no, Poe, then, I lie down by the side of my darling, my darling—
The door opens and saves me from myself. I am trembling all over and there is a puddle of vomit beside my chair that I don’t remember supplying. The detective is a little older than I am, impeccably groomed, her blond hair tied into a neat twist, charcoal suit cut to fit all the right lines of her and shoes that make that clop clop sound that always reminds me of a horse. I notice these details with strange precision. She sees the mess and manages not to grimace as she sends for someone to deal with it, and then she sits opposite me.
“I’m Detective Lara Roberts. And you’re Franny Stone.”
I swallow. “Franny Lynch.”
“Of course, sorry. Franny Lynch. I remember you from school. You were a couple of years below me. Always in and out, never staying put. Until you moved away for good. Back to Australia, wasn’t it?”
I stare at her numbly.
A man arrives with a mop and bucket and we wait while he painstakingly cleans the vomit. He leaves with his tools and then returns a couple of minutes later with a cup of hot tea for me. I grip it with my frozen hands but don’t drink—I think it might make me throw up again.
When Detective Roberts still won’t speak, I clear my throat. “So?”
I see it then: the horror she has been working to hide from me. It slides over her eyes like a veil.
“They’re dead, Franny.”
But I already know that.
3
The Saghani, NORTH ATLANTIC SEA MIGRATION SEASON
My hands have started bleeding to the touch. I spend six hours of each day tying ropes in knots. I am to do this until I can tie all ten of the most common sailing knots blindfolded or in my sleep. I have to know each one intimately, and I have to know which knot is used for which task. I was sure I knew all of this days ago, but Anik has made me continue tying anyway. The blisters formed first, and then they burst and the blood came free, and each night they begin to scab over, just a little, and each morning the scabs are worked off and they bleed again. I am leaving a smear of myself on everything I touch.