The Bone Clocks (86 page)

“So that ship in the bay
is
a lifeboat to civilization?”

“Metaphorically, yes.”

“Commander Aronsson said only Lorelei can go?”

“Technically, yes.”

“Could you turn that one space to two spaces? Using your … y’know …” I do a spell-casting gesture with my hands.

Marinus resembles a lawyer whose line of questioning is proceeding as planned. “Well, now. I’d need to enforce a powerful Act of Suasion on the commander and the lieutenant outside, as they wait; then, as the launch approached the
Sjálfstæði
, I’d need to transverse to the captain and the first mate and enforce the same act upon them, to ensure poor Rafiq wasn’t returned to shore immediately.
Then
, during the voyage north, I’d have to renew the Act of Suasion continuously until we were past the point of no return, when all the protagonists would be wondering what had got into them. I won’t lie: It would be a tall, tall order. Only a truly adept follower of the Deep Stream could pull off a trick like that …”

I feel mild annoyance, gratitude, and hope. “You can do it, then?”

Marinus puts down the fiddle. “Yes, but only for Lorelei and Rafiq. Many of the
Sjálfstæði
’s crew members have children of their own, so they’ll be unconsciously sympathetic, and much easier to keep suasioned. Perhaps Xi Lo or Esther Little could have squeezed you and the professor aboard, but I know my limits, Holly. If I tried it would all come tumbling down. I’m sorry.”

“Doesn’t matter. In Reykjavik, can Lol and Raf stay together?”

“We’ll find a way.” Marinus’s young eyes are big, gray, and as truthful as Iris Fenby’s. “They can stay with me. We’re housed in the old French consulate. It’s roomy.” He tells Lorelei and Rafiq, “Don’t panic. I’m a more experienced guardian than I look.”

The clock ticks. We have only twenty-five minutes now.

“I don’t quite understand, Holly,” says Raf.

“One moment, love. Lol, if you go, Raf can go with you, up to the land of insulin. If you don’t go, sooner or later there’ll be a medical emergency and … nothing to treat him with. Please. Go.”

Upstairs a door bangs shut. The evening sunlight’s a mandarin color. Lorelei’s on the edge of tears, and if she starts, there’ll be no stopping me. “Who’d look after
you
?”

“
I’ll
look after her!” Mo acts grumpy to stop Lorelei crumpling.

“And the O’Dalys,” I tell her, “the Walshes and the all-new, fortified
Sheep’s Head Republic. I’ll get myself elected Minister for Seaweed, so they’ll give me a guard of honor.” Lorelei’s face is unbearable so I look away at the smiling, fading dead, watching me from the mantelpiece from safer worlds, from beyond wooden, plastic, and mother-of-pearl frames. I stand, and press both kids’ heads against my old, aching sides and kiss the tops of their heads. “I promised your mum and dad, Lol, that I’d look after you, and I promised you the same, Raf. Getting you two on that boat, that’s keeping my promise.
Nothing
will give me more peace or—or,” I swallow, “joy, than knowing you two are safe from all of—all of,” I sweep my hand in the direction of the town, “oh, what happened today. What’s to come.
Please
. My two treasures. Give me this. If you—” No.
If you love me
sounds like blackmail. “Be
cause
you love me,” my throat’s so tight I can hardly say the word, “go.”

O
UR LAST MINUTES
together were rushed and blurred. Lorelei and Rafiq hurried upstairs to pack for the two-day voyage. Marinus said they’d go shopping in Reykjavik for warmer clothes, as if shops are the most natural thing in the world. I still dream of shops: Harrods in London, Brown Thomas in Cork, even the big Supervalu in Clonakilty. While the kids were still upstairs, Marinus sat in Eilísh’s chair, shut his eyes, and Harry Veracruz’s body and face went still and vacant, while my psychosoteric friend’s soul went outside to implant a strong, false, urgent memory in the minds of the two officers. Mo watched, fascinated, muttering only that I’d have a lot of explaining to do later. Moments later, Marinus’s soul was back in Harry Veracruz’s skull and the two Icelandic officers appeared, saying that the captain had just that minute told them the president was extending his offer of asylum to Lorelei Örvarsdottir’s foster brother, Rafiq Bayati. Both appeared just a trifle dazed as they spoke, like drunk people trying their best to act sober. Harry Veracruz thanked Commander Aronsson and confirmed that both youngsters would be taking up the president’s offer—and would he kindly have the sea chest sent up from the launch at the pier? The
officers went and Mo said that she could think of three laws of physics that Marinus had apparently broken but, given time, she was confident of coming up with a few more.

Soon after, two marines arrived with a carbon-fiber trunk. Marinus unpacked it in my kitchen, taking out ten large sealed containers, each with eighty vacuum-packed tubes of powder inside. “Concentrated field rations,” Marinus said. “Each tube has fifteen hundred calories, plus nutrients and vitamins. Mix with water for supergoo. I’m afraid the only flavor the depot had in stock was Hawaiian pizza, but if you can ignore the pineapple and cheese, they’ll last the two of you nearly three years. Better yet …” He took out a pack of four sheathed tabs and handed me one, explaining they were ethered to one another, so they wouldn’t need the Net to thread a connection. “One for you, me, Lorelei, and Rafiq. Not the same as having them in your kitchen, of course, but this way they’re not gone from your life once we round the headland. They’re powered bioelectrically just by holding them, too, so they’ll function without solar panels.”

Rafiq’s head appeared between the banisters. “ ’Scuse me, Mr. Marinus? Do you have toothbrushes in Iceland?”

“A lifetime’s supply. Dentists, too. And it’s just ‘Marinus.’ ”

“Cool. Okay. Holly, what’s a dentist again?”

T
HE BLUR
’
S OVER
. We’re on the pier as dusk dims the Dunmanus Bay, Lorelei, Rafiq, Marinus, six Icelanders, Zimbra, and me, and it’s actually happening. We had to leave Mo up at my gate ’cause the path down’s too crumbled away for her ankle. Her brave face and the kids’ gasps and tears have given me a taster of my own very near future. “Wrap up well,” Mo had told them. “And wave at Dooneen Cottage as the ship leaves the bay. I’ll be waving back.”

The patrol vessel’s half hidden against the darkening mass of Mizen Head. Only a few spots of light mark its position. On any other evening there’d be skiffs and dinghies taking a closer look at the incredible steel visitor, but today people’re still too occupied
with, and too traumatized by, the aftermath of the violence in Kilcrannog, so the Icelandic vessel sits there undisturbed.

Marinus’s sea chest is being loaded back onto the launch moored to the concrete pier. It now contains the kids’ clothes as well as the
Eagle of the Ninth
books, Lorelei’s box shrine, her fiddle, and Rafiq’s box of fishing floats and hooks—Marinus assured him the salmon fishing in Iceland is world-class. Rafiq’s key to Dooneen Cottage is still around his neck, by accident or design I don’t know, but it’s his. He picked up two white pebbles from the strip of beach by the pier, I noticed, and put them in his saggy coat pocket. Then the three of us hug, and if I could choose one moment of my life to sit inside of for the rest of eternity, like Esther Little did for all those decades, it’d be now, no question. Aoife’s in here too, inside Lorelei, as is Ed, as is Zimbra, with his cold nose and excited whine. He knows something’s up. “Thanks for everything, Gran,” says Lorelei.

“Yeah,” says Rafiq. “Thanks.”

“It was my honor,” I tell them.

We separate, at last. “Take care of them,” I tell Marinus.

That’s why I came
, he subreplies, and says, “Of course.”

“Say bye from me to Izzy and the O’Dalys and … everyone,” says Lorelei, her eyes streaming, not with the cold.

“And from me too,” says Rafiq, “and tell Mr. Murnane sorry I didn’t get my fractions homework done.”

“Tell them yourselves,” says Marinus. “Via the tab.”

I can’t say “Goodbye” because that word’s too painfully final, but I can’t just say “See you then” because when will I ever see these precious people, really, in the flesh? Never again: That’s when. So I just do my best to smile as if my heart isn’t being wrung out like an old dishcloth and watch as Lorelei and Rafiq are helped aboard the launch by Lieutenant Eriksdottir, followed by the youthful ancient Marinus. “We’ll thread you once we’re safe ashore at Reykjavik,” he calls up to me from the boat. “It should be the day after tomorrow.” I call back, “That’s great, do that.” My voice is thin and stretched, like a violin string wound too tight. Rafiq and Lorelei
look up from the deck, not sure what to say. Marinus subwishes me,
Good luck, Holly Sykes
, and I sense that somehow he knows about my resurgent cancer, and my huckleberries in their childproof canisters, stowed safely for if and when. So I just nod back at Harry Marinus Veracruz, no longer trusting my voice. A tall marine unmoors the boat and hunkers down in the prow. Owls in the Knockroe pines hoot. The outboard motor is ripped into life. The noise jolts Lorelei rigid and alert and she’s scared now, and I am too. This is the moment of no turning back. The launch pulls away from the pier in a tight curve. Lorelei’s hair streams across her face. Did she remember her woolly hat? Too late now. Above Knocknamadree Mountain on Mizen Head swim a pair of blurry overlapping moons. I wipe my eyes on the cuff of my ratty old fleece and the two captive planets become one again. Pale gold and badly scratched. I shiver. We’re in for a cold night. Now the launch is skimming off at full speed over the dark and choppy water, and Rafiq’s waving and Lorelei’s waving and I’m waving back until I can’t make out the figures in the noisy blue murk anymore, and the white wake from the outboard engine is widening behind the launch … But not for long. Incoming waves erase all traces of the vanishing boat, and I’m feeling erased myself, fading away into an invisible woman. For one voyage to begin, another voyage must come to an end, sort of.

Michel van der Aa, Lisa Babalis, Tom Barbash, Nikki Barrow, Avideh Bashirrad, Manuel Berri, Dominika Bojanowska, John Boyne, Adam Brophy, Ken Buhler, Amber Burlinson, Evan Camfield, Gina Centrello, Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s
Imperial Life in the Emerald City
, Noah Chasin, Kate Childs, Rachel Clements, Patrick Cockburn and his book
The Occupation
, Toby Cox, Louise Dennys, Walter Donohue, Margaret Drabble, Susan Fletcher, Dominique Fortier, Kirsten Foster, Daniel Galera, Tally Garner, Claire Gatzen, Sam Greenwood, Dominic Gribben, Sophie Harris, Aleksandar Hemon, Kazuo Ishiguro, Susan Kamil, Trish Kerr of Kerr’s Bookshop Clonakilty, Jessica Killingley, Martin Kingston (founder of Kilcrannog), Katie Kitamura (sorry I woke Ryu), Hari Kunzru, Seth Marko, Nick Marston, Sally Marvin, Meriç Mekik the Treasure Hunter, Mrs. MacIntosh, Katie McGowan, Caitlin McKenna, Jan Montefiore, Ray Murnane, Neal Murren, Lawrence Norfolk and family, Alasdair Oliver, Hazel Orme, David Peace, Thomas E. Ricks’s
Fiasco
, Wendell Steavenson’s
The Weight of a Mustard Seed
, Juan Gabriel Vásquez, Lana Wachowski, Bing West’s
No True Glory
, Camilla Young. Apologies to anyone I’ve overlooked—it’s my memory, not ingratitude.

Thanks to Kathleen Holland Designs for crafting Jacko’s labyrinth.

Singled-out thanks to David Ebershoff, Jonny Geller, Doug Stewart, and Carole Welch.

Final thanks to my family.

D
AVID
M
ITCHELL
is the award-winning and bestselling author of
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, Black Swan Green, Cloud Atlas, Number9Dream
, and
Ghostwritten
. Twice shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, Mitchell was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by
Time
magazine in 2007. With KA Yoshida, Mitchell translated from the Japanese the internationally bestselling memoir
The Reason I Jump
. He lives in Ireland with his wife and two children.

davidmitchellbooks.com

Facebook.com/DavidMitchellBooks