by Mark Morris
Sheer force of will, but I didn’t want to think about that.
I snatched for Rowan’s hand and Josh’s too, where they stood mesmerised and struggling to stand in the blast. I tugged each, and they each came with me grimly, step by step. It was a hard slog just to reach the side-gate, even with the impetus of what was following, that brute blunt fear to drive us on.
The gate still stood open. The wind was slamming it back against its hinges, slam and slam again; something in me wanted to stop and pull it shut, give it a chance of surviving the night.
But nothing here would survive the flood when it hit, and I had no free hand in any case. My true interest lay in their survival, the two youngsters who clung and hauled alongside me as we made a difficult panicked passage over the rocks of the beach with tidewater swirling about our feet, and behind us the dreadful sounds of destruction as the flood took my gateway, my truck, and my workshop in strict order.
A sudden wave took us from behind, soaking us waist-high and floating Rowan off her feet for a moment. After that she clung closer. I ploughed on doggedly, letting Josh foray forwards while I trod more or less in his footsteps, making myself the anchor of our trio. That wave must have been the flood’s last gasp. But we still had wind and tide to face, not out of the water yet.
And something more.
* * *
“Single file,” I yelled above the wind’s howl as we reached the foot of the cliff path, “hand in hand, slow and careful. Keep tight against the rock. Josh, you first.” I was in the middle, keeping a grip on them both. The path might give way before us or behind us, or underneath all three; but if we went, we would all three go together.
Mostly I kept my eyes on my own feet, for what little good that did, and my back flat against the cliff to give the wind least possible purchase. Rowan copied me with care; but Josh was leading, looking ahead, inclined to step out to see better. Each time, the movement of his feet snagged the corner of my eye, pulling my head up in anxiety, having me tug at his hand to draw him back into the rock wall’s mockery of safety.
Maybe he was getting confident, thinking the worst was behind us; maybe he could see the end of the path, the top of the cliff. At the last he didn’t let me do that; this time he tugged back teasingly, tried to draw me forward into his body’s better shelter.
I was distracted, not ready, taken aback. Just for a moment I went with him, took a step too far, lost my place as the body-bridge between him and Rowan.
I broke my grip on her hand. She was too far behind; she couldn’t stretch that far. I felt her fingers slip between mine and away.
I flailed blindly to recapture them, before my head could whip around to see; and I felt a strong hand close with mine again.
Strong and wet and bitter chill, compounded of salt and wind and water, and so very very much not Rowan’s hand.
Familiar none the less. Not Rowan, and not supposed to be here. Anywhere.
We always want to hold on to everything. We don’t even let our dead go.
Sometimes, the dead don’t let us.
Now I looked.
I couldn’t see Rowan at all, through the dark and the wind and the figure that stood between us. Broad-chested, raw-boned, standing four-square on the path; known, integral, unmistakable. Dead. Holding my hand.
I took a second; I needed that one second just to stand there, to be back, to be sheltered and watched over and held.
Then I plunged: straight through whatever there was of him contained within that shaping, the sea spray and the wind and all, a great stillness made of movement as we all are, as all things are.
I hurled myself recklessly and blindly through, to reach Rowan.
Doing that, I had to let go of Josh.
Every story is about betrayal, in the end. We lucky ones, we’re allowed to choose who we betray.
If the briefest breathless moment can truly be forever, then I honestly never thought I’d find her. I thought she’d be gone: over the edge, or the path collapsed beneath her, or just not there, not anywhere.
But I hurtled into her very physical self, and for a moment we clung, almost going over; and then we scrambled to some awkward mutual desperate balance, and if that was some kind of Sophie’s choice, apparently I’d made it.
Made it and couldn’t conceivably regret it, when she was right there wrapped around me, damp and chill and trembling; and even so already it rived me, that I had let Josh slip. I gazed yearningly back over her head, thinking that Bruce must have taken what I had abandoned, sure that I would never see the boy again—and suddenly there he was, plunging out of a darkness deeper than the night, just as I had.
Again we teetered, and again we didn’t fall. Now I had them both within the circle of my arms, and Bruce had lost his advantage. Whatever choice I’d made, there were others free and able to make choices too.
“All together or not at all,” I said, and this time I set Rowan before me, with my hands on her shoulders as they used to be, as they always should be. Josh took his cue from me, without being told or asked: he set young strong fingers on my shoulders, stood close enough behind me that I could feel his breath on my neck, even in that wind; was young enough to brush a kiss against my nape, even in that danger.
I nudged Rowan forward, and that’s how we climbed the last of the path: caterpillar-style, stepping all together and gripping tight. I suppose I was still making the same choice, Rowan the one I gave my strength to, trusting Josh to hold to me; but now it didn’t feel like betrayal. Recognition, rather. Something new between us, a shift of state, that I lay within his compass as much as he in mine.
Up and up, step by step; and here we were at the top and the wind was almost helpful now, blowing inland, pushing us to greater safety, away from the cliff edge. It was hard even now to believe that I had lost neither one on the path below, when I’d thought to lose them both. And now I could fling an arm around each and march them forward, laughing almost in the teeth of the night. Bruce had had his chance, I thought, and missed his mark, and—
* * *
Of course that’s when he came again, in that moment of stupid confidence, when we thought the worst behind us. He’d always had a knack for catching me off-guard, keeping me off-balance, so that I’d forever be falling into him, needing him to catch me once again.
Again he was a storm shadow, woven from dark and wind and water. He shaped himself out of nowhere, and stood before us, undeniable as death—and then he walked away, across the ninety-acre, as though he were a guide in the night.
Towards the sheepfold, where of course we were headed anyway: somewhere to pause, to catch our breath, to huddle in an angle of the walls and let the wind batter itself against stone while we wrapped our heads around what we had just survived.
He led us and we followed, because what else could we do, where else go? There was no path to better safety, no path at all. If we had him in sight, at least we knew where he stood.
Besides, the wind hustled us neatly at his heels. I leaned back against it, tried to drag my feet, to act as a brake for all three of us. Even so, I could barely keep us from catching him up. We dogged him, and he led us exactly where we had all meant to be. Every step felt inevitable, preordained, irresistible.
The sheepfold had a gateway, though no gate. He brought us there and paused, and turned—I want to say to face us, although the weather mask he wore offered no suggestion of a face.
We came to a halt, all three of us together. Even the wind seemed to pause for that breathless confrontation, until he moved again. Reshaped himself. Made a frame around the gateway, like an open invitation: come on in.
Like a lychgate, a threat as much as a promise.
Not wide enough for three of us abreast, however close we huddled. He wanted to force me into choice again, and this time there would be no reprieve. Whoever I left outside, he would take. And he had tested me once already, and he knew—we all knew—which way that decision fell.
Maybe he wante
d a new apprentice.
Not this time.
I could feel Josh stiffening at my side, seeing what I saw, leaping to the same conclusions. Waiting to feel me pull away.
Not this time.
This time, I made a different choice.
I stepped away from both of them at once, one brisk pace back. I took a wrist of each, before they could protest it, and locked their two hands together; then I gripped them by the neck, one in each hand, and propelled them forwards.
The young cling by instinct. If either of them knew what I was doing, if they understood, they had no time to overcome that instinct and unlatch. I pushed them by main force through the opening in the fold’s wall, through the gate mouth Bruce had made.
He didn’t touch them; I don’t believe he could. The fold was home, safe ground, always had been. Even the wind couldn’t reach them, I thought, in there.
I was alone out here, my choice made, and I didn’t even try to follow them in.
Instead—well. Hand in hand and two by two, that’s the way we chose to go.
I reached out my hand to touch the nebulous near column of that strange shimmering gateway, and felt my hand seized again by the same strong frigid fingers as before. There he was again in almost-human form, his own size, his own shape.
If he had all the powers of wind and water, he chose not to use them. Perhaps bonding himself into an almost-body, as near as he could come, gave him only that body’s strength. The memory of mortality with all its limits implied.
At any rate, I could pit my own body’s strength against his and not make a mockery of myself. I could tug him, indeed, against the wind’s shove, back towards the cliff edge and the path. It may be that he was willing to be tugged. Denied what he’d expected, the cruel choice, one child or the other, he might be bewildered now; he might be intrigued. If he was capable of either, or capable of anything but malice. I couldn’t tell: was he a ghost; was he himself remade with all his old attributes and antagonisms; was he only a memory or a lingering aspect somehow cut off from death and left behind?
It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except this moment, this determination: to take him away from the kids, away from the world if I could.
Young or otherwise, the human instinct is to cling. We always want to hold on. We don’t even let our dead go.
I was gambling, I suppose, that I could hold on to him now, and take him with me one last time. That he wouldn’t have the strength or else the will to leave me.
I was almost running now. And hauling him along, and if he thought anything at all—if he was capable of thinking— he must have thought I was headed for the path and trusting him to keep me safe in a foolish, hectic descent.
Not I. I ran him clean off the edge of the cliff.
* * *
That was all I had. My way to save the kids, if it could work; to keep him bound to me and end myself. I had no time for regrets, for second thoughts, for fond farewells. Just straight to the edge and over.
Hurling both of us into that wind, almost rising before we could start to fall; hoping he would, what, disintegrate perhaps? Lose coherence and fray away into the air that he was made from? I’d had no time for analysis either, or I might have thought myself foolish, hopeless, illogical. Lost.
I thought I was lost anyway. Dead myself and not reckoning to come back, malevolently or otherwise.
I leapt, almost flew, almost fell—and didn’t, quite.
He had always had the saving of me in his hands. Always been the saving of me, always made that choice.
Now, one more time—who knows why?—he did that again.
I had thought myself so grown-up in my pride, in my strength, mature and responsible and knowing. Now suddenly I was a child again, while a grown-up swung me by one arm.
That grip I had, I’d thought I had; turned out to be his grip after all, his on me, as ever. He swung me high and hurled me, back to the land again.
I hit the ground hard, and couldn’t breathe for a while. I couldn’t see for a while after that, because of the wind and the night. The wind died, though, in time. Then I could stand, and see that there was nothing to see, walk to the fold, and find Josh and Rowan still huddling there.
* * *
Did he linger, did he depart, did he dissipate? I had no way of knowing; only that he was not there.
Nor was the yard there, when I went down, when I could. Nor the bulk of the workshop. The roof and doors were gone; some walls survived, but none worth keeping. There was nothing in me, no will to build again. It had been his, and barely mine before he took it back; and the village was in ruin, and my life there.
Besides, I had insurance. His insurance, transferred to my name just before he died; he always had been careful with everything that was his, including me. That money bought me a yacht; none so fine as those we used to build, but good enough. Blue water worthy.
The cottage I gifted to Rowan, if she should decide to want it. If not, to Josh; if not him, then to the distress fund for the village, all my friends and neighbours.
From the cottage, I took nothing but Bruce’s ashes; from the wreckage of the yard, nothing but the wreck of Josh’s copper origami, The Boat of Going Nowhere. Crushed and mangled as it was, no kind of seaworthy, I would take it out, far and far, and pour the ashes into its deepest crevice, give them to the ocean, watch it drink them down.
And then—well, not come back. Not yet, not now. Let the winds have me for a while; winds and blue water.
DEPARTURES
by A. K. Benedict
She has no idea where she is but, judging from the lager farts rising from the fabric under her forehead, she’d say she was face down on a pub banquette. Someone must’ve called her out last night for a quick one and the quick one turned, as they do, into a lengthy ten. Maybe she lucked out at a lock-in. Maybe she was held, if only for a moment.
She sits up slowly and opens her eyes. The world lurches. Yup—she’s in the corner of a pub, an empty bottle of gin on the table in front of her. Her head, though, doesn’t feel like a piñata under attack. And there’s no burst of guilt, shame or screaming nerve endings. If she’s lucky, her eyeliner is still in place and not smeared across her, or someone else’s, face.
Something’s wrong, though. She knows that as surely as her name. Something is off-kilter, like the illusion of a straw kinked in a cocktail glass. She doesn’t know what. She can’t even be sure if she’s been in here before. The generic pubness—Christmas tree slouched in the corner; decorations that look like they’ve seen better days but probably haven’t; punters muttering; barmen buffing; smoke filling the room, confirming both a lock-in and a landlord with a lax relationship with the law—means it could be any number of bars in Dublin.
Two men turn from the bar. The nearest, a scowl of a man in a barrel of a body, looks her up and down, then sneers. She sinks back into the seat. The other man is tall and gaunt with a very long neck. He moves slowly towards her, like an ambulant nebuchadnezzar of champagne.
“You’re a weak man, Henrik. Can’t you mind your own fucking business for once?” the sneering man says.
“Leave it, Carny,” Henrik says. He has difficulty walking, as if he’s moving one frame at a time. “You’re awake, then,” he says when he reaches her. He sits down. “Don’t mind Carny. He’s always been at war with the world.” He grins, making his face look like a crumpled hankie. “You’ll be feeling pretty rough, I should think.”
“Could be worse. You were here last night, then?” she asks.
“I’m always here.”
“You’re the landlord? Tell me if I’ve broken anything, will you? You know, tables, chairs, laws, hearts? I’ve no idea how I got here.”
“No one does.” He crosses his legs infuriatingly slowly, like a skeletal Sharon Stone in slo-mo.
The coffee machine fumes behind the bar. “I need coffee,” she says. At some point, memories are going to surface and she needs to be in a fit state to apologise/call the police/
run.
“It won’t do you any good, I’m afraid,” he says. “You know that, deep down.” His hand moves haltingly across the table to hers.
She tries to yank her hand away but it’s stuck in place. This is one weird hangover. “Do I know you?” she asks. She attempts to cross her fingers, hoping that they hadn’t crossed a line last night. Her forefinger twitches but otherwise won’t budge. And she has never been this cold. This is more than too many shots of Jägermeister.
“No, but I hope we’ll be friends. I’m Henrik. I’m the welcoming committee.”
“Isn’t there usually more than one person in a committee?”
“Our numbers have dwindled lately. Maybe you’d like to come on board?”
“I’m not much of a joiner.”
He looks at her, head on one side. “You really don’t remember what happened, love?”
“Could you just tell me what I’ve done, who I’ve offended and what the fuck I drank last night and then I can go home or have my stomach pumped?” She’s no one’s love.
“Do you know where your home is?” he asks.
“I wasn’t that drunk, thanks. Soon as I know where I am, then I can make my way back. I can’t be that far out.”
“You’re at the airport. The pub in Departures.”
Okay, maybe she can be that far out. “Then I’ll get a cab.”
“I’ll call them from the bar. What’s your address?” he asks.
“It’s…” But the words don’t come.
“Which side of the river?”
She should know this. She knows she knows this but she can’t even picture her front room.
“And who shall I say the taxi’s for, miss?”
Again, she opens her mouth to tell him but the word that represents her has gone. She can’t find her first name, or her second. She doesn’t even know if she has a middle name or what her job is, or if she has one. It’s like searching for something in her handbag that she’s sure is there but there are only old mints, ticket stubs to a film she doesn’t remember and Tippex. And now someone’s tipping the Tippex over everything she knows. Even facts and trivia are whiting out. She doesn’t even know which Monkee’s mum invented Tippex. Or was it Post-its? At least she knows that she doesn’t have a partner. That one she knows deep inside her, where the yearning lurks.
