The Annual Migration of Clouds

by Premee Mohamed

  “We’ll cover your share. And we’ll talk to the others. How dare you come over here and make me say that, to your face. What do you take us for?” She is indignant, looming; I can’t tell if she’s joking. Maliah watches us with wide eyes, her gaze flickering between us like mirrortalk. “No? You really wanted to ask?”

  “I was trying to work my way up to it, but you didn’t let me!”

  “And I won’t. Your mother didn’t teach you a lick of manners, and neither, apparently —” she sighs “— did we. Listen. We are neighbours. We are family. We’ll look after her if you go. Isn’t that right, Mala?”

  “Of course.”

  “Even if she . . . if her Cad . . .”

  “How dare you. Get back next door and stop shirking. Go talk to your mother. Tell her we’re here, and it’ll work out. We’ll make it work. And here.” She glances rapidly around the room, even though I know she knows every single piece of art in the place by name, date, and artist and could find any painting she liked with her eyes shut. Flick: and one is gone from its clip, too fast for me to see. “You take that with you when you go. For luck.”

  “Thanks, Yash.”

  “Thanks, nothing. We’ll see you again.”

  “You’ll probably see me later today.”

  “God forbid. You’re poison even in small doses. Rabat, my ass.”

  I stand in the hallway for a moment between our two offices, feeling lighter on my feet, more awake, letting hope creep back into my blood. What’s the painting? One of Yash’s own: a magpie, dark and neat and clean, perched on a branch over a creamy swath of clouds. I’ll have to find a way to pack it flat. She didn’t need to give me that. I suppose she’ll just paint a new one if she misses it, and its absence will help her miss me less, knowing that we are together. That’s how it works. They never had kids. I wonder if they wanted them.

  I stash it with my letter and tracker, and murmur vague threats to the ants, and sit down with Mom to spin for a bit.

  “I talked to Yash and Mal.”

  “Mm?”

  “They said they’ll cover for me if I go. And help with the spinning. I mean, until I get back. Because I know that was what you were worrying about.”

  Mom’s hands don’t falter, her face doesn’t change, but the temperature in the room drops ten degrees. “Reid, sometimes I . . . really don’t know what to do with you.”

  “What?”

  “I can’t believe you were . . . I can’t believe you were so inconsiderate. That you went to two old women to guilt them into doing your work for you, while you scheme to abandon them, and us, for God only knows what.”

  Her voice is a hiss. My stomach churns, flipflops, has a colour: green-yellow and thick, like the slop on the river.

  “God knows what,” I repeat.

  “Well, we’ve never had any proof that it really exists. Have we? Or any of the domes. Any of them. Now Howse alone has been sending requests for applications for just a few years. And yet, they claim to be a real university. Now people can make all sorts of claims. It could be a scam. It could be something terrible, run by dishonest people.”

  “Yes, but —”

  “Whoever heard of anyone being ‘accepted,’ anyway? I haven’t.”

  “People have been accepted,” I say over my ringing ears. “Not here. But in Calgary. They sent word up. Two people.”

  “Years ago. Did they ever come back? Did they send word that they were all right? There’s still . . . there’s still a lot of people out there who might have motivations that . . . well.”

  “Mom.”

  “I’m just saying —”

  “Mom.”

  “— that it’s quite a coincidence, isn’t it, that they sent this letter to a young woman?”

  We both fall silent. Because well, yes, a few years ago a group of people travelled up the Two from Red Deer and started what they called a “mission” in one of the churches across the river . . .

  She shakes her head. “I didn’t think you were like this. So gullible. You were always so responsible. Working to help the community thrive and be safe. And it wasn’t like we made so many demands on you, specifically. Was it?”

  “Mom —”

  “But everyone has their duties. And you’re handing yours off to a pair of — of ninety-year-olds. Don’t you think they’ve got enough on their plate? Hmm? Or were you thinking about that before you went over and coerced them into covering for you? How could they say no?”

  It’s not river-slop that curdles in my gut; it’s tears. Of course it is. Haven’t cried for a while. Forgot what it was like. I want to stand up, yell, defend myself, defend my dream, my stupid dream that’s just a couple of hours old, no older than the day itself, that she says is a fraud, a scam, a scheme, but I can’t come up with anything, because she’s right. I had sought out only familiar faces, never thinking of my burden adding to theirs.

  You thoughtless, selfish little shit, I tell myself, and the words are swallowed as easily as chips of ice, melting as they go down. The way of all true things.

  “I’ll sort it out later,” Mom says quietly. I wish she had yelled. “Reid, honestly. I thought we were past the age where I had to clean up your messes.”

  I swallow past the lump and watch my hands, the familiar motions. She says, “Don’t apologize. You just want to make the world a better place. That’s what they’re preying on, those letter people. Don’t be ashamed of that.”

  Around two, she bundles our finished skeins so I can take them down to the store. Something hard and heavy still sits where the lump of tears was, and I have to drag myself down the flights and flights and flights, out the side door, south, west. Steering well clear of quad still. It is quiet there, but that doesn’t mean that something terrible is not happening, and I don’t want to know.

  That’s not true. I do want to know. I don’t want to watch, though. I want to look away and then have it be done, whatever it is.

  Maybe that’s the Cad. Or maybe I’m just getting older and more squeamish. Who knows?

  (That without a name knows.)

  (Yeah. That would be the only one who does know. And it won’t tell me. Fucker.)

  5.

  The store is about as busy as usual, sunny, gusts of herbs and frying food covering the less savoury odours of compost and scavenged rubbish. A long time ago the university built this place for performances, and it never lets you forget it.The building itself puts on a show. Swoops and arches and the dance of untouched glass. Here where we haggle and cajole was where people would meet before the shows, and back there behind the locked doors is the stage, the encircling seats mouse-eaten and broken now, the curtains long gone like any piece of contiguous fabric large enough to be useful. Seen it all in photos. Always wonder what it was like, watching a show back then. The dresses and suits from the books. The hush, the stage lights.

  Now I give the yarn to Bashir at the west counter and let him weigh it and put the credits into the book under Graham, R. and C., and then I go over to the east counter and slide onto the empty stool next to Henryk, who doesn’t even look up before whispering, “God, help me count these, would you? I’m losing my mind.”

  “It’s hardly advanced calculus, Henryk,” says Mrs. Cross tartly, as I scoop over half of her pile of paper and thumb through the sheets. Fifty, then fifty, then fifty. I tie them into bundles and enter them into the book and look up uncertainly into her pale, querulous face, topped with impossibly orange hair. Has she heard? Impossible that she hasn’t. And yet, she hasn’t congratulated me . . .

  I open my mouth to give her the good news, maybe thank her for insisting we write those essays, then close it again, as if I can hear my mother’s voice about to emerge instead of my own. We all turn into our mothers, that’s the joke. But I am. And I will. I have no choice. And I won’t even be there to see what she becomes.
r />   Henryk says, “I’m . . . I’m still getting forty-nine here, Mrs. Cross.”

  “Are you suggesting that I am deliberately miscounting my product, Mister Mandrusiak?”

  “No, ma’am —”

  “Or that I am too old or . . . or decrepit to count it correctly?”

  “No, ma’am!” His hands are shaking now, sweat bursting visibly from his fingertips. That’ll only make it worse, and he knows it. Under the white-hot, face-destroying beam of her gaze, I grab the stack from him and slide it across the smooth plastic, minutely dented and scarred from the tiny but ceaseless impacts of decades of pens, books, fingernails, and tokens. Of course it’s fifty sheets; two of them have gotten stuck together. I pry them gently apart with the edge of my thumb, tie, record. She double-checks the entries in the book, leaves with her face glowing.

  “I thought she was going to mark me down,” Henryk says gloomily.

  “School’s been over for a month. She can’t give you marks anymore.”

  “I know. I’m still having nightmares. How come you didn’t say anything about your letter?”

  I shrug with difficulty; the weight inside me is still there, physical, smushing things down, pressing my ribs out. It has edges, this pain. Facets. I realize I am curling around it, my arms enclosing my torso, rumpling my too-big jacket like a bird puffing up in the cold. The sparrow, I think. The witness.

  Henryk’s expression is lightly reproachful. He says, “She’s the whole reason you got in.”

  “Yeah.” But I’m selfish, I want to tell him, I’m an ingrate, don’t you know that, isn’t it obvious? So obviously I can’t thank her. I’m too busy shirking my work and abandoning my mother and my home. See, here, this mass inside me, black and dense as coal.

  Through the cracked glass above us the light dims, returns, dims again. Clouds racing each other to get wherever they’re going. Like they’re such bigshots. In the greyness, I say, “I’ll tell her later.”

  “What did your mom say? She must have freaked out.”

  “ . . . Yes. I would definitely say that she did that. Yes.”

  “That’s awesome!”

  Someone I don’t know comes to our counter with rabbit jerky; it smells nice, if maybe a little underdried, but it’ll never have a chance to go bad. That’s a treat you can’t get in the Dining Hall, and it’ll be purchased and eaten in minutes, probably before I leave. Henryk weighs it, puts it in the right cubbyhole, marks it down in the book, gives the boy his tokens.

  I lower my voice, press down hard on the mass of tears. “No, Mom says it’s a scam. A trick to get young women out to the middle of nowhere. No one’s ever seen these places, she says.”

  “Well,” Henryk says after a long, judicious breath, “no one’s ever seen Paris, either.”

  “Yeah, but there’s pictures.”

  “Could be faked.”

  “Movies.”

  “We’ve never seen movies of Paris.”

  He is complacent, unruffled. This is enough argument for him. He has faith in the letter and the necklace. Why shouldn’t he? We are asked to take many, many things for granted. More than anyone who’s ever lived before us. They could look something up in five minutes, or Zoom someone who lived far away. Even, for a little while, talk to the people on Mars. So they say. Arguably, we have less evidence that a mission went to Mars than we do that a single university in the mountains may exist. And which is more likely?

  “Listen.” He positions his forearms on the counter to soak up a weak ray of sunshine. “People in Paris know Paris is there. A city’s the only place you can live now. So what if people here don’t think there’s a Paris? Or an Australia or Brazil or whatever. Who cares? If a thing is a thing, it’s still a thing even if people don’t think it’s a thing.”

  “What?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “ . . . Anyway, she also said I would miss planting. She’s worried.”

  “Oh. Well that’s true. You could ask around before you go. Or put something up on the board . . . or ask Larsen if someone’s got spare capacity or whatever.”

  “There’s no spare capacity. And I don’t want to beg.”

  “I didn’t say beg.”

  I don’t want to tell him I didn’t even want to get near Larsen, seeing her reaction this morning, but went to two old ladies next to my office on my same floor. Literally the least possible effort I could have made, just ahead of lying on the floor and waiting for someone to carry me to the dome. My eyes smart with tears.

  “It’ll get done,” he says at my listless nod. “Reid! You don’t think we’d just . . . ignore her once you were gone. Nobody’s like that. Well, most people aren’t like that.”

  “There’s always a couple assholes.”

  “There’s always a couple. But we’d protect her from whoever. You know that.”

  “Who needs protecting?”

  A shadow looms, not a cloud one but a proper one, heralded by a tremendous waft of trapped smoke — Koda, who runs the east soapworks. Smell of ashes, old teardrops of chemical burns burned pale into her reddish-brown forearms. “Here ya go, babies. Get a whiff of that.”

  She plops six bars on the counter, neatly cut, resinous green, and turns to me interestedly as Henryk gets them in the system. “What now, brains? No one’s on ya about the school letter, are they? I’d sort ’em out myself, but . . . ” With theatrical nonchalance, she studies her gleaming nails, clean as a whistle. “Well. You got you enough practice in that particular area of expertise. What with this one around.”

  “Hey!” says Henryk.

  “Nobody’s getting into a scrap with anybody,” I say, firmly. “God forbid. Little old for that, don’t you think?”

  “Never too old to remind people not to fight.”

  “By splattering them into the ground.”

  “Yep.”

  “It’s nothing, anyway, Ko,” I say all in a rush. “It’s just, I’m worried about my mom, because it’s the thaw —”

  She snorts, a magnificent production in someone so big; her disdain is a five-act play. “What, you think you’re so irreplaceable, you think the whole system falls apart less one person?”

  “No! No, it’s not that. It’s just . . . Mom’s not getting any younger, and —”

  “Neither are you. You’re gonna throw away this chance because everybody ages one day per day?”

  “I mean, what if something happens to her while I’m gone? What if I can’t come back? She’ll be alone in there, how can I possibly —”

  She shrugs. “There’s no guarantees in life, kid. What if you stay put and we have another dust storm like when you was little? It ain’t people runs the system. It’s water.”

  “But the grids, the seeds, the schedules —”

  “Sure, it’s gonna suck trying to fill your spot. Larsen’s gonna be pissed.”

  “She’s already pissed. And I didn’t even say I was going to go. And the yarn —”

  “Let me finish. It’s gonna suck, but,” Koda says, raising a finger, “if we’re gonna be stretched thin and pissed off at someone, this is the best reason. Reid, imagine what you’ll learn, the folks you’ll meet. Imagine what you could do! We can’t give you anything like that here.”

  “I know that, but . . .”

  “But you’re gonna cry. Jesus.” She leans closer; Henryk and I do too. The counter still smells sweetly of spruce soap, though it only held it for a moment. “What you want is something that don’t exist anymore. Insurance. Now that’s something we’ve tried a couple times, and it never works out. But what we could do is give her some savings. Just for her. Would that make you feel better? A little cache?”

  “A little what?”

  “Listen. I’m probably going to regret this. But I’m gonna offer anyway. To you, and only to you. I’m putting together a
pig hunt in the valley. Friday. Hmm?”

  My God. It’s an invitation not quite on par with the university acceptance, but the startled lurch in my gut is no different. I’ve never been invited to one — never even heard rumours of one before it happened, in fact. Even the Coy Scouts don’t hunt pigs. People have died.

  But it’s a lot of food, and game remains the one thing it’s understood you aren’t obliged to share, in a world where we share everything down to underpants and hairbrushes. If I went, and we got even a single pig, my portion, a tenth or a dozenth of that meat, would be tremendous. And it would be Mom’s alone after I left.

  Dried and smoked, Mom’s share would set her up to barter for a long, long time. But most importantly, she would know what I meant by it. Meant to look after her even if I wasn’t here: to prove incontrovertibly that I was thinking of her and not myself. Why risk death right before I had to leave for meat I would not even get a chance to eat? Why not just leave? Because of her, that’s why.

  This is a tremendous offer in too many respects to turn down: in reputation, mine and Koda’s; in opportunity; in respect; in experience; in sheer calories. She would not have made such an offer out of pity for either me or my mother. She thinks I can do it. For a moment I love her with everything in me. “I’m in.”

  “Me too,” Henryk says after a beat.

  Koda hides her surprise at that, but a muscle near her mouth twitches. “All right. I’ll send details.”

  “Thanks, Ko. I mean it.”

  She punches my shoulder in a friendly fashion, making my teeth click together. Neither of us needs to be told to keep it to ourselves. Too many people would try to stop us. To interfere, even sabotage. Or worse yet, invite themselves along. The secrecy is what works about a pig hunt, they say, because the things are skittish, and they have ways of knowing. I do not myself think, as some half-jokingly do, that the local magpies and crows are used as spies, but it is a fact that no one ever seems to know when one of the hunts is happening, and that is by design. We are all good actors when we need to be.

  When she is gone, I punch Henryk too, not hard enough to hurt but as meaningful punctuation before I speak.