The Annual Migration of Clouds Page 12

  Maybe it doesn’t matter. I don’t know. I’m weeping again, getting both tears and blood on Hen’s pillow. Whatever a cloud is, whatever it weighs, no matter how big it is, something moves them around: they move, they do not resist it. Nothing is so heavy that it doesn’t. Look at the planet. Still moving. And still moving back to the same place it came to every year. We cannot affect that. Not with all the will in the world.

  Henryk puts a knuckle in my back, as if knocking to be let in. “Are you okay?”

  “Mm. Just thinking.”

  “What about?”

  You, you, you. Only you, always you. How I thought we were going to do it, and what a disaster that would have been, and whether I wanted it or not, and I still don’t know the answer. You, who I will leave, who is leaving me. “The future.”

  “The future?”

  I shrug, and wipe my face: smell of rust. “Maybe everybody will have Cad. And everybody will be safe. Sick, and safe.”

  “The other option is that everyone stops having kids at all. No more Cad.”

  “I don’t think it’ll let people do that.”

  “Maybe.” He yawns. It is academic to him. I am briefly, furiously envious. “Sleep.”

  “You sleep.”

  When Henryk’s little wind-up clock blares, I return home, woozy with exhaustion, a little too defiant, waiting for Mom to accuse me of abandoning her to fuck Henryk so that I can shout that I didn’t, but she doesn’t. For a second I wonder if she realized I didn’t storm back in after I stormed out, but dismiss that as too good to be true. We’re all crammed in here so tightly that you pretty much always know where someone is. Recognize the breath on the far side of the wall. She looks unslept, irritated, but not actually angry. I guess it’s true what they say: sleep on your anger, and it may not waken.

  Tightly, she says, “Let me look at your cut.”

  I walk to her and hold my breath as she takes my face in her hands. One of us has to be the bigger person, I think. Her, because she’s the grownup. Me, because I see how she does it. All right. All right. This is survivable. The worst is over. Now we can talk rationally.

  “You must have picked at it in your sleep.”

  “I think so. It was bleeding a little.”

  “Did you put pressure on it?”

  “Yes. A few minutes.”

  Her next questions should be “Where were you?” and “With who?” but she tightens her lips and says, “Let’s go get breakfast.”

  We dress and head to the stairs, and I precede her in the trickle of people ahead of us. “You’ll have to start thinking about storage for all that meat,” I say, and turn, and she is silhouetted for a moment, and I know, know, a tremendous flash of knowledge, a cymbal-clash, the Annunciation in old paintings, what she is about to do, and that she will succeed.

  Nothing will be taken from me, she seems to say, or the disease says, though perhaps (in the second that elapses between when I turn and when she begins her flight down the concrete steps) they are working as one; nothing will leave me, I will leave rather than be left, I have had enough of being left —

  — and in the last moment, I who have never prayed, who takes everything in vain because it is what the other kids did, find myself praying to a disease. Help me! I can’t do this alone!

  Something responds.

  In the years to come I will never know what. I throw myself up the steps as she comes down, and catch her, taking her full weight — meagre, bones in the crackling dress, screams around us — before she hits the landing, and the nameless one arranges my body in midair to curl and roll, thudding down the last few steps till we are on the flat concrete pad, and neighbours are pulling us apart, wailing in fear, and someone picks me up, and someone picks her up, and I meet her eyes: No, I try to tell her. I thought we could all be separated, but we cannot. I, and my monster, will go. You, and your monster, will stay. This is how I know I’m going.

  16.

  The worst was over, and then it wasn’t, and now something else begins. Unofficially, she is confined to our office for a week while Dr. Chan comes and chats with her. I don’t know if this is therapy (which I’ve read about, but not actually seen). Mom sticks to her story: She didn’t jump. She slipped.

  “A dozen witnesses have suggested otherwise, Claire.” Dr. Chan is soft-voiced, wears her hair loose over her shoulders, dark and sleek as the pelt of a black cat. Her skin has no writing on it. She knows things about minds, but I worry that she doesn’t know things about the parasite. It is something you cannot know from a book.

  “I happen to think,” Mom says, glancing at me in the doorway, “that it’s not very good for people’s mental health to be accused of lying.”

  “No, you’re right. It’s not. But it’s also not very good for people to lie to themselves.”

  “I suppose it wouldn’t be.”

  She did jump, I tell Dr. Chan later on, a few floors down, while Yash and Mal take up self-appointed, and not very surreptitious, sentry duty. She didn’t slip or tumble. She leapt, like a fleeing deer, and with the same strength and speed: I did not think I would catch her.

  “It’s the disease,” I tell her. “I know it was. I could have lifted a car.”

  “Reid, that doesn’t fit very well with what we know about Cadastrulamyces,” Dr. Chan says. “The presence of the infection seems to be correlated with fewer occurrences of risk-taking behaviour.”

  “No. Believe me, okay? Trust me. I live with it. I’ve felt it inside: like a hand, holding your bones, pushing you around. I’ve felt it respond to things you’d never believe. What it does is a calculation. It does a — what do you call it. A cost-benefit analysis. There are risks, but then there are bigger risks. If the options don’t look good sometimes it’ll do nothing. But sometimes it’ll decide between bad and worse.”

  “That sounds like a lot of agency for a fungal infection.”

  “It sounds fucking bonkers. I know. But if you thought there might be two outcomes, and all you had to work with was a body: you think — If I die, I’ll never see her go. If I live, I’ll be so hurt she’ll have to stay. Either way it wins. It —”

  “Reid. Please don’t —”

  “— it wins, okay? It thinks in terms of winning and losing. I know it does. It knows the best way only to keep the host body alive, or to end it, and Mom went along with it. Because it made sense to her. I don’t know how I can leave her in this state. How can I?”

  Dr. Chan regards me with something like astonishment. I try to review my last handful of sentences in my head, and okay, admittedly: Not good. Not real good.

  “My own infection let me save her. Let me save hers too,” I say after a minute. “I couldn’t have done it myself.”

  “Reid.”

  “Don’t put this down in the record, okay? Please don’t.” I get up unsteadily, and head to the door. “I have to go, I’m sorry. I’m supposed to go to the hospital. Dr. G has to look at my foot. Infection or whatever. I’ll come back.”

  “I’ll see you when you do,” she calls.

  Both of us, I almost say. We are not a team now, but we are not enemies fighting a war either. I think perhaps there has been a truce. Maybe temporary. I don’t know. But know that you are dealing with two, and not one.

  I think, as if I am addressing a child instead of a disease: Operation Barbarossa. You don’t know what that is, do you? Maybe it’s best I don’t tell you.

  17.

  Mom’s week ticks down; mine does too. Boar jerky (gamey, rusty-tasting, as precious as salt) buys me a spot on a steamcart convoy heading west on Highway 16; I will be on my own to head south after I’m dropped off, but only a short hike from the edge of the Zone. I’m worried about hiking on my busted leg, but I don’t have a choice.

  I know I shouldn’t carry much weight, and luckily there isn’t much to pack; it all fits in my woven ruck
sack. Clothes and hand-drawn maps, the letter, the tracker, food, water, soap, toothbrush and charcoal, my magpie painting, one book (my favourite, with the great tripartite-mouthed worm on the cover). Dr. Chan frets; Dr. Gagliardi frets; Henryk frets; Mom is serene, her final gambit, her nuclear option, failed.

  Robins sing for tiny kingdoms; both sides of night are marked with their song. The ice on the river breaks up. And when the morning comes, green leaves are working their way free from the branches at last.

  The steamcart parks near Sub, and idles, the sound echoing around quad. It is a dilapidated but grand thing, once a gravel truck, now mostly bits of bolted-together sheet metal around a boiler and uncountable gears, rumbling and breathing heavily into the cool air, with three passengers already aboard. Seeing it here is a different kind of terror. It’s still not too late to back out, I think, looking at it. It’s still not too late. I could still stay here, with everyone I know. The driver gives me a look.

  “Reid.”

  I turn, lightheaded with terror, and see that others have joined my mother and Henryk as part of the seeing-off. McKinnon, Larsen, Koda. Aldous, impossibly, on a wheeled bed pushed by four people I don’t know. Mal and Yash, smiling. Mrs. Cross. Larsen says, “Listen. This wasn’t easy to find. A bunch of us had to take the damn city apart to put it together. So don’t mess it up, okay?”

  “What?”

  “Voila,” croaks Aldous, and from behind him one of the boys wheels out a bicycle — a bicycle, of all things. Most of the paint gone, sky-blue shreds remaining over a black frame, the wheels those weird airless ones that look like honeycombs. A bike. I thought people had busted or absconded with every single one not claimed by the Coy Scouts. My God. It’s even got a basket on it. And a bell. Where in the world did they find a bell? I take the handlebars, bracing the light frame against my hip.

  “So you can get south,” Larsen says, unnecessarily, “after you get dropped off.”

  “Cargo’s extra,” the driver says.

  “I’ll end you where you stand.”

  “ . . . All right, this one time.”

  I’m speechless, stumbling over my words. “Larsen. Koda. All of you — how — how?! I can’t take this. You need this here. Bikes are — how?”

  “Not easy, is how,” Koda repeats, and squeezes my shoulder with her big hand. “Go make us proud.”

  “I don’t know how to ride a bike.”

  “Well, learn how, and then make us proud. Christ.”

  I look up into her dark eyes, trying to see a trace of pity there — she has given me enough charity, I think, but all I can see is determination. There is a mission, and if we all cannot carry it out, then one of us must go and carry it out by proxy. That, I understand. Pride is better than anger. Better than pain. When we think we have nothing to be proud of, we can be proud that we set a girl on her way to an impossible dream. Yes, all right. I accept.

  “I promise I’ll be back,” I say. No one speaks. I awkwardly hug Henryk and push a letter into his coat pocket, and then we stand for a moment with our hands on each other’s shoulders. He’s taller than me, and I don’t know why I find this strange; as strange as it is that I’m taller than Mom now. I’ll write, I want to tell him. Write to me. My address is: a dome. Instead of speaking I can only stare into his washed-out, rainy-day eyes, trying to memorize their shape and colour.

  For no reason the long, amber light on his face reminds me of something we used to do when we were kids: pulling up asphalt pebbles from the road and throwing them into our tiny fires till they flared and melted. God only knew what we were breathing in, but it was always satisfying to watch them deliquesce: solid into liquid, gone like ice. I never knew why we did it. Just fun, I guess, and we were bored; but now I wonder how long ago I looked at his face in that tiny orange firelight and knew for sure that I loved him, even if he never loved me.

  “I, an alligator, will return,” I tell him.

  Tears at last, his face wobbling. “In a wh . . . in some period, certainly, crocodile.”

  Yash and Mal clutch me, run their hands over my hair. I hug Mom last, a long hug, breathing in her familiar smell, resting my head on her shoulder. This at least I have never doubted. Not for any longer than a second or two, when it seemed it would be taken from me. But even that could not have succeeded in removing the love, only other things.

  I had wanted to leave with one of grandma’s enamel pins on my jacket, so that in some way a cycle could be unbroken — Great-grandma to Grandma to Mom to me, but I never asked for one, and of course Mom can’t read my mind. She would have given me one though, I think. If she had, I would have left this boar tusk at home, secret and sharp in the bottom of my bag, wrapped in a dozen plastic bags. That’s not what I want: showing up to this grand futuristic place like a caveman with a bone. A pin would have been better. A unicorn. But I did not speak. “I love you,” I tell her.

  “I love you.”

  We all shout our goodbyes and they flee for cover under a darkening dawn, the first drops of welcome rain. These days, rain is another word for hope. A good omen. I stow my bike, climb aboard the cart, and find a spot on a bench, pushing my bag between my legs. The driver flips up a loosely woven cover to keep out the wet, and campus disappears into darkness, except for a semicircle of light ahead and behind us, like a tunnel. I didn’t say everything I meant to say, but I mean, who ever does, really. Can’t be held to such an impossible standard.

  As the cart turns, I get a startling glimpse of my mother’s face, pale, turning back to look (no — don’t look back), the trees in her cheeks seeming to surge forward to say one last farewell to the trees under my nails. One day she watched her mother die of Cad, and one day I will watch my mother die of Cad, and if I have a daughter she too will watch her mother die one day of Cad. Do they all know one another, all these different infections? Yes, they must. Mine is daughter of hers. Well, say your goodbyes: and one day we will all see each other again.

  Acknowledgements

  I would like to thank my agent, Michael Curry, as always, for helping to bring this novella into the world. I would also like to thank my incredibly perceptive and dedicated editor at ECW Press, Jen Albert, and our eagle-eyed copy editor, Rachel Ironstone. They shaped this into a stronger, clearer story and brought Reid and her community to life. I’m also grateful to Jessica Albert at ECW Press and Veronica Park, who created the amazing cover; I’m not sure I’ve ever had a cover that so beautifully and elegantly rendered the heart of a story. My local friends Jordan and Vicki Lightbown patiently answered all my questions about hunting strategies, archery, the river valley, and feral hogs (as well as supplying me with wine and endless stories!). My friend Jennifer R. Donohue probably deserves an actual medal for putting up with me during the writing, revision, and editing stages, and I am indebted to her for her humour and patience. And finally, I would like to acknowledge my long-time friends Mark McIntyre and Kim Scott, who rarely left my side when I attended the University of Alberta and without whose love, companionship, and determination I never would have graduated.

  About the Author

  Premee Mohamed is an Indo-Caribbean scientist and author based in Edmonton, Canada. She completed degrees in Biology and Environmental Conservation at the University of Alberta. She is the author of novels Beneath the Rising and A Broken Darkness and novellas The Apple-Tree Throne, These Lifeless Things, And What Can We Offer You Tonight, and The Annual Migration of Clouds. Her short fiction has appeared in a variety of print and audio venues. Upcoming work can be found at her website, premeemohamed.com.

  Copyright

  Copyright © Premee Mohamed, 2021

  Published by ECW Press

  665 Gerrard Street East

  Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4M 1Y2

  416-694-3348 / info@ecwpress.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transm
itted in any form by any process — electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise — without the prior written permission of the copyright owners and ECW Press. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  Editor for the Press: Jen R. Albert

  Cover and interior illustrations: Veronica Park

  Cover design: Jessica Albert

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Title: The annual migration of clouds / Premee Mohamed.

  Names: Mohamed, Premee, author.

  Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20210176326 | Canadiana (ebook) 20210176539

  ISBN 978-1-77041-593-5 (softcover)

  ISBN 978-1-77305-708-8 (ePub)

  ISBN 978-1-77305-709-5 (PDF)

  ISBN 978-1-77305-710-1 (Kindle)

  Classification: LCC PS8626.O44735 A76 2021 | DDC C813/.6—dc23

  This book is funded in part by the Government of Canada. Ce livre est financé en partie par le gouvernement du Canada. We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts. Nous remercions le Conseil des arts du Canada de son soutien. We acknowledge the support of the Ontario Arts Council (OAC), an agency of the Government of Ontario, which last year funded 1,965 individual artists and 1,152 organizations in 197 communities across Ontario for a total of $51.9 million. We also acknowledge the support of the Government of Ontario through Ontario Creates.