“If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were trying to distract me.”
Lan picked at her dinner, scowling, then put down her fork and said, “You want to know about my mother? Okay. Here’s everything you need to know about my mother.”
“I’m all attention,” he said, ignoring her to carve into his bird.
“She lost her coat the night she got here.”
She could see him trying not to react to that, but after a few awkward seconds, he looked at her. “There must be more to the tale than that.”
“There is, but if you want to hear it, you have to hear all of it.”
“Have I, indeed?”
“This is a big piece of me,” she told him, erasing his crooked smile. “You want to buy me tonight? Let me say it all. I’ve only got it in me to do it once.”
“It can’t be so precious, surely,” he said after a considering moment. “It isn’t your tale.”
“No, it isn’t. It’s hers. She gave it to me and I’m selling it to you, and if you can’t understand why that makes it worse, then I guess we’re done.” She grabbed up her apple and bit, chewing hard and staring straight ahead.
Azrael watched her eat, his fingers drumming now and then on the edge of the table. “Tell me,” he said at length.
“You interrupt me just once and so help me—”
“I won’t.”
“Fine.” Lan put her apple down and pushed her plate away. It felt slightly obscene to be eating when she said this. She’d been so hungry the night she’d heard it. They all were, except maybe the mayor and his family, but maybe even them. It had been a bad winter, so cold the last ferryman to come through had claimed the Channel was freezing over. The ground had gone too cold, even in the greenhouses, so the peaches were all drawing down. The ones in fruit were bitter; the rest wouldn’t flower. Everyone said the cold wouldn’t last, but the soup got thinner and loaves got smaller and everyone went to bed hungry for all that no one was worried. And lying there in the bed they shared, listening to Baby Ivy crying two beds away, for no reason whatever unless it was just to take a hungry child’s mind off her pinching belly for one night, her mother started to speak, whispering in her ear so no one else could hear, “I was a child…”
“She was a child when she came to this country,” Lan said now. “She didn’t remember how old. Maybe seven. Maybe only five or six. She used to live in a big house, painted grey and white. She said from her bedroom window, she could see the sea, but they never went there that she remembered. Not until the Eaters came. No one knew what happened yet. No one knew it was you. There was a whole ocean between you and my mother’s home, but the dead rose up anyway and started eating people.”
Azrael did not respond.
“They couldn’t get out of the city. All the cars were stuck on the road and so people were driving crazy, trying to get through anyway and crashing their cars and then they’d raise up and so there were Eaters on the road, going car to car and no one could get away. So they couldn’t get out of the city, but the city was even worse. People were shooting Eaters and shooting each other, which only made more Eaters, and buildings were burning and no one even knew why or what had happened. But somehow, someone over there came up with this plan to put all the kids in town that could get to them on a boat and take them to England. Just until whatever was happening was over, because they didn’t think it was happening in England and England was the only country they could think of that was far away and friendly. This was the plan. What kind of plan was that?” Lan asked him. That wasn’t part of the story. She hadn’t really meant to ask, but it came bubbling out of her all the same. “What kind of ass-headed plan…? She had no one, knew no one. Her parents thought they were saving her. Instead, they put her on a boat and sent her right to you. And she was five or six or seven. And she was all alone.”
Azrael said nothing.
“The ocean was cold. That’s all she remembered of the trip across. It took a long time and she mostly stayed in her room with the other kids. Sometimes, they were let out on the deck, but the wind was so cold and sometimes it snowed, so even if they were let out, she mostly stayed in her room. All she had was what she was wearing: her pajamas, her rubber boots, and her coat. There wasn’t time to pack others or even to really get dressed. And it was so cold that she hardly ever took the coat off, even indoors. It was pink, with white fuzz on the edges like fur, but not really. When the boat came close to the shore, they called all the kids up onto the deck. It was dark and it was snowing. All the kids were trying to stand in the middle of other kids because it was warmer there, but my mom was so little, she got shoved to the outside. She was right next to the rails in the very front of the boat. So she saw everything. She could see fires burning in the city, but no lights on. And the boat was going to dock anyway,” said Lan, shaking her head. “How could anyone see that and just dock anyway? How could they not know?”
“What would you have had them do?” Azrael asked quietly. “Sail the Earth forever? Perhaps they were out of food. Perhaps they thought…at least it would end quickly.”
“Nothing ends. That’s the point, isn’t it? They all but fed those kids to your Eaters and, quick or not, that’s a fucking awful way to go.”
He did not answer that.
“It was dark,” said Lan, after a few calming breaths and a drink of water. “But my mother could see shapes moving on the shore. She thought they were people, their new moms and dads, coming to get them. But they didn’t stop when they reached the end of the pier. They fell into the water, she said, and they kept coming until she could see this white, churning wave coming right at them. The boat never even had the chance to dock. The Eaters hit the side of the boat and kept piling up. It wasn’t quick, but it was…inevitable, she called it. Like the sun setting. They piled up higher and came over the rails and suddenly everyone was screaming. The boat kept going. It broke through the pier and crashed into the whatsis, the docking place. The hull stoved in and the boat started to flip over. The waves came over the side and kids were being washed overboard, right into the Eaters in the water. My mother fell too, but a wave picked her up. She grabbed hands with a boy in the water and the wave took them both to the pier. It put her down on top of the boards. It slammed him into the side and crushed him dead. That was how my mother came to England.”
“She lost her coat in the water, one assumes.”
“No, she still had it then. It was a big, puffy coat. She used to say it was what saved her, actually. It was full of air, like a life-vest. Anyway, there was no one left of the crew on the boat. No one to meet them on shore. Eaters bloody everywhere and no one to help. All she could see of the city was burning buildings and the boat sinking off the pier. All she could hear was sirens and screams. The kids all scattered as soon as they reached shore and most of them got taken down by Eaters pretty much right off. My mother was one of a group that climbed in through the window of a dockside warehouse or something. Understand, this place was in sight of the boat she’d come in on. She could have thrown a rock and hit it. But she thought she was safe, like a child who thinks pulling the blankets up over her head at night will keep the monsters out. She slept that night with her hood pulled up, the hood on her coat, for just that reason. It was a big, puffy coat,” Lan said again. “She couldn’t hear through it very well. She never heard the Eater come in through the window.”
Azrael raked his eyes across the table, then stabbed the roasted hawk off its platter and transferred it to his plate. He began to carve it, somewhat forcefully.