“Indubitably, yes.”
“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. “Because you love me,” my throat’s so tight I can hardly say the word, “go.”
OUR 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?”
THE 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.