Some shadows are sharp, some shadows are blurry.
I’ve seen them before in another time and place.
“Gran?” Lorelei’s waiting for my answer to a question.
“Sorry, love. I was just … What were you saying?”
THE RADIO’S STILL dead. Mo asks Lorelei if she’s up to playing a tune on the fiddle after a day like that. My granddaughter chooses “She Moved Through the Fair.” I wash the sea spinach while Mo guts the fish. We’ll fry the puffball in butter at the last minute. If I was younger I’d be in town helping with the grisly business, but I wouldn’t be much use there at my age, digging graves for makeshift coffins. Father Brady’ll be busy. Probably he’s claiming the salvation of Kilcrannog was a case of divine intervention. Lorelei plays the ghostly refrain beautifully. She inherited her dad’s musical flair as well as his fiddle, and if she’d belonged to my or Aoife’s generation she might’ve thought about a musical career, but I’m afraid music will be one more nonsurvival pursuit that the Endarkenment snuffs out.
Rafiq makes us all jump as he barges open the door; something’s wrong. “Rafiq,” says Mo, “what on earth’s the matter?”
He’s panting for breath. My first thought is diabetes, but he’s pointing back down to the bay. “There!”
Lorelei stops playing. “Deep breaths, Raf—what is it?”
“A ship,” Rafiq gasps, “a boat, and men, and they’ve got guns, and were coming closer, and they spoke to me through a big cone thing. But I didn’t know what to say. ’Cause of—of what happened today.”
Mo, Lorelei, and me look at each other, confused.
“You’re not making a whole lot of sense,” I say. “Ship?”
“That!”He points out at the bay. I can’t see, but Lorelei goes over, looks out, and says, “ Jesus.” At her astonishment I hurry over, and Mo hobbles behind. At first I see only the bluish, grayish waters of the bay, but then see dots of yellow light, maybe three hundred meters out. “A patrol boat,” says Mo, at my side. “Can anyone see a flag on it?”
“No,” says Rafiq, “but they launched a littler boat and it moved dead fast, straight towards the pier. There’s men in it. When it was near one of the men spoke through this cone thing that made his voice louder, like this.” Rafiq mimes a megaphone.
“In English?” asks Mo, just as Lorelei asks, “What did he say?”
“Yeah,” replies Rafiq. “He asked, ‘Does Holly Sykes live here?’ ”
Mo and Lorelei look at me; I look at Rafiq. “Are you sure?”
Rafiq nods. “I thought I’d heard it wrong, but he said it again. I just sort of froze, and then,” Rafiq looks at Lorelei, “he asked if you live here. He knew your full name. Lorelei Цrvarsdottir.”
Lorelei sort of clutches at herself and looks at me.
Mo asks, “Could you see if they were foreign?”
“No, they had combat goggles. But he didn’t sound very Irish.”
The patrol boat sits there. It’s big, with a tower and globes and big twin guns at each end. Can’t remember when I last saw a steel hull in the bay. “Might it be British?” suggests Mo.
I don’t know. “I heard the last six Royal Navy vessels were rusting in the Medway, waiting for fuel that never arrived. Anyway, don’t British ships always fly the Union Jack?”
“The Chinese or Russians would have the fuel,” says Lorelei.
“But what would the Chinese or Russians want with us?”
“More raiders,” Lorelei wonders, “after our solar panels?”
“Look at the size of the ship,” says Mo. “She must be displacing three, four thousand tons? Think of the diesel it cost to get here. This isn’t about swiping a few secondhand solar panels.”
“Can you see the launch?” I ask the kids. “The motorboat?”
After a moment, Lorelei says, “No sign of it.”
“It could be behind the pier,” says Rafiq, edgily. At this point Zimbra pushes through between my calf and the door frame and growls at the lumpy denseness in the hawthorn by our gate. The wind brushes the long grass, gulls cry, and the shadows are sharp and long.
They’re here. I know. “Raf, Lol,” I murmur, “up to the attic.”
Both of them start to object, but I cut them off: “Please.”
“Don’t be alarmed,” says a soldier at the gate, and all four of us jump. His camo armor, an ergohelmet, and an augvisor conceal his face and age and give him an insectoid look. My heartbeat’s gone walloping off. “We’re friendlier than your earlier visitors today.”
It’s Mo who collects her wits first. “Who are you?”
“Commander Aronsson of the Icelandic Marines, that ship is the ICGV Sj б lfst жр i.” The officer’s voice has a military crispness, and when he turns to his left, the bulletproof visor reflects the low sun. “This is Lieutenant Eriksdottir.” He indicates a slighter figure, a woman, also watching us through an augvisor. She nods by way of hello. “Last, we have ‘Mr.’ Harry Veracruz, a presidential adviser who is joining us on our mission.”
A third man steps into view, dressed like a pre-Endarkenment birdwatcher in a fisherman’s sweater and an all-weather jacket, unzipped. He’s young, hardly into his twenties, and has somewhat African lips, sort of East Asian eyes, Caucasianish skin, and sleek black hair, like a Native American in an old film. “Afternoon,” he tells me, in a soft anywhere-voice. “Or have we crossed the boundary to evening?”
I’m flustered. “I … uh, don’t know. It’s, um …”
“I’m Professor Mo Muntervary, formerly of MIT,” says my neighbor, crisply. “How can we help you, Commander Aronsson?”
The commander flips up his augvisor so we can see his classically Nordic, square-jawed chin. He’s thirtyish, squinting now in the direct light. Zimbra gives a couple of gruff barks. “First, please calm down your dog. I do not want him to hurt his teeth on our body armor.”
“Zimbra,” I tell him. “Inside. Zimbra!” Like a sulky teenager, he obeys, though once inside he peers out between my shins.
Lieutenant Eriksdottir pushes back her augvisor too. She’s midtwenties and intensely freckled; her Scandinavian accent is stronger and ess-ier. “You are Holly Sykes, I think?”
I’d rather find out what they want before telling them that, but Mr. Harry Veracruz says, with an odd smile, “She certainly is.”
“Then you are the legal guardian,” continues Lieutenant Eriksdottir, “of Lorelei Цrvarsdottir, an Icelandic citizen.”
“That’s me,” says Lorelei. “My dad was from Akureyri.”
“Akureyri is my hometown also,” says Commander Aronsson. “It’s a small place, so I know Цrvar Benediktsson’s people. Your father was also”—he glances Mo’s way—“a famous scientist in his field.”
I feel defensive. “What do you want with Lorelei?”
“Our president,” says the commander, “has ordered us to locate and offer to repatriate Miss Цrvarsdottir. So, we are here.”
A bat tumbles through the dark and bright bands of the garden.
My first thought is, Thank Christ, she’s saved.
My second thought is, I can’t lose my granddaughter.
My third thought is, Thank Christ, she’s saved.
The hens peck, cluck, and goggle around their coop, and the brittle, muddy garden swishes in the evening wind. “Magno,”declares Rafiq. “Lol, that massive ship sailed here from Iceland just for you!”
“But what about my family?” I hear Lorelei saying.
“Permission to immigrate is for Miss Цrvarsdottir,” Aronsson addresses me, “ only. That is not negotiable. Quotas are strict.”
“How can I leave my family behind?” Lorelei’s saying.
“It is difficult,” Lieutenant Eriksdottir tells her. “But please consider it, Lorelei. The Lease Lands have been safe, but those days are over, as you learned today. There is a broken nuclear reactor not far enough away, if the wind blows wrongly. Iceland is safe. This is why the immigration quota is so strict. We have geothermal electricity and your uncle Halgrid’s family will care for you.”
I remember Цrvar’s older brother from my summer in Reykjavik. “Halgrid’s still alive?”