It’s why he’s nervous around her. There’s so much he doesn’t want to see.
He emerges into the rear yard behind the barracks, which is empty at this time of the day. There are warehouses and old offices back here, repaired and turned into workshops by anybody who needs them. From these buildings the villagers produce soap, paper and paint, grinding huge bags of daffodils and turmeric to make the colours. They weave clothes, and craft shoes, and make new tools from old iron and lumber grown in forests near the farms.
In a few hours, after everybody gets back, these buildings will be stuffy and hot, the rear yard ripe with the stink of chemicals, boiled weeds, wax and starch.
Seth passes through the shadow of a skeletal radar tower, arriving outside a small redbrick hut with a vaulted roof and a mechanical clock that still ticks, thanks to Hephaestus’s ministrations.
He pokes his head through the open door, his vision taking a moment to adjust to the gloom. Six children are at their desks, watching Niema prod a plastic map of the world.
It was hanging on the wall when she first established the school here, a painful reminder of what had been lost. She scratched out everything that wasn’t this island and has drawn a perfect circle around it, indicating the safe area between them and world’s end.
‘We’ll never know who created such a terrible weapon, or why it was used, but we do know that the fog caught us entirely by surprise,’ she says, in her familiar rasp. ‘There were no plans in place for a disaster of that magnitude. Unless you were incredibly wealthy, there were no shelters to hide in, or provisions stockpiled. Our children weren’t even learning basic survival in school.’
She snatches an impatient glance at the clock, surprising Seth. Niema loves being in the classroom. Something important must be happening if she’s this distracted.
She pulls her attention back to the children, her gaze roaming their rapt faces.
‘It seems strange now that we were so ill prepared,’ she continues, at last. ‘The human race had been on the precipice for almost a century before the end actually arrived. We’d dug the earth dry of its resources, and climate change was forcing huge population migrations, while destroying arable land and living space. In the end, we destroyed our own society before nature could do it for us, but it was a close-run thing.’
Seth breathes in, overcome by a powerful sense of nostalgia. He remembers this lesson from his own childhood. He remembers Niema’s vehemence, the affronted anger wreathing every word like fire.
One of the children puts their hand up.
‘Yes, William,’ says Niema, pointing towards him.
‘How many people were there before the fog?’
‘Uncountable,’ she replies. ‘We have to keep our population to a hundred and twenty-two because that’s all our farmland and water supply can sustain, but their resources were far greater than ours. Millions were being born every day in cities larger than this island.’
The children coo, their imaginations alight.
Another hand shoots up. Niema nods to the little girl at the end of it. ‘Why were they fighting?’
‘We could always find a reason,’ she replies. ‘We had different gods, or different skin, or the fight had been going on so long we’d forgotten how to stop it. Somebody had something we needed, or we thought they were planning to hurt us. Often, it was as cynical as our leaders believing it would prolong their own power.’
‘But wouldn’t –’
‘We put our hand up when we want to speak,’ interrupts Niema, reprimanding the young boy. His hand goes up, his sentence dragged into the air after it.
‘Why didn’t Abi stop them?’
‘Unfortunately, we didn’t have her to help us,’ says Niema. ‘We were alone in our own heads, without Abi to take care of us. You’re right, of course. If we had her, none of this would have happened. She would have reined in our worst impulses.’
She lingers on that point, the children trying to imagine what this world would look like if humanity had been able to outsource its collective conscience. Another hand comes up.
‘Yes, Sherko?’
‘When can Adil come home?’ he asks abruptly. ‘My mum really misses him.’
The students tense, taken aback by the anger that flashes across Niema’s face.
‘Adil hurt me,’ replies Niema, struggling to calm herself.
‘I know, but Abi always tells us to forgive people,’ he says reasonably. ‘Adil has been gone a long time. Haven’t you forgiven him yet?’
He’s wide-eyed, his questions guileless. Niema’s anger evaporates like fog hit by sunlight.
‘I’m trying,’ she says, rubbing a hand along the scar on her forearm. ‘Your great-grandfather was violent. We can’t tolerate that in the village. Do you understand?’
‘No,’ admits Sherko.
‘I’m glad,’ she says fondly. ‘Unfortunately, I’ve been alive a lot longer than you, and I’ve picked up some bad habits along the way. It’s not quite as easy for me to forgive people as it is for you, but I’m trying to be better.’
Noticing Seth at the door, she holds up a solitary finger, indicating she’ll be finished in a minute.
Crossing his arms, he waits in a thick wedge of shade until the children come running out for playtime. Niema wanders out after them.
‘Back in an hour,’ she calls, as they disappear towards the exercise yard.
‘Good lesson?’ asks Seth.
‘One of them always does something to surprise me,’ she says, wrapping her long grey hair into a bun and stabbing it in place with a pencil.
She looks tired, he thinks. Her eyes are raw, with dark circles, and there’s a heaviness to her limbs that’s never normally there. For the first time, he feels like he can see the weight of age upon her, all those invisible years dragging behind. Emory was right. Something’s troubling her.
‘How you feeling this morning?’ asks Niema, uncomfortably aware of his scrutiny. ‘It was strange not seeing Matis at breakfast.’
‘My father lived a long life in service to the village,’ he replies mechanically. ‘I’m proud of him.’
‘It’s me, Seth,’ she says gently. ‘You can admit that you’re sad.’
‘There’s no memory gem,’ he blurts out, pain inscribed in every word. ‘Abi says it was lost in the ocean.’
‘Did she?’ Her voice is strained. ‘I’m so sorry, that’s terrible. I can’t imagine what that must be like for you.’ She lays a hand on her heart. ‘We’ll tell his stories to each other. We’ll keep his memories alive that way.’
He turns his head to hide the emotion, wiping away the brimming tears. She gives him a second to see if he has anything else to add, but Seth prefers to skirt emotions rather than dwell on them. He was the same when his wife died. He held on to her gem for weeks, reliving their life together in every quiet moment. Around his friends, he pretended he was fine. He laughed and joked and worked, same as he’d always done, putting on a note-perfect performance of his old life.
It was Emory who shattered him.
One day, he saw his daughter running across the yard, her hair blowing freely. Judith was the one who always had tied it up for her, and being reminded of that fact ripped the heart out of him. He collapsed sobbing and didn’t stop for a month.
‘I was hoping you could row me to the lighthouse this evening,’ says Niema, changing the subject. ‘I’ve got an experiment I wish to run.’
Seth sighs inwardly. Niema keeps a personal lab out at the lighthouse, which he’s never been inside. Whenever she goes there she works through the night, while he sleeps in the boat, rowing her back the next morning. He always wakes up feeling like he’s been balled up in somebody’s fist. After spending last night on the pier, he was really looking forward to sleeping in his own bed tonight.