She’s flying through a beautiful city made of glass and steel, then talking to Hephaestus as a boy.
A mirror appears, with a younger Niema looking back at her.
She’s a little girl, playing with a strange dog with multicoloured fur.
Then the pier outside the village. The bay is full of huge boats, big as cities. People are walking towards them, every face grief-stricken and slightly smug.
It’s a life out of order, and the jumble’s making Emory nauseous.
Niema’s running on a machine. She’s staring at a screen, choosing the features of her new child. She’s shouting at somebody, who looks terrified. She’s being swept up into her father’s arms, holding a little trophy.
She’s in a bright lab, strapping an older woman to a chair who’s talking brightly, happily. Unconcerned. The clock puts the time at 9:14 p.m.
She sees corridors, and equipment. Jack with his eyes closed.
She’s cradling a baby.
Glowing insects in a tube. Boys playing. Her parents. The village, surrounded by smiling faces.
They’re back in the bright lab. Thea’s screaming into Niema’s face, gesticulating, her face contorted by murderous rage. The memories stop, which is lucky for Emory as she’s about to throw up.
Clara catches her before she falls. ‘What did you see?’
‘Niema,’ says Emory. ‘Abi must have pulled the memories just before she died, but it’s a jumble.’
She goes to the door, sucking in the sea air, until the room stops spinning.
A few moments later, Clara joins her, having used the gem herself with equally upsetting results. ‘Did you get to the end?’ she asks.
‘Thea argued with Niema,’ says Emory. ‘She was furious.’
‘We don’t know when it happened. The memories were jumbled.’
‘Niema was wearing the same clothes she died in, and her hair was done the same way,’ points out Emory. ‘Do you know where they were? I didn’t recognise it.’
‘No,’ says Clara, after thinking about it. ‘I haven’t seen anything on the island that looks that new. Do you think Thea’s responsible?’
‘I’m not sure, but she must have been one of the last people to see her alive. Mind you, Hephaestus has the gem, which puts him near the body. Come on then, let’s finish searching this place before he gets back.’
Emory heads back into the machine room, while Clara rummages half-heartedly through the papers on the desk. She pulls open a drawer, causing a sharp knife to come sliding forward. It has a crude wooden handle wrapped in cord.
Clara’s breath catches in her throat.
She takes it out slowly, turning it around in her hands.
‘Mum,’ she calls out.
‘Yeah,’ replies Emory, from the other room.
‘I’ve found Dad’s knife,’ Clara says hollowly.
Emory arrives at her side, staring at it, dumbstruck. She saw this knife every day for a decade. She remembers the shape of the handle, and that odd chip in the blade that he could never buff out.
He left with it when he went on expedition. He would have been carrying it when he drowned.
FORTY-THREE
They’ve almost reached the village, and the evening sky is ribboned by purple and pink streaks. A storm is blowing over the volcano, the wind whipping their hair, while the first drops of rain lash their faces.
Emory’s oblivious to the worsening weather, and the world at large. She’s sat in the back of the boat, in communion with the knife held in her upturned hands.
Clara’s watching her mother with concern, while trying to ignore the discomfort of the oars rubbing against her raw palms. Emory’s the brashest personality in the village, full of noise and movement, like a skipping stone on a flat sea. Seeing her climb inside herself is unsettling.
‘What are you thinking about?’ asks Clara tentatively.
‘Absolutely nothing,’ says Emory, in a dead voice. ‘And that’s a problem with the fog this close.’
Clara stares past her mother at the horizon. Her entire life the fog’s been a smudge in the distance, a wall around their world, but it’s near enough now that she can see the insects floating inside, their golden glow scattered across the surface of the water.
It’s beautiful, she thinks, shuddering. Do they know what they’re doing? Will they enjoy it?
‘No,’ I say. ‘They’re attracted to the radiation that bodies naturally emit. They’re like me. They were created to do a job. Nobody was interested in them having feelings about it.’
Clara rows their boat onto the beach, the keel scraping up the pebbles. Emory leaps out before it’s settled, almost running towards the gate.
‘Where’s she going?’ asks Clara, alarmed.
‘To confront Hephaestus.’
‘Is that a good idea?’
‘No.’
‘Have you told her that?’
‘Of course I’ve told her that. We need her, Clara. We need her for everything that’s coming, but if this meeting proceeds naturally, she’ll be seriously hurt. Do your best to keep her calm. I’m working another angle.’
Passing through the gate, Clara wades straight into silence.
The communal tables are packed, but everybody’s sunken within themselves, picking at their food. Parents have their children on their laps, while couples hold hands, and friends sit shoulder to shoulder, trying to seal up any spaces where their fear could grow. This is supposed to be a funeral. They should be singing and dancing, and reminiscing. This almost feels disrespectful to the dead.
‘They don’t think we can be saved, do they?’ says Clara, pityingly.
‘Do you?’ I ask.
Clara watches her mother striding towards the lane, almost seeing her for the first time. Under that great mass of hair, she’s smaller than nearly everybody, narrow across the shoulders, with thin arms and legs.
And yet her size doesn’t even occur to Clara when she thinks about her. Her entire life, Emory’s been the biggest personality in every room she’s entered. Where most people were meek and subservient, she was always fearless, forthright and full of energy, like a hornet’s nest that spills questions into the air when struck. She doesn’t stop, and she’s relentless when she thinks she’s right.
But what’s that ever got her?
That’s the niggling doubt in Clara’s thoughts. Under her mother’s bed are more than a dozen notebooks filled with questions. Barely any of them were ever answered. Why should this one be any different?
Clara follows her mother towards the lane, under the twinkling lights of the mourning lanterns, which have been strung between the two wings of the barracks. They needed four ropes to hold the lanterns dedicated to the dead villagers, and nine for Niema’s. The discrepancy makes Clara’s blood boil.
The villagers led kind, selfless lives. Nearly everything they did helped make this place better for other people.
By contrast, Niema ordered the memory wipe that killed them. She experimented on the bodies in the infirmary, and now the fog is closing around the island, because she couldn’t bear to leave anything behind once she was gone.
Niema doesn’t deserve to have more lanterns than the villagers. She doesn’t deserve to have any, at all.
Four steps take Emory and Clara into the lab, where Thea is bent low over the contraption they pulled out of the ocean. She’s using a pair of tweezers to pluck an object from between two bent struts.
Hephaestus is on the floor, his back to the wall, fiddling with the memory extractor like a kid with a new toy. He’s humming a half-forgotten tune that Thea’s obviously enjoying, because her head’s swaying slightly in time.