Acceptance(22)

So, instead, he shoved his hand into his jacket pocket from time to time, clenched his fist around his father’s carving, taken from the mantel in the little house on the hill in Hedley. The smooth lines of it, the way the grain of the wood under the paint threatened a splinter, soothed him. A carving of a cat, chosen to remind him of long-lost Chorry, no doubt blissfully hunting rats among the bushes.

So, instead, he dove, resentful at their pull, into reexamining over and over his rescued Whitby pages, the “terroir pages,” although they were more personal than that. An anchor, a bridge to his memory of the rest of the manuscript, lost at sea. If he used those pages to talk to Ghost Bird, it was in part to bring relief or distraction from the closeness of her and the way that the endless reeds, the fresh air, the blue sky, all conspired to make the real world remote, unimportant, a dream. When it was the most important thing.

Somewhere back there his mother was fighting for her career at Central, that act synonymous with fighting against the encroachment of Area X. Somewhere, too, new fronts had opened up, Area X expanding in ways that might not even match its prior characteristics. How could he know? Planes might be falling from the skies, this non-mission, this following of his, already a failure.

Quoting Whitby’s report as he remembered it, paraphrasing: “Had they, in fact, passed judgment without a trial? Decided there could be no treaty or negotiation?”

“That might be closer to the truth, to a kind of truth,” Ghost Bird replied. It was now early afternoon and the sky had become a deeper blue with long narrow clouds sliding across it. The marsh was alive with rustlings and birdsong.

“Condemned by an alien jury,” Control said.

“Not likely. Indifference.”

“He covers that, too: ‘Would that not be the final humbling of the human condition? That the trees and birds, the fox and the rabbit, the wolf and the deer … reach a point at which they do not even notice us, as we are transformed.’” Another half-remembered phrasing, the real becoming half real. But his father had never valued authenticity so much as boldness of expression.

“See that deer over there, beyond the canal? She’s definitely noticing us.”

“Is she noticing us or is she noticing us?”

Either scenario might have horrified his mother the spy, who had never gotten along with nature. No one in his family had, not really. He couldn’t remember any real outings into the woods, just fishing around lakes and sitting by fireplaces in cabins during the winter. Had he ever even been lost before?

“Pretend the former since we can’t do anything about the latter.”

“Or this,” Control said. “Or this: ‘Or are we back in time, some creature or impulse from the past replenishing us as we grind to a halt.’”

“A stupid thing to say,” Ghost Bird said, unable to resist the bait. “Natural places are no different than human cities. The old exists next to the new. Invasive species integrate with or push out native species. The landscape you see around you is the same as seeing an old cathedral next to a skyscraper. You don’t believe this crap, do you?”

He gave her what he hoped was a defiant expression, one that didn’t hint at how he had begun to doubt Whitby even as he continued to recite the gospel of Whitby. He had held back the quotes that might lead to something more substantial so he could think on them a little longer, contaminate them with his own opinions.

“I’m trying to separate out the pointless from the useful. I’m trying to make some progress as we trudge on over to the island.” Unable to avoid infusing the word island with venom. Grandpa Jack would’ve felt the same about the island, would be restless and pushing, for all the good it would’ve done against Ghost Bird.

“Did any expedition ever make it to the island?” she asked, Control recognizing her attempt at deflection.

“If they did, nothing came back to the Southern Reach about it,” he said. “It wasn’t a priority.” Perhaps too much else to wonder about.

“Why all the focus on the lighthouse, the topographical anomaly, and not the island?”

“You’d have to ask the former director about that. Or you’d have to ask Lowry.”

“I never met Lowry,” she said, as if this disproved his existence.

Truth was, Lowry sounded unreal to Control when he said the name in this place. But Lowry also resisted being cast aside, disregarded, kept floating there at the edges of his vision like some majestic, demonic dust mote. Manifesting every time he worried he might still be on a mission that had lodged so deep inside his skull he couldn’t draw it out. Unknown commands, messages, imperatives, impulses that were not his own, that could be activated by others.