The episodes always begin the same way, with a strange look in Kira’s eyes and that twist of her mouth. Everyone says they’re a symptom of her condition, an intermittent twinge of paralysis. “Watch for changes,” Mom said, “but don’t be afraid. Just write it down, record everything.”
It’s early January now, a month since we arrived in England. Christmas was a blur of torn paper and scraps of twirled ribbon. Gifts grabbed last-minute from Oxfam to replace things we left behind.
And now this. Aunt Irene has driven us out to Bunkers Hill, a little nothing stretch of road twenty minutes north of where we live. Kira’s wearing oversized rubber boots, the thinness of her body hidden by a waterproof jacket, her small hands in ratty purple mittens. She trudges gracelessly ahead of us on the opposite side of the road. It’s just the three of us today, Mom absent again because of another meeting with the specialists at the Centre where she’s been taking Kira for treatment. When she left this morning I could tell she wasn’t expecting good news.
So we’re still doing our best at make-believe. Aunt Irene suggested a trip to the countryside, and here we are—just outside Oxford, a place I’d only heard about in stories. I’m surrounded by a tangle of green, gappy hedgerows of hawthorn and blackberry scrub. My aunt has been pointing out features of the new landscape to us: early blooming irises, nettle husks that still sting if you brush them with bare hands, jack snipes, chaffinches, all the other birds I don’t recognize yet. The air is milder than it would be back in Toronto this time of year, the wind more like breath. Flowers in January.
On the right is a row of terrace houses, most of them showing signs of abandonment. In front of me an inflatable snowman lists to the side, sagging and dingy. A walnut tree has dropped a branch as thick as my wrist into a tangle of clothes line. Just before Christmas the River Cherwell broke its banks and flooded this area, prompting a temporary evacuation. The water has drained into ditches and culverts but most of the families still haven’t come back. Maybe they never will.
Storms have been worsening everywhere. In the airport before we left Mom couldn’t tear her eyes away from the monitors, watching the presenters go on and on about the devastation. All over England, rivers have been breaking their banks, or trying to, only held in check by levees and diversion canals. Whole villages in the south have vanished and in Wales the flooding has stripped away the peat, leaving behind ancient animal bones—bears, red deer and aurochs, things that have been extinct for hundreds of years.
“Do you really think it’ll be better for us in England?” I’d wanted to know.
“It’s for your sister, Feef,” she’d said tiredly. “Your aunt said they’ll be able to help her. And it’s only for a little while.”
Kira coughs hoarsely into her fist, another sign of trouble, and her medical ID bracelet jingles. She showed it off like it was a charm bracelet when her clinician first gave it to her, twisting it this way and that in the light. Now she usually keeps it hidden. KIRA PERELLA – JUVENILE IDIOPATHIC IMMUNODEFICIENCY SYNDROME.
“Should we go back?” Aunt Irene asks. There’s a muscle over her left eye that starts to jump when she’s worried. Mom has the same twitch.
I shake my head, watching Kira. “Let’s wait.”
Kira plods along the road, stiff-kneed, ignoring us. She sets one foot in front of the other, walking an imaginary tightrope, toe pointed. Then she points to her right, squinting into the distance. “What’s that?”
Through the tangle of hedges and brown brambles I see what caught Kira’s attention. The silhouette of a tower, at least a hundred feet tall, jutting into the sky. “Well spotted,” Aunt Irene says, smiling. “That’s the old Cherwell cement works. It’s been empty for a good while now. That was the chimney, I think? There used to be all sorts of other machinery around it, and flues for separating the hot gases from the kilns. You can just see the quarry lake from here. I imagine it’s drenched down there right now. I used to…” She shades her eyes with her hands. “There was a man I knew who worked at that site, a quarry engineer who sometimes did freelance work assessing dig sites for the School of Archaeology. We went for walks around here.”
A trace of emotion crosses her face but I don’t say anything. I always used to ask Mom about her life before I was born, old boyfriends, how things were when she was my age. Not so much now.
Before Kira got sick all I could talk about was university. I spent late nights at Jaina Heymann’s place, she and I flipping through course catalogues together, looking at media studies or English, maybe journalism. It all seemed within easy reach. Now there’s a painful squeeze in my chest when I think about how my future was supposed to be. Mom’s trawling for a sixth form college here that will take me at short notice. A whole new system with A-level exams in the late spring I’ll need to pass.
I take a breath and let it out slowly but the ache is still there.
“I thought it was, you know, like a castle. Mom said there would be castles around here.” Kira stares at the tower, tugging off her mittens.
“Not here, Kiki,” I tell her. “She just meant in England.”
Her grey eyes narrow. “She said here.”
“I’ll show you a castle,” Aunt Irene says. “In the summer we can all go to Warwickshire. There’s a proper castle near where your cousins live, much older. The cement works was built in the twenties.” She grins at me conspiratorially. I like her like this.
If Mom’s around Aunt Irene is different, more careful—with Kira especially. I don’t think she’s used to kids anymore. Before Kira was born, she took a sabbatical year in Toronto and she visited us all the time. I still remember her distracted kindness, the beat-up guitar she gave me when she thought I might be musical, her encouragement even when the lessons didn’t take. She was always reading, and she infected me with her love of stories. If she was sitting at the breakfast table she’d read the ingredients on the Rice Krispies box aloud. It used to drive Dad crazy.
I keep quiet. I love the smell of damp stones and moss, the minty musk of nettles. Ivy crawls over every surface, trees and fences and brickwork. All these houses will disappear eventually and no one will miss them. For some reason it feels good to me, being in a place so close to being forgotten.
“Promise?”
A horn from a distant riverboat sounds and all at once the sky is filled with birds.
“Starlings,” Aunt Irene cries out. “Look!”
They take to the air making a fantastic noise. Where did they come from? I hadn’t seen them on the trees, or I hadn’t understood what they were. Just leaves, dead things.
Kira fumbles for my hand. There are moments like this when everything feels the way it used to. I glance at her and she smiles, a brief resurgence of her old self. The strange look in her eyes is gone and I wonder if maybe I imagined it. Still, she’s pale and a blue vein glows at her temple.
“Hey now, kiddo.” I give her hand a squeeze. “How’re you holding up?”
Her eyes are still fixed on the birds, watching the flock twist itself into complicated patterns and ghostly shapes, almost recognizable.
“Maybe it’s time to go home,” she says.
Home. I wish it were as easy as that.