Mam and Maeve come and go when it suits them, and when I’ve time to think, when they’re away and I’m frightened and lonelier than usual, even, I dream about getting off the island.
I think about it a lot, when I’m on the course, getting through the running or the swim. I wonder could I crawl all the way to the mainland.
I hear, a rare few times, Mam and Maeve talk about the same thing. There are snatches of conversation; there are times there are cracks in their perfect club of two.
I’d rushed through duties and come back to the house, knowing they’d be out on the island gardening, but they were home before me, talking quietly. Wanting to be alone but together, in a way that made me feel lonely.
I can move so quietly; I know the house so well, but even still, I only hear little bits.
“… won’t be able to make sure she’s safe.”
“We’re never safe. The only thing we can do is be prepared, keep up with her training—”
“No, I said.”
“Muireann. Think. If she’s never even seen a skrake, she’ll never know what to do with—”
“You’re telling me to take our twelve-year-old out to fight a skrake!”
“She’s not a child. Think what we were at her age.”
I listen so hard in the silence that out of the corner of my eye, I can see the fabric over my chest shuddering with every heartbeat. My palms are sweaty, hearing them talk like this. They go so quiet, I don’t know whether they’re whispering or only looking at each other crossly, but it’s Maeve that goes on again, her voice so low I nearly can’t hear.
“We have to take her. She won’t learn otherwise. And we’ll be there.”
“She will learn, she is learning—”
“She knows nothing. Compared to … She should be more grateful.”
“But that’s what we brought her here for. A safe life, a better life … the best life—possible…” Mam is louder, as usual, tripping and stopping over her words. “We left so she didn’t have to make the same choices we did, so she wouldn’t be caught the way we were.”
“We left because you were pregnant and you weren’t meant to be.” Maeve’s voice is cold and flat. It’s a warning voice, but Mam goes on.
“For both reasons. For our freedom and hers. And I know, it’s not what we imagined, and we thought we’d have more, and I want to give her more, to show her more, but it’s too much, Maeve, I won’t. Let her have another few years still. Let us.”
“That’s not a safe choice and this isn’t freedom, this is hiding. We need to find more people.”
Crouched in the hallway, I dig my fingernails into my arms and think about going in to them. What is said then is so quiet it’s hard to hear.
“Other people are only a danger—”
“I know, love.” Said with patience and kindness and like she’s heard it before.
Then Maeve says, a bit more quietly, worriedly, “We made ourselves so safe here. We need to move before something happens to us.”
“Out there, something will happen to us. We might be the last ones left,” Mam answers after a minute, and there’s a way that they’re silent together that makes me think they agree about that. “I nearly hope we are. Skrake are only one danger, love.”
“I know that.” So quiet, I barely catch it.
“Even if it’s still standing, would you have her make the same choices we made?”
There’s another silence, and my ears strain through it, and I hear the gentle noise of fabric on fabric and lips on lips. I know they’ve got their arms around each other, and it makes me feel happy and lonesome all at once.
“… you know exactly what I think we should do if one of us gets it.” That’s Maeve. She might have said “bit,” not “it.” Amounts to the same bloody thing, anyway.
Silence again, and I stay listening till it draws out longer than all the other silences and then is filled with the sounds of them going about ordinary things. I hear the clang of the bucket and the sound of the peeler going, and that’s the end of that. I imagine asking them but I don’t, of course I don’t, there’s no point asking them anything at all.
If they’d ask me, which they won’t, but if they did, I’d say Maeve is right. We live in a world ended by skrake, and it’s irresponsible of them not to have introduced me to one yet. If we were on the mainland, it’d be different; we wouldn’t be hiding. I could protect them while they got older. This being something I’d read or thought I’d read or wanted to read, or maybe just dreamed. Just the kind of nonsense children think when they’re safe in their own homes. I think about their words, though, about skrake and about people and, always, about banshees.
That night Mam comes to kiss me in bed. Even though I’m training now, though I’ve been training these five years, she’ll still pretend I’m a child when she’s worried. She brushes my hair back off my forehead, and I close my eyes and fall asleep, happy and loved and feeling as if there is such a thing as safe.