Chapter 48 Last Rites
LAST RITES
Two and a half years later, one sleepy Saturday afternoon found me reclining in a rocking chair in my Montreux apartment.
The air around me smelled of artificial heating from the radiators.
Never before the pandemic did I realise that artificial heating gave off any smell, but it did, if somewhat less pleasant than the smell of wood burning in a lit fireplace.
I was watching the first snowfall of the year from the window: a perfect, white flurry of fluffy snowflakes, swirling over the frozen surface of the Montreux Lake like powdered sugar being shaken onto a pie.
Alex and Danny were playing with their toy cars on a rug in front of the TV.
My rare moment of respite wouldn’t last long.
I had half an hour at most before one of them would start demanding my attention, the other following suit shortly.
I felt a smile tug at the corners of my mouth.
Danny had his back to me, but Alex sat facing me, his dear little face all scrunched up in concentration.
He glanced up at me absent-mindedly, as if looking from afar.
My breath caught in my throat at the familiar gleam in those icy blue eyes, so startling in a toddler and yet so very his, so very belonging to him, the same way the first blossom of the year is simultaneously expected and surprising on a hawthorn tree.
The twins’ hair was still a few shades too light.
But I thought that I could already detect a certain solidness in their shoulders, foretelling perhaps that one day they would grow into giants like their father was.
My heart squeezed tightly at the thought.
Not just with sorrow, but with a love so fierce that it seemed to me impossible to contain it inside of me, and I felt as if it overflowed, filling up the space the three of us occupied.
As far as I could tell, they didn’t take after me at all.
Certainly not in their appearance, but not much in personality either, as far as it was possible to judge so early on.
I was glad for that. I wanted them to be all him.
I wanted my genes to serve as nothing but scaffolding for the manifestation of his.
The TV was on. I almost always kept it on, relishing the luxury.
It only had one channel, which mainly broadcasted news from all parts of the world in English and an occasional movie from before the pandemic.
The volume had been turned down low, but I increased it once I saw the images on the screen.
Old footage from some travel documentary, no doubt, of glaciers and volcanoes, the land of ice and fire. Iceland.
A reporter appeared on the screen. She looked nothing like the reporters of the past; she had no make-up on, and her mousy hair was up in a messy bun. Her teeth were markedly yellow.
“It has now been confirmed that the virus’s origin can be traced to melting glaciers, which led to the release and revival of an ancient virus that had been dormant for millennia.
This virus, LSC-312, in its original form, likely caused little to no symptoms in humans.
However, rapid, subsequent mutations and most notably crossing with Lyssavirus, the virus responsible for rabies, turned it into the disease we know now.
These findings align with what we know about individuals immune to the modern form of the virus, as immunity has been observed almost exclusively in persons residing in Arctic or sub-Arctic areas who had been exposed to the older, harmless virus strands . ..”
Sensing my own excitement, the twins abandoned their toys and looked up at the TV with their plump pink mouths slightly agape.
“Well, what do you know,” I told them incredulously, “Daddy was right all along, wasn’t he?”
Five years had gone by in a heartbeat.
My sons’ hands in each of my own, the three of us crossed the Royal Mile of Edinburgh, crowded with spectators of the renewed Fringe Festival, the cheerful mob laughing and clapping as kilted men swallowed fire or pranced around on stilts.
Feet galloping uphill on the slightly uneven cobblestones, we were headed to my favourite, family-friendly pub.
It was the first to reopen in the post-pandemic era, assuming the optimistic name of ‘New Hope’. Dave and Kevin were meeting us there.
I had moved my little family to Scotland at the same time they relocated back to London.
Dave teased me unceasingly about coming there to ‘chase ghosts,’ but they both still visited me as often as possible, despite the fact that Scotland had become a separate country and they needed a ‘visa to visit bloody Edinburgh of all places’.
“Mum, what’s it called again?” Alex asked, eyeing his plate with distrust some moments later.
“Sticky toffee pudding, darling,” I told him. “It used to be your daddy’s favourite.”
“Sickly coffee pudding.” Danny laughed, jesting.
“Stiffy cocky pudding,” Alex joined in.
“Well, if you two don’t want it, I’m sure your uncles would be more than interested ...”
I made to pull the sweets away from them across the shiny table surface.
“Nooo ...” they protested in unison, hands gripping the sauce-free edges of the plates.
Almost everything in the pub was made of polished dark oak: the walls, the floors, the window booth we sat in, and the bustling bar with its dozen beer taps. Most were only remnants of days long past, since only two kinds of beer were available.
“Is it true?” I asked Kevin quietly once the twins seemed sufficiently occupied with their puddings. “Have you found the cure?”
“Not me.” He scoffed modestly. “I am nothing but a cog. But the Institute did, if that’s what you’re asking.
Although it’s technically not a cure. It’s an antiviral drug that suppresses the virus to levels undetectable in blood.
Not unlike HIV meds, for instance. We’re in late stages of human trials. ”
“Well, I’ll be damned.” The breath caught in my throat, and I exhaled heavily. “My chin nearly hit the floor when I heard that on the news.”
“Living here has done wonders for your English, hun.” Dave chuckled approvingly, taking a large sip of his pint. “You’re actually starting to sound like a person from this century.”
I only made a face at him in response instead of just telling him to shove it, which no doubt would have been met with an even more gleeful approval.
“You do work with them though, right?” I asked Kevin, leaning closer to him as I propped my elbows on the smooth surface of the table. “You check their blood levels and whatnot?”
“Yes. Part of what I do these days,” he admitted with a certain reluctance.
“Do they remember what it was like, being furies?”
“Some of it.” He pushed his new glasses up his nose, plastic ones with square black rims that made me do a double-take each time I looked at his face. “But they say it’s like remembering a nightmare. Most of it is very blurry and confused.”
“Small blessings, I guess,” Dave remarked. “Imagine remembering that you feasted on the innards of your friend or a family member.”
“Right?” I shook my head in disbelief. “How do you live with that? Even if the memories were hazy, I’m still not sure I would have wanted to.”
“Same way we live with what we’ve done, I suppose. Still, some struggle,” Kevin allowed with a pained expression. “Like this young mother we work with who ... uhm, ate her baby when she turned. Sadly, she does remember more than most ...”
“God!”
“But most of them can recover with therapy and have meaningful lives. Which got me thinking.” Kevin’s voice was almost a whisper, barely audible above the pub’s bustle. “Would we have done what we did if we had known a cure was possible in our lifetime?”
We all sighed heavily.
Memories of Finlay’s and Petr’s faces invaded my mind, lingering even as I tried urgently to push them away. So did the memories of countless other faces.
“We did what we had to do to survive,” I replied with insistence so hard that my teeth nearly broke on it. “Uninfected lives had to take priority, or else we wouldn’t have made it.”
“Oh, I don’t know, Renny, dear.” Dave took another long sip before continuing in a voice that was unusual for him, low and strained and humourless.
“Priority is one thing. Acting as if infected lives didn’t matter at all is another.
Let’s be honest, hun, I think he made us do a lot more than was strictly speaking necessary to survive. ”
I was reluctant to dignify that with an answer, not wanting to get into a discussion we had had countless times before.
We sat lost in silence for a few moments, the twins far too occupied by licking their plates clean to make much noise.
We had a view of the stately Edinburgh Castle from where we sat, and I marvelled at the passive endurance of the weathered stone.
Perched gloomily atop Castle Hill, with its walls both rounded and angular, it resembled a dragon that had lain down to rest and observe, wings pulled close to its scaly body.
And what hadn’t it seen: burning of witches, processions of royalty and prisoners, enemy attacks.
More recently, it had witnessed a near collapse of its creators and remained unmarked by it, indifferent to it even.
Looking at it, I felt a connection to all the decades and centuries of human destiny that it had observed in silence.
And to one human in particular, who had once gazed upon the stony facade with his icy blue eyes.
I imagined that the trace of Scottish accent would have been stronger in his voice then than when I knew him.
What would he have said to all those accusations?
I only knew that he would have had an answer, but I did not know what that answer would have been.