Chapter 40 #3
The door scrapes open and Digger bounds in, tail wagging, happily betraying us as the door behind her fills with the two men from the sailing boat, who are puffing with the exertion of chasing us and turn out to be a man and a woman on closer inspection and I wonder if I can maybe drop the babies safely and dive to get the gun, before they notice it, and they look back at me and their faces are as weather-beaten as their patchwork clothes, but there’s something in their likeness that tells me they are sister and brother, and one more thing that stops me for a moment, just long enough for the girl to see the gun at her feet and stoop to pick it up.
And the thing that stops me for that crucial life changing microsecond is that they look familiar. I haven’t ever seen these strangers from the sea before, but I’ve seen bits of them in another face—
The woman drops the clip out of the gun and jacks the bullet out of the chamber with a look of distaste. She then pockets the clip and squats and puts the gun back on the floor. She seems very calm. She looks up at me with very steady eyes, eyes I have definitely seen before in another face.
I’m Bar, she says. You don’t need that—
She nods at the gun.
We’re not going to hurt you, said the man, white teeth flashing in a beard like a spade.
He’s Ferg, said Bar. Who are you?
I couldn’t speak. Not to them. I felt my legs go and found myself slumping to the ground, sitting in the mess of books with the babies on my knees. I could only look down. Water dropped out of my face and plopped on to a green-covered book about an elephant in a suit.
I’m sorry, Cat, I said, the words somehow so big inside me that it hurt to get them out of my throat. I tried. I really did try. I know you tried too. More than me. Much more. Because you fell. Because the Tower fell on you. I didn’t mean what I said. You’re not useless. You’re just hurt…
More wetness fell on the elephant’s face.
I said the last words so quietly they were almost only in my head.
You’re my only-one.
And you’re mine, Cat said.
I looked up to smile at her.
Who are you talking to? said Bar.
They followed my eyes. There was only a blank wall. I turned and scanned the room.
Who are you looking for? said Ferg.
My sister, I said.
They looked at each other.
Us too, said Bar. I mean our sister. Not yours. But who were you talking to?
She was just here, I said. Cat. I mean—
I took a deep breath, trying to clear my head, trying to get those fragments back in place so I’d be enough of a person to explain to them the thing I was only really just putting together for myself. It was too big for me to do on my own. I shook my head.
I felt a warm and familiar hand slide into mine. A tough little hand, rough-skinned and strong, made for doing things. Like saving everyone. Three squeezes like always. Like the last time. Three squeezes for three words.
I’m always here, said Cat.
She died, I said.
Trying to smile as I finally said it felt like having to lift the heaviest weight in the world.
But I managed to do it. And after that I didn’t have the strength to stand up, but I managed to let them each take a baby because they had Bear Shirt’s kind eyes, and they just sat down beside me on the floor, like we were old friends already, calming the babies and telling me it would be all right, that everything would be all right and we’d just sit there a while and get to know each other.
They had Bear Shirt’s kind eyes. So I let them.
See, little Mouse? said Cat from behind me. You did good, she said.
They couldn’t see her. But I could still feel her hand.
Three squeezes to last me a lifetime.
And of course, I had left Cat’s poor broken body there in the tank.
She hadn’t survived the night of the fire.
It was always my second favourite place to be, and was now somewhere she’d be safe from the animals, with a great view of the world going by.
Hard to be lonely with so much to see once you were finally still enough to notice it.
I’d left her body there, but Cat was and is so much more to me than just a body.
She was my parent, my big sister, my playmate, my teacher, my friend, my love, and for most of my life, my whole world – my only-one.
That’s just too much to fit in one small body.
It’d be enough to make anyone itchy-twitchy, feeling like they’re going to burst. So of course it all came with me instead.
I carried it all every long step of the way, and I still do, because all that might be too much to fit in one body, but the one true bit of magic I do believe in is that a heart is bigger than a body.
In fact, I don’t think a heart has edges. It can be as large as you let it be.
Once upon a time mine just held Cat, at whose side was always my most favourite place to be, no matter where we were.
Then the girls came, then Digger, then the twins, then maybe, perhaps the chance of a whole new family.
Other only-ones. A life not looked for, but given as an unexpected kindness from a supposedly indifferent fate.
A kindness that opened a new and wider world.
But that’s another story.
And I had to cross the sea to get to it.