David Mitchell - The Cloud Atlas

“I didn’t say anything,” I said, looking down to find my hands uncovered.

“Not a thing,” Lily said, expectant.

“I have to go,” I said.

“So soon?” she said. She waited a moment, and then appeared to make up her mind.

“Lily, you can’t tell any one,” I said. “You have to swear.”

She waited a moment, then smiled.

“You came in with a question,” she said. “Now, I have an answer.”

She leaned over, put her lips to my ear. I swear she kissed me. I felt the brush of a touch, a breath, and when I looked up, she was standing by me, smiling, and then leaving.

It was a fine way to deliver a secret, because I heard nothing, not then. Oh, she’d whispered the name of the place-Shuyak-but I didn’t realize that, not until later. At that moment, I was consumed with the way her breath found my ear, the way her face grazed my hair, the way her lips were moving- Shu-yak -so that it felt like (it must have looked like) a kiss. Even now, when I say the name of that place- Shu-yak -when I’m lonely or nostalgic or some unrelenting, everlasting Alaskan summer twilight has me pinned, sleepless, to the sheets, I can give myself chills when that first syllable, that sh , draws my lips forward, just so, like lips set to kiss.

When I came to, she was gone, the counterman was gone. Al that remained was the bill, which I paid, and the whispered word, which started echoing in my head, louder and louder, as I made my way back to base.

The boy would have survived had Lily been with us. I knew that the morning of the second day, which would be our last with adequate food, water, and fuel. The day before, we’d picked our way west through the delta in dense fog. I had no idea we’d made the Bering Sea until I realized I couldn’t smell the tundra’s mud and grass, just water and salt. I turned north. I had a map; it showed a tiny Red Cross symbol near a mission settlement just up the coast. I had a map, but Lily would have known a better, mapless route. She would have gotten us where we needed to go.

And she could have told me more about the boy. I wanted to know his name, his real name. I wanted to know what chain of events had left him in my care. When he was awake, he looked at me with fear and barely spoke. When he was asleep-and he seemed to sleep, or slip from consciousness, more and more-he would often shout and screech, delirious. Sometimes it sounded like words, sometimes notes of music, high and thin.

If he lay silent for too long I noticed that the seabirds-they looked more eagle than gull-would float down closer to us. If they got too close, I would bark and yell. Sometimes that was enough to get the boy raving again. But it was never enough to get him to open his eyes, fix them on me, and tell his story.

THURSDAY. RONNIE HAS SURVIVED FOR AN ENTIRE DAY, and so have I. Maybe it’s not right to compare our conditions? But in some ways mine is more dire: he’s only dying, whereas I’m being asked to live out my days Outside, divorced from my Alaskan life.

Having been through extended hospital stays a half dozen times before with Ronnie, though, I can tell you what the second day is like: busy, hopeful, anxious. There is still some carryover of that day-one-type relief- he got here in time! -that’s usually counterbalanced by day-two anxiety: what’s really wrong? There are other milestones, like day six, when you realize, it’s only a night away from an entire week; surely that’s not a good sign. And then, of course, there’s the Last Day, which is always a surprise.

But today’s surprise arrived shortly after breakfast. Ronnie awoke. Or, as he put it, returned.

His eyes opened, slowly, and he scanned the room. Then he found me. We watched each other silently for a full minute, maybe more.

“They thought you were in a coma,” I said at last. “Not a ‘classic coma,’ mind you.” Ronnie considered this a moment; he was still coming to. Then he rolled his eyes, coughed, and declared he was hungry. I handed over several items I’d gotten from the vending machines for my breakfast, and he devoured them as he explained where he’d been.

“Not a coma,” he said, shaking his head. “The ocean,” he declared, and then asked for my coffee. I handed him the cup. “I’ve been to the bottom of the ocean. Here and there. I went to where the seals live, the whales.”

“They send their best?” I asked. This wasn’t the first time that Ronnie had told me he’d “traveled.” While the rest of the world thought he’d passed out in a bar or fallen into a semi-coma in a hospital, Ronnie would later claim that he had been swimming to the depths of the sea, or summiting the sky, en route to the moon. Shamans were known for such journeys; and indeed, they resembled comas. Long ago, the angalkuq would gather everyone in the qasgiq , a village’s largest building, which served as both the men’s quarters and communal hall. He (not always, but usually a he) would lie in the center of the floor, often bound. Sometimes the light would be extinguished, and witnesses would be left to deduce what was happening from the sounds they heard. Loud grunts, a struggle, then quieter and quieter as the angalkuq flew farther away, then loud again once he’d returned, perhaps with a crash or thump. Sometimes the angalkuq would narrate the journey, other times detail it upon his return.

Ronnie only ever spoke upon his return, and his accounts were so fanciful I ascribed them to spirits more alcoholic than otherworldly. One time, I was sure Ronnie was plagiarizing the plot of a Disney movie that had recently played at the library. (We’d all seen it, every one of us: it was an actual, first-run movie , after all.) But then, I’d fallen asleep halfway through the movie myself. I was no more judge of what was real than Ronnie.

This time, though, was different. He ignored my crack about the seals sending greetings and instead spoke rapidly: “I saw the boy,” he said. “I saw him.” He looked both excited and nervous. “Not the mother. Did you see her? There’s a mother in the story. I can’t remember. I can’t remember if she’s there.” He raised the cup I’d given him. “It’s the coffee. Caffeine. This is a drug. I am telling you this.”

“I’d blame alcohol, Ronnie,” I said. “Demon rum.”

But he had already handed the cup back to me. “Wait here,” he said. “I’ll be right back. Tell you what I find.” He lay back, closed his eyes, and then jerked awake. “The wolf, Louis-you’ll watch for him.” He extended a hand toward me-hard to imagine, Ronnie actually reaching for help, for me-but as he fell back, I slipped out of his grasp.

I didn’t move to pick his hand back up. Because maybe he was traveling. I didn’t want to hold him back. I didn’t want to be dragged any further out of my world, away from my God. Maybe that’s it. Or maybe it’s just that I didn’t want to feel the wolf’s teeth sinking into my hand.

What’s the difference, anyway, between what Ronnie is doing- slipping in and out of consciousness, traveling from one world to another-and my falling asleep? My dreaming of flight, and then recounting my banal dream after I awake? I don’t know. I don’t dream of flying. I did it once, really did it, just me and my arms and legs and the air, and I’ve never wanted to do it again.

IT WAS LATE WHEN I got back on base after my dinner with Lily. Something-or everything-about my “goodbye” dinner with Lily made me desperate to talk with someone, even Father Pabich, though he would probably have treated the whole matter as something worthy of confession.