David Mitchell - The Cloud Atlas

“Lily?” I sat up on my elbows, and when she didn’t reply, stood up.

When she first touched my hand, I flinched, but then she reached out with her other hand and touched me gently on the chest. I relaxed, and let her take my right hand back in hers.

“People who have lived here their whole lives-white, Yup’ik, Inuit-will tell you the northern lights never make a sound. They did that night. They made a crack, just like that, and they were gone.”

“What happened just now?”

“One of the teachers tried to tell us what the lights really were the next day, like it had something to do with science. But we all knew what the lights really were. Really are: the souls of women who die in childbirth. Suicides. Those who have been murdered. That’s who you see.”

Lily fell silent, and when I looked over a moment later, she was crying. “Who do you see?” I asked.

She didn’t answer. Then she said, “When I first came to Anchorage, there were things I could see, I could hear, there were things I knew , but the longer I’ve been here-it’s flowing away from me. I can feel it.” She ran her hands along her arms. “Here-here.”

“Lily,” I said. “I know why you want the journal. You want to find him.” Lily kept rubbing her forearms. “You want to find Saburo.”

“Saburo,” Lily said. “He’s gone. He’s died,” she whispered. “I know it, or knew it. What I want to find is—”

“Whatever you need,” I said. “I’ll help you.”

Lily looked at me.

“I’ll talk to Gurley when he’s calmed down. I’ll get this transfer canceled or postponed, and I’ll go with you. I’ll help.”

“Tonight,” she said. “We have to leave tonight.”

“Lily.”

She stepped away. “Come with me,” Lily said. “I’d go alone-I should have already gone alone. But I don’t want to. He left something for me, out on the tundra. Something I need to find, to see. Something that’s going to be very hard for me to see. I want a friend with me. I want you, Louis.”

“I want to be there, Lily. It’s just that—”

“Jesus, Louis. If you won’t listen to the real reason, how about this one, since it’s the one you’d believe anyway. I need to use you. I can’t get out of Anchorage, can’t get to Bethel, can’t get into the bush, can’t go anywhere, without permission from the military. The whole state is restricted. You know what it’s like to be a civilian here? A half-breed civilian? Wasn’t so long ago the goddamn officers’ club was off-limits to any girl who wasn’t white.”

She just wanted to use me. I’d fallen, again, for that fiction about friendship and trust and whatever simulacrum of love that offered, and then she’d come out with it. Why she really needed me, then, there. The worst part-for her-was that I couldn’t help. A kid sergeant like myself? Like I’d be allowed to escort a civilian-a “half-breed”-into restricted areas.

Years later, with the benefit, or burden, of knowing all that would happen next, I see that she was right, of course-about everything. About what Saburo left her. About the need to leave that night. About how Anchorage was sapping her. About how she thought of me, first, as a friend, and about how she knew I’d never think that was enough.

What I want now is another chance, just one more chance to live this life over. To make the right choice back when I stepped off that train in San Diego, or all the way back, when I left my mother’s womb for someone else’s arms. To answer the right way when Lily asked a final time, Tonight? , to not hear myself say, I can’t , to not hear her say quietly, I know you can, or knew.

Instead I’m just left with the memory of her drawing close a final time, and picking up my hand, my left. She held it to her mouth, I could feel her breaths, tiny and rapid. She drew her lips along the back of my hand. I leaned forward. But she was already backing away. In two paces, she was gone into the dark, and for a horrible moment, I thought she’d leapt off the rock into the rapids, but then I heard someone, something, beating through the brush.

I followed her, the sound of her, for as long as I could hear her. An hour, longer. I had the right answer for her now.

But by the time the sky had gone light again, I had nothing left to follow. No sound, no sign. The forest floor was a trackless carpet of pine needles. I stopped, looked around. Overhead, I heard the first morning planes in and out of Elmendorf Field. I was about to turn and head back the way I had come when I saw something hanging on a tree. It was a tiny mask of weathered gray wood, no bigger than my palm. The face was simple-two eyes, a nose, a mouth set in a line. A small feather dangled from the chin. I took down the mask and turned it over. Then I lifted it to my face, peered through one of the eyeholes, and saw-another feather? I lowered the mask. Sure enough, not twenty yards away. Not far away, I found another feather, and not far from that, another. They were tiny, and easy to miss, but what they led me to was not. A clearing with a giant boulder in the center like a bull’s-eye.

The balloon had missed its target, though. It dangled from a tall tree nearby, explosive payload intact, the whole mess swaying and creaking with each gust of wind.

The first day, it was still possible. The hospital was just a few hours away, I was sure. I could see it plainly on the map: on the coast of the Bering Sea, just below the mouth of the Yukon. We would make it there in time, the boy would live. We’d used up most of the morphine, but I administered what was left in order to keep him comfortable, especially as we’d soon be in open water. He didn’t like the needle, but he was too tired to cry.

I left most of the gear behind. I hadn’t wanted to waste time packing, and thought the trip ahead would be brief. I avoided portages. I ran the throttle wide open whenever I could and tried to let all that was invisible guide me. I listened; I tried to remember how to concentrate. I prayed. But all that came to me was the roar of the motor and, occasionally, the crying and raving of the boy.

Then the clouds came, at first soft and high above us, then lower and thicker until they surrounded the boat and it was no longer clear which way to go. I looked at the map; it was useless. It showed the land and sea: we needed one for clouds.

We spent a day in those clouds, and then another. And when the mission infirmary materialized around noon that third day, I was more angry than relieved. Never finding it would have meant absolution, that I’d gone in search of something that wasn’t there.

I DID NOT SLEEP HERE LAST NIGHT-I HAD PREPARATIONS to attend to-but it seems as though I missed little. Ronnie is still unconscious.

I thought this morning, when I entered and shouted, “Good morning!” that Ronnie flinched, or raised an eyebrow, but the nurse who was already there saw nothing. I sat with him awhile, and then checked the ward for Friday’s new arrivals.

I eventually returned, greeted Ronnie again-nothing-and sat. I opened my breviary and tried to read, but could not. Ronnie wasn’t flinching, but I was, every time the high hum of another plane finally grew loud enough to reach my hearing. Thursday’s weather had cleared, and long-delayed planes were pouring into Bethel. The bishop, or his emissaries, weren’t due in until late this afternoon, but perhaps they’d decided to play it safe and catch an early flight. Perhaps they’d decided not to come at all.

Could they really take me away from all this? Kidnapping is what it would be. Murder. I can’t breathe Outside. Some attic apartment in a Seattle rectory? A room, way at the end of the hall of some Gonzaga dormitory, in Spokane? No weather or shamans or wilderness to battle? I’d suffocate.