Page 107

Papa stands by the back bumper. Moonlight floats in his eyes. I catch a waft of him – stale tobacco, unwashed clothes – and wrinkle my nose. Usually, the smell wouldn’t bother me, but in the last few days I’ve taken baths and showers, used deodorant and toothpaste, all sorts of nice things.
‘You broke the rules,’ he says. ‘Not just once, but twice. Youestrangedyourself. Say you understand.’
‘Papa, I—’
‘Say you understand.’
‘I understand.’
‘Out.’
I expected him to be cross, but there’s a tonelessness to his speech that alarms me. This isn’t at all the reunion I imagined. Sliding towards the rear doors, I jump down on to grass. The wind whips away Papa’s stink, replacing it with ocean salt.
Some distance away, I hear the muted crash of waves. We’re on a slope, close to a cliff edge. Far below, reaching all the way to the horizon, lies indigo sea. The moon has launched a fleet of white schooners across its surface.
Above me, stars too numerous to count stud the heavens.
‘Where are we?’
Ignoring my question, Papa slams the rear doors. When I turn my head I spot a squat stone shack at the top of the slope. Its corrugated-iron roof lifts and groans in the wind. Firelight glows at a window. Woodsmoke flutters from a tin chimney. Along the left wall stands a rickety lean-to shed, its timbers silvered by moonlight. Walking down the grassy slope towards us is Magic Annie.
V
She’s dressed, tonight, as Kamali, my spirit guide. Over her Cowichan sweater, with its bold silhouettes of mountain bears, she wears her necklace of turquoise stones. On her feet are her favourite buffalo-skin moccasins.
Her face crinkles like parchment paper when she sees me. I can smell her perfume, mingling with the thin smoke of her cheroot.
‘I thought we’d tamed you,’ she says, coming close. ‘And all along, you were a little streak of cancer, biding your time.’
‘Kamali—’
‘Uh-uh,’ she snaps. ‘That name is dead. You burned it up, same as everything else, in that fire you set.’
‘It wasn’t me, Annie. I never—’
‘Yes, it was. Or might as well have been. And now we got to start all over. Our time of life, that’s not something we relish.’ Her lips shrink from her nicotine-browned teeth. ‘Why’d you come back?’
‘Because there’s nowhere—’
‘Face on every newspaper, on every TV. Wholeworldwants to hear aboutyou, doesn’t it? What happened? All get too much?’
‘I just want things to go back to the way they were.’
The moonlight has bleached away all colour, leaving Annie as haggard as stone.Ocean Eyes, I used to call her. Right now, those eyes are blank windows, utterly lacking in humanity.
‘Here,’ she says, pressing a hessian sack against my chest. ‘Put it on.’
‘Annie, please. You don’t have to—’
Behind me, Papa drives his fist into my kidney. I sink to my knees, mouth opening and closing like I’m a fish hooked from the sea. The pain is crippling.
Somehow, I drag the sack over my head. The wind blows, flapping the fabric against my face. My nose fills with the stink of rotten onions. Annie grabs my wrist and pulls me forwards.
Is this how my life ends? A short walk with my former spirit guide, followed by a long plunge over a cliff edge?
Annie wheezes as she climbs. A minute later we come to a halt. I stand beside her, wondering whether my next step will lead me inside the shack or over a three-hundred-foot drop. Around us, the wind snaps and moans.
Something jangles at my side. I screw up my face. Annie puts her hand in the centre of my back and shoves.