The Bone Clocks

“Yes, please.” Lorelei goes to the little box shrine and opens up its front. The photo shows Aoife and Цrvar and a ten-year-old Lorelei, against the background of a dig at L’Anse aux Meadows. It was taken in spring of 2038, the year they died, but its greens and yellows are already fading and the blues and magentas blotting. I’d pay a lot for a reprint but there’s no power or ink cartridges to print one, and no original to make a reprint from; my feckless generation trusted our memories to the Net, so the ’39 Crash was like a collective stroke.

“Gran?” She’s looking at me like my mind’s gone walkabout.

“Sorry, love, I was, um …” Often, there are just blanks.

“Where’s the tin with the incense sticks?”

“Oh. I tidied it up. Put it somewhere safe. Um …” Is this happening more these days? “The tin, above the stove.”

Lorelei lights the new incense stick at the stove, then blows out the tiny flame. She crosses the kitchen, placing the stick in the holder in the little shrine. On the ledge are a Roman coin, which Aoife gave to Lorelei, and an old windup watch Цrvar inherited from his grandfather. We watch the sandalwood smoke unthread itself from the glowing tip. Sandalwood, yet another old-world scent. The first year we did this, I’d prepared a prayer and a poem, but I started weeping so uncontrollably that I appalled Lorelei; since then we’ve tacitly agreed that we just stand here for a little while and sort of be alone together with our memories. I remember waving them off at Cork airport five years ago—the last year that ordinary people could buy diesel, drive cars, and fly, though ticket prices were spiraling through the roof, and they couldn’t have gone if the Australian government hadn’t paid Цrvar’s way. Aoife went to see her aunt Sharon and uncle Peter, who’d moved out there in the late twenties and who I hope are still alive and well in Byron Bay, but there’ve been no news-threads to—and precious little information from—Australia for eighteen months. How easily, how instantly we used to message anyone, anywhere on earth. Lorelei holds my hand. She would’ve gone with her parents if she hadn’t been getting over chicken pox, so Aoife and Цrvar drove her here from Dublin, where they were living that year. A fortnight with Grandma Holly was the consolation prize.

Five years later, I take a deep, shuddery breath to stop myself crying. It’s not just that I can’t hold Aoife again, it’s everything: It’s grief for the regions we deadlanded, the ice caps we melted, the Gulf Stream we redirected, the rivers we drained, the coasts we flooded, the lakes we choked with crap, the seas we killed, the species we drove to extinction, the pollinators we wiped out, the oil we squandered, the drugs we rendered impotent, the comforting liars we voted into office—all so we didn’t have to change our cozy lifestyles. People talk about the Endarkenment like our ancestors talked about the Black Death, as if it’s an act of God. But we summoned it, with every tank of oil we burned our way through. My generation were diners stuffing ourselves senseless at the Restaurant of the Earth’s Riches knowing—while denying—that we’d be doing a runner and leaving our grandchildren a tab that can never be paid.

“I’m so sorry, Lol.” I sigh, looking around for a box of tissues before remembering our world no longer has tissues.

“It’s all right, Gran. It’s good to remember Mum and Dad.”

Upstairs, Rafiq is hopping along the landing—probably pulling on a sock—as he sings in hybrid Mandlish. Chinese bands are as cool to kids in the Cordon as American New Wave bands were to me.

“We’re luckier, in a way,” Lorelei says quietly. “Mum and Dad didn’t … Y’know, it was all over so quickly, and they had each other, and at least we know what happened. But for Raf …”

I look at Aoife and Цrvar. “They’d be so proud of you, Lol.”

Then Rafiq appears at the top of the stairs. “Is there any honey for the porridge, Lol? Morning, Holly, by the way.”

SCHOOL BAGS PACKED, lunches stowed, Lorelei’s hair braided, Rafiq’s insulin pump checked and his blue tie—the last vestige of a uniform the school at Kilcrannog can reasonably insist on—done again and redone, we set off up the track. Caher Mountain, whose southern face I’ve looked at in all seasons, all weathers, and all moods nearly every day over the last twenty-five years, rises ahead. Cloud shadows slide over its heathered, rocky, gorse-patched higher slopes. Lower down is a five-acre plantation of Monterey pines. I push the big pram that was already a museum piece when me and Sharon used to play with it during summer holidays here in the late seventies.