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Then a car hummed down the road. It slowed near our house, screeched to a halt. Grandpa dropped his broken bits in the garbage and went out the back door. “It's Queenie,” he called to me unnecessarily. I hunted for a dustpan under the counter, bashing my head in the process.

“God fucking damn!” I shouted, then bit my lip. Grandpa and Queenie were talking outside. It was almost five-thirty; I'd have to get a move on with the breakfast. All the time I worked their voices rose and fell, and to my astonishment, Grandpa's laughter. At last I couldn't stand it. Abandoning the omelettes I went out back.

“Everything all right?” Queenie was resplendent in a scarlet polyester pantsuit. “We heard shouting.”

“Just part of my normal wake-up routine,” I said.

Grandpa was holding something in his hands, a small, white, squirming something. Its little, obscenely pink tongue was licking his hand.

“What is that?”

“That,” said Queenie, “is Lily.”

Grandpa looked up, his face shining. “Isn't she pretty?”

He held her out toward me, hands under her little armpits. Her belly was round and pink and naked; she smelled doggy and there was something else, like warm rising dough. The animal suddenly convulsed, and a tiny stream of yellow piss shot out of her and almost hit me. I took a step backward. The piss streamed onto the cracked pavement, steaming in the dawn air. “Yeah, real pretty.” Lily finished peeing, eyed me, and barked. “She hates me already. Animals always hate me.”

“They're good protection,” Queenie said. “You should think of getting a dog.”

“I don't need protection,” I started to say, but the words dried in my throat.

Grandpa shook her gently to make sure she was finished relieving herself, then took her back in his arms and tickled her tummy.

“My Skipper had a litter. This one insisted on coming along for the ride this morning,” Queenie explained.

“Such a pretty girl.
Such
a pretty girl!” said Grandpa.

I looked at him, then back at Queenie. “What have you done with my grandfather?” I demanded. “Where have you stored his brain?”

“Does she like that? Does she like having her tum-tum rubbed, oh, yes!”

“Do you like her?” Queenie asked Grandpa.

“Like her?” I interjected, anger in my voice. “He's acting like an idiot over her!”

“I haven't had a dog since… oh, in years,” Grandpa remarked. “But… I should really think about it. At my age…”

“Your age?” Queenie scoffed. “I'm far older than you and I have dogs!”

“Well, it'd get me out more…”

I turned and stalked inside. “I'm cooking breakfast.”

Grandpa invited Queenie to join us. I cooked omelettes and fried some sausages while they talked dogs. And dogs. And this dog in particular. We ate, Grandpa with Lily on his lap; I couldn't taste a damn thing. When I rose to clear away the dishes, Lily barked and growled.

“Let me do that.” Grandpa waved me off.

“Yes, Ruby, sit a moment,” Queenie said. “I want to read the cards for you.”

“What?”

Queenie started rummaging in her purse, and Grandpa put the plates down on the floor, encouraging Lily to lick them; her tail wagged furiously. “The cards, girl, Queenie's famous for her card reading,” he said. “Haven't you ever heard of the cards?”

“Tarot cards?”

“Goodness, no.” Queenie seemed shocked. “Tarot is for gypsies. Here.” She pulled an ordinary deck out of her purse. “Shuffle them and think about your question.”

“But I don't have a question,” I said.

“Well, ask about your future, then. The next year, say.”

Dubiously I slid the deck out of its box and began shuffling. “Like this?”

“Concentrate. Say, what's going to happen to me this year? There you are.” I finished my awkward shuffling and she said, “Place them face down on the table. I cut them… there.” She started laying out cards, face up, in a cross – revealing a Joker disconsolately riding a bicycle, a Queen of Hearts, a Queen of Spades and a couple of Kings, and some other, faceless cards. “H'm,” she said.

“What, Aunt Queenie?”

“A journey over water for you.”

“Well, that's hardly a surprise.”

“A dark-complected man.”

“Oh, goodie.”

“Not romantic, though. A friend.”

I was disappointed. There wasn't anything wrong with meeting a dark-complected man, was there? “You sure?” I asked, but she was on to the other cards.

“An older woman. She'll look after you. But… a stranger. H'm.”

Grandpa splashed quietly in the sink. “You'll be coming back home at last.

Beginning afresh. Face demons.”

“Oh, great,” I said. “I guess it's about time I face my inner demons.

Right, Grandpa?” He didn't answer. “You're talking about inner demons, right, Aunt Queenie?” She didn't answer either. “Queenie?”

She was gazing at the cards. Her body seemed to shrink, grow smaller and harder, and when next she spoke, her voice was low. “Danger there. Look out for… a visit by a stranger. And… a lost child.”

Silence grew. “Queenie?”

She stirred and raised her head, but it was as if her eyes looked through me.

“Aunt Queenie?” My voice was small like a child's.

“Seven of crows,” she said distinctly.

“Seven of… what?”

She shuddered, seemed to come back. “Oh. Did I say that? I meant spades. Funny I'd say crows,” she said. “Seven of spades means instability. Although birds mean something. Yes. Visits from the dead.”

“Visits from the dead?” My body went cold.

“Birds are special – they can go between the worlds, you see. Gulls are fond of us, and crows, and chickadees, too; such a cheery bird, the chickadee. John, do you remember old Mrs… what was her name? She kept that tame crow, below the bridge she lived now…”

“Oh, my, Mrs. Harvey?”

“Yes, Mrs. Harvey, and that crow could talk, do you remember that?”

“Birds can't talk,” I said. “Except maybe parrots.”

“It'd screech out greetings to anyone who walked by,” Grandpa remembered.

“I think birds can talk if you take the trouble to learn their language,” Queenie said. Lily barked. “Can't trust all birds, though,” Queenie went on. “Pigeons, now, they're a mixed bunch.” I stared at her. “Birds are just like us,” she said. “Good ones and bad ones.” She swept up the cards and tapped them on edge into a tidy deck, placing them back in their box and into her purse. When she looked up, she took in my stricken face and put her hand over mine. “Don't worry, dear,” she said. “Just keep your wits about you, make sure you eat properly and get plenty of rest. Oh, and you'll come into a bit of money through an older man, a friend. That's nice, now, isn't it?”

“Who was the Joker?” I asked.

“The fool on the bicycle? That's you, dear.”

We had to rush to get to the airport in time. I ran upstairs to get my bag, but stopped short in my room, sitting heavily on my bed. Hot tears spilled out of my eyes. I tried to stem the flow – no time, no time! like the White Rabbit. Did I have everything? I remembered the photos I'd stashed in the drawer of the bedside table. I slid them inside my backpack and stood up with an attempt at energy and decision. A moment of standing, unmoving. The pack was strangely weighed down now, so heavy, now. I unzipped the pack and put the photos back in the drawer, then wiped my face on my sleeve, pulled my hair forward over my eyes, and grabbing my jacket went downstairs.

Grandpa and I wasted five minutes squabbling over who would be self-sacrificing and take the back seat of the tiny two-door car; in the end I won and folded myself in with my bag. Grandpa sat in the front with the dog on his lap. All the way to the airport I chattered about nothings in a relentlessly cheery tone. I even cooed over the dog. “Are you going to keep him, Grandpa?”

“Lily's a her,” Queenie said.

“Of course I'm going to keep her,” Grandpa answered.

As we pulled into the airport parking lot, Lily started emitting little percussive, high-pitched woofs.

“Now, now, girl,” Queenie and Grandpa said. Queenie swerved into a parking space.

“Don't worry about coming in. My plane leaves soon,” I said.

We got out of the car and I turned to Queenie. “Thanks for the ride, and the talks, and… everything.”

“My dear.” She folded me in a tight embrace, her thin arms strong around me. “Bless you.”

Grandpa handed Lily to his sister to kiss me goodbye, startling me by smoothing my hair back from my face. “I'm glad you came,” he rasped.

“I'm glad I came too,” I sniffled. I dropped my bag on the pavement and put my arms around him, crying into his shoulder. Finally I pushed myself away. “Shit, I can't stop crying.”

“Language,” said Grandpa.

I picked up my bag and slung it over my shoulder.

“Safe trip.”

“Yeah.” The puppy barked.

I walked toward the entrance, stopping to wave. They waved back. The puppy barked. It occurred to me to wonder how Queenie had known when I was leaving; I hadn't told her, I hadn't told anyone. She stood there, a small flame-coloured figure waving wildly next to her taller, somber brother.

My father never left the Island, not once during his whole life. He said he didn't like the idea of crossing water. “I don't have any reason to leave,” he'd say. I suppose that's the way it used to be for most people, staying close to home. In all the years that make up human history, it's only been the very briefest and latest of moments in which it has become normal to zoom around like maniacs in the sky, crossing huge distances in hours, leaving one reality utterly behind and entering the next. I hate it.

I got through the gate and waited in the featureless holding pen until my flight was called. I had to go outside to get on the plane, leaving as I'd come. On the way across the tarmac I separated a little from the other passengers; they were walking slowly, chattering and laughing. I moved aside and a little ahead of the herd.

As I neared the plane my tired body began to feel mired. It was harder and harder to move forward. The pavement quaked under my feet in slow undulations, like a shaky bog I thought, like there was something vast and liquid underneath. The air was thick, and I couldn't hear for the blood pounding in my ears. My backpack got heavier and heavier until I had to struggle not to bend double with the weight of it. I could see the luggage guys in their blue coveralls, grouped in a little circle at the foot of the plane, facing inwards. It was hard to tell because of the heat shimmers coming off the tarmac, but they all seemed so short, heads big for their bodies. As I got closer they turned toward me, leering, big heads lolling on their necks, eyes small and black and dangerous. One had a bird perched on his shoulder, a pigeon, beady eyes and clawed feet and greasily shining feathers.

Those eyes followed me to the foot of the stairs. The bird flapped its wings and flew up to perch on top of the plane. The blue men grinned; their teeth looked sharp. One of them licked his lips, sending a shiver up my spine.

My hand touched the metal of the stair rail, its cold hardness coursing through me like an electrical shock. I came back to myself, to real time, gripping the rail and clattering as fast as I could up the steps, away. At the top I paused. I could see a half-circle of blue ocean cupped between two purplish-green hills, and a keen, salty wind sent my hair out in dark streamers. I tried to look over the side to see the blue-uniformed men again, to reassure myself. But they seemed to have shrunk even further, crawling like blue babies around the wheels of the plane. The other passengers were pressing behind me now, and a smiling flight attendant beckoned me inside.

I submitted and found my seat – on the aisle, in front of a bulwark. Two b'ys sat next to me, hogging the window, glad to be leaving the Rock and getting back to their homes and jobs in Toronto, they told me. I hadn't asked. Panic was blooming inside me. I tried to see through the window across the aisle: fragments of trees, green grass, hills; no ocean. The plane jolted and lurched as the luggage hurtled into the hold. I pictured the blue-clad men in their circle, grinning as they caressed each suitcase with strange hands, sending each piece of luggage flying into the hold, little people clustered like maggots around the wheels of the plane. The usual jabbering announcements in English followed by spurts of French – we were leaving. Had no one else
seen
? The engines roared. We began to back up; I could feel the wheels bumping over bodies, bump, bump, bump, small corpses in our wake. I found myself at the door of the plane, babbling to the stewardess about having to stop, we were running over the babies.

“What babies?” she said, a hand on my arm, dismay dawning in her eyes. I tore away from her and pressed my face to the window, trying to see out. No men, no babies, no pigeons, just clear pavement and luggage trucks zipping off into the distance driven by perfectly ordinary men.

I turned back to her and lied, “I'm sorry, I'm afraid of flying.”

She offered to sit with me during the takeoff but I said no, I'd be fine.

I went back to my seat, conscious of the eyes of everyone who'd heard my outburst. I put on my seatbelt and screwed my eyes tight shut, knowing they were keeping an uneasy eye on me now and would be until they saw the back of me in Toronto. The plane taxied down the runway, paused as if gathering strength, and raced along to take off. As the ground dropped away – over the roar of the engines – my ears filled with a thousand yammering voices screaming in rage.
Don't you leave me. Don't think you can fly away from me. No. No. No.

CHAPTER 18