besides nobody tells me anything anyway.’ She sighed and looked into the flames. ‘No, it is as Elise feared it would happen.’
‘Elise—you mean Dr Nyström?’
‘Of course.’
‘What was it she feared?’
‘You are aware that our improvements’—the word was spoken as if it was being held up for inspection—‘over humans are as much about what was taken away as what was given?’
‘Yes. Certain traits were muted.’
She gave a half-smile.
‘Yes, I like that word. We are just as much a muting as we are a mutation. Well, Elise’s fear was that these muted qualities might only last for as long as they were required. She believed that there was nothing to prevent them from returning, once the erta had fulfilled their—’
‘Purpose.’
Oonagh turned from the fire. ‘Was she right?’
‘That would account for it.’
‘Then death will not be quelled, and neither too will life. Why are you here, Ima? Why do you ask these questions?’
I hesitated. I did not want to tell her about you, not yet, for I was still not sure I trusted her any more than I trusted them.
‘I am here because I believe I have been lied to. And I am asking you these questions because I want to know the truth.’
‘Then why not ask your mother?’
‘I cannot.’
‘Yes.’ Her eyes flicked around me like insects. ‘The truth is a luxury few children receive from their parents.’
I looked away at this, exposed. Suddenly all I could think of was you alone outside in the blizzard. How long would it be before a lantern found you?
‘I should not have come, I am sorry.’
I stood and hurried for the door.
‘You’re nothing like her, you know.’
I froze midway across the room. Turning, I saw Oonagh’s frail silhouette standing against the fire.
‘What?’
She walked towards me and stood, resting upon her stick.
‘Kai, your mother. You’re oceans apart. Mind you, that should come as no surprise. She was never like me either; I made sure of it.’
‘What do you mean?’
She looked away, her expression suddenly haunted by a memory.
‘I only wanted to please her, to help her.’ She fumbled with her stick. ‘I never thought… never expected that they would… You have to understand…’
‘Oonagh, please, tell me what happened.’
She stopped and looked up, fingers folding and unfolding over her stick. Finally she gave me a glum nod.
‘Follow me.’
OONAGH LED ME to a far corner, where she pulled a lamp from the wall—an ancient gas-powered contraption that spluttered and roared when she lit it—and held it above a dusty table strewn with papers. She rummaged among them, finally pulling out a small square of paper which she held to the light.
‘Have you ever seen one of these?’ she said. ‘It’s a photograph.’
I peered at the faded image. It was of three humans—a male and female adult and a female child. They were smiling, happy, standing in sunlight at the edge of a lake. The child was wearing sunglasses in the shape of stars, and presenting a small fish which I assume she had just caught. Clouds scudded across an endless blue sky.
‘If you ever find yourself wondering how it is you exist,’ said Oonagh, ‘then here is your answer.’
‘Who is it?’
I passed the photograph back to Oonagh, and she studied it with affection.
‘The child is Dr Elise Nyström, and those are her parents. It was taken in 2017, when she was eight.’
‘I already know how Dr Nyström created us.’
‘You know how she created us, but not why.’ She turned the photograph this way and that, as if scanning it for new clues, or shadows she had not seen before. ‘Elise used to say that you were never truly free until your parents were gone. Before then you were a perpetual child, forever chained to their bedtime stories, the fictions they had fed you in order to make sense of the world. Fictions about you, about them. About the world.’ She glanced at me. ‘If you were lucky enough to have such parents, of course. Many were not, sadly.’
She gazed back at the photograph.
‘But Elise was. She had no brothers or sisters, just two happy parents who loved each other and her. They had a warm house with a constant flow of visitors and parties, they played with her as often as they could, gave her an excellent schooling but never spoiled her, took her on camping trips where they lay on their backs and talked into the night about stars and planets, fed her imagination day after day, and comforted her when she had nightmares. She grew up believing