Page 7 of Our Last Echoes


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“Just one I grabbed from Facebook,” Lily said.

“They’re nice photos,” I supplied.

“Probably not very accurate, then,” Kenny said with a laugh. “We’re usually bedraggled, muddy, exhausted, or all three at once. You can identify a LARC employee by the dark circles under our eyes and the stray feathers tucked in odd places.” He leaned back in his chair and waved at us to take our seats. The chair creakedalarmingly under me, but held up. “This is great, you know. I don’t have to be the new guy anymore. You get all the abuse.”

“Nah, she’s just a kid,” Lily said. “I’ll be nice to her.” Kenny groaned good-naturedly.

“How long have you been at the LARC?” I asked him.

“Two summers, but I got here a week after Lily. I’ve been ‘new guy’ ever since,” he said. “It’ll be great having some extra company, at least. Especially since Liam’s leaving.”

“What?” I asked, startled and, I had to admit, a bit disappointed.

Liam gave a too-casual shrug, slouching in that boneless, expansive way that only tall, skinny guys can manage. “My mum—my other mum—didn’t precisely check with Dr. Kapoor before she put me on a flight to Anchorage. The only reason I’ve been here this long is that Mum took off for a research trip to Morocco for a book, and my grandparents are visiting my cousins in Delhi and can’t get a flight back until next week. I think Mum was trying to force us into some quality time together, but Dr. Kapoor’s busy with her feathered children. And I know better than to compete with them for her affection.”

Mrs. Popova whisked the cocoa and pursed her lips, shaking her head as if in regret.

“I’m sure your mom loves you more than birds,” Kenny said awkwardly.

“More than any one of them, to be sure,” Liam said. “But in the aggregate, sometimes I wonder.” He smiled that easy smile to take the edge off his comment.

The silence threatened to get truly excruciating, and I cleared my throat. “You mentioned a ghost story?”

“A ghost story?” Kenny asked, perking up.

“I said it waslikea ghost story,” Liam hedged.

Mrs. Popova clicked her tongue. “All stories turn into ghost stories if you wait long enough,” she said. She paused in the midst of stirring the cocoa, looking out the kitchen window at the gray of the mist. “No, she wasn’t a ghost. She was just a child.”

“The girl in the boat?” Kenny guessed.

Mrs. Popova sighed. “It’s not a story I care to tell or hear without a bit of whiskey in me, and I haven’t got any. So if you’ll excuse me, I’ll get myself to bed. Enjoy your cocoa. Lock the doors. And—”

“Don’t go outside,” Kenny and Lily chorused. They laughed, but my skin prickled.

Once Mrs. Popova was in her room, I turned my gaze on Liam. “So. The girl in the boat,” I said, ready to shake him by the shoulders until he explained what the hell he was talking about.

“You’re not saying it right,” he informed me.

“How am I supposed to say it?” I asked.

“Like this: the Girl in the Boat,” he intoned. Like a title. Like a figure from myth. Like, I thought, a ghost story.

“It’s kind of LARC legend,” Kenny said. “Passed down to the new grad students and post-docs.”

Liam nodded. “I heard it from one of my mom’s students at the University of Alaska when I was a kid. It’s been around awhile. There are a few different versions.”

“And what version would you tell me?” I asked.

“The spooky version, of course,” Liam said, and grinned. He sat up, leaning forward a bit and holding up his hands as ifframing the scene. “A fisherman is out on the ocean. No one for miles around, as far as he knows, and fog all around him, so thick he can’t see. And he starts to hear this bird. Like a loon, maybe. Mournful, sad. This broken cry calling out again and again. He tries to ignore it. It’s just a bird, and he has a catch to haul in. The cry starts to fade. Like it’s getting weak. And he doesn’t quite know why, but he starts heading toward it.”

I shivered. The cadence of Liam’s voice had changed. It was low and haunting, his eyes fixed on mine as he spoke. Kenny and Lily seemed just as spellbound, leaning forward in their seats, even though they knew the story.

“Then he can’t hear it anymore. And he can’t see anything through the fog. So he cuts the engine. All he can hear is the water against the hull of his boat, and his own heavy breath.” He let the silence hang, leaving us to imagine that eerie stillness. When he spoke again, it was softly. “And then... he sees it. Emerging from the fog. A low shape on the water. A boat. Just a rowboat, but it hasn’t got any oars. He draws up alongside it and looks inside. And he sees a little girl, curled in the bottom of the boat. So cold and so tired and so hungry that she’s lost even the strength to cry. He takes her back to shore, and bundles her up, and gets her help. If he hadn’t come upon her then, she would have died.”

“But she didn’t,” I said. My mouth was dry. I struggled to keep my voice even, the normal level of curious. “So it isn’t a ghost story after all.”

“I don’t know,” Liam said. His head tilted. “Maybe you don’t have to die to be a ghost.”

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