Epilogue — The Feather

Molly’s years passed the way years always do. One at a time, and then all at once.

Molly kept going down the coast every chance she got. Apart from sheets, lightbulbs and pages on the wall calendar, nothing really changed.

Sosta kept coming to visit when Molly was down. Wherever they were, a world away or side by side on the porch, they ebbed and flowed together through all the joy and misery that family, friends and lovers had to offer.

One afternoon, Molly was following the same shoreline she’d walked with her Grandad so many times before, and that she’d walked alone or with Sosta so many times since. The sky was high, wide and clear above, with gulls squawking and wheeling on the wind.

“Look at this one!” yelled her daughter, running back up the beach towards her. She stopped halfway and added a piece of driftwood to her collection.

“I love this one, Billbill,” Molly said, picking up a bleached abalone shell, but her daughter Billy had already bolted.

Molly looked over the collection of shells and bits of wood and seaweed, then looked up when she noticed Billy had gone quiet. Her daughter stood a few metres away, holding a feather carefully in both hands. She was inspecting it closely as she turned it slowly this way and that. Molly walked over and crouched beside her.

“Do you know what kind of feather that is?” Molly asked.

“I dunno,” Billy shrugged. “Maybe a bird feather?” Molly smiled.

“It feels important,” Billy said, almost whispering.

Molly thought about the feather she and Sosta had found the day they met. Her daughter had that same quiet curiosity about her, the same sense that the moment meant something, even if she didn’t know what. Billy held the feather up toward the sky and the breeze played its fronds gently.

“Mum,” she said.

“What’s that, Billbill?” said Molly, looking into her daughter’s face.

“Why does it feel like everything is connected sometimes?”

Molly smiled and ruffled her daughter’s hair. She stood up and looked out across the ocean. For a moment she thought about explaining everything she had learned. About the patterns she had learned to see, about the ways they moved through people.

She thought about trying to explain Uno.

After a moment she shook her head slightly and smiled.

“That’s a good question,” she said.

Billy nodded thoughtfully and slipped the feather into her pocket. She turned to run ahead again, but Molly called after her.

“Hey, Billbill. Did anyone ever tell you about the mapmaker’s granddaughter?”

Billy stopped, turned, and walked back, sensing something in her mum’s voice.

“Well then,” said Molly, in a voice that was hers and not quite hers. “Settle in.”

They walked on together along the sand, the small hand finding the big one.

“In a village where the river met the sea,” Molly began, “there lived an old mapmaker and his granddaughter, Nin…”

And the ocean beside them stretched quietly on toward the horizon.