They slept in empty buildings when they could and outside when there was nothing else. Her grandfather had stuffed blankets and medicines and changes of clothes into a backpack, and they were able to get by.
Then, five days into their journey, somewhere west of the islands that dotted the waters across from Seattle, her grandfather came down with plague. He turned hot and feverish, and his skin darkened in broad purplish patches all over his body. She didn’t know which form of plague he had contracted, and it wouldn’t have made any difference if she had because she was too little to understand which of the medicines would help. She tried them all, one at a time, but none of them seemed to make any difference. She washed him with cool water to help keep his temperature down and tried to make him drink so that he wouldn’t become dehydrated. For a time he tried to coach her by telling her what he thought would help, suggesting what she might do for him.
But his sickness turned worse, and he became incoherent. He raved as if he had lost all reason, and she became afraid that someone—or something—would overhear. She gave him sleeping medication because she didn’t know what else to do. She kept bathing him in an effort to lower his fever, kept trying to get liquids into him, and waited for him to die.
But, against all odds, he recovered. It took weeks, and it was a slow, torturous process. Afterward, he was never the same. His hair had gone white.
His face was marked by the struggle he had endured, his once strong visage lined and pinched and gaunt. He was frail and gnarled in a way old men become when all of their youth has been bled out of them. It happened in the span of about four weeks, and even after he was sitting up and eating and drinking again, he was only a ghost of himself.
She looked at him warily and tried to hide how afraid she was for him. But she could tell by the way he looked back that he knew.
They set out again, but he was no longer her grandfather of old. He sang ditties and spoke in odd rhymes. He talked incessantly about the weather, about forecasts, storms, fronts and pressure ridges, and things she had never heard him speak of before. None of it made much sense; it frightened her in a way even the ravings hadn’t. He only rarely spoke of anything besides the weather.
Nothing else seemed to matter to him.
At night, he would wake her sometimes with his muttering, talking in his sleep of black, evil things coming to get them. She would wake him, and he would look at her as if she were a stranger.
When they reached the shores of Puget Sound, they began walking south until they found a rowboat. Without so much as a word about what he intended, her grandfather loaded their few possessions, placed her aboard at the stern, climbed in after her, and pushed off. It was nearing sunset, and darkness was almost upon them. He didn’t seem to notice. He rowed them toward the islands, seated with his back to them, facing her, his haunted eyes fixed on her face. He rowed all night without stopping, and even though it was black all around them, the weather stayed calm. They reached an island sometime just before dawn, pulled the boat ashore, and slept. When they woke, her grandfather rowed them around to the other side of the island, where they stopped again.
The following day, he rowed them all the way across the channel to the city.
She could have run from him at any time while they were on the island. She was quicker than he was; she was probably stronger and possessed of more endurance. She could have slipped away while he was sleeping, as well. But she never considered leaving him. He was her grandfather, and she would stay with him no matter what.
In Seattle, they lived in derelict buildings on the waterfront, scavenging supplies and foraging for food. She waited for him to tell her it was time for them to leave, but he seemed to have lost interest. He barely acknowledged her presence now, growing more distant by the day. He never spoke her name, even when she called him Grandfather. He would wander the waterfront for hours and sometimes days before returning. She tried to go with him, but he refused to let her, telling her there was a storm coming or a change in the weather and she needed to stay close to home. Their home was an old container down by the cranes. Her life had turned to ashes.
Then, one day, when she thought things couldn’t possibly get any worse, he went out and didn’t come back. She waited for a week for his return, but there was no sign of him. In desperation, she went looking for him and was still searching ten days later when Sparrow found her and brought her home to live with the Ghosts.
*
“THREE MONTHS AFTER he disappeared, I found him down by the docks.
He looked at me and didn’t say anything. I could tell he didn’t know who I was.
I spoke to him, but he just smiled and said something about the weather.”