When you have a child, people are full of advice. Sleep when they sleep. Don’t let them in your bed. All of it nonsense. The only piece that ever worked for Bijou was the one about using water to calm them. She was happiest when she was paddling, splashing, swimming. In the winter, we spent hours in the shallows at Oriental Bay or in the backyard with the paddling pool. In the summer, when we had to stay indoors, she took a lot of cold baths.
On what turned out to be our last evening together, she had spent a long, happy day at kindergarten. It was nearly summer and the teachers had set up water activities in an attempt to keep the children cool and distracted. For a good two weeks, the sun had been beaming down from dawn until well past dinner. Everywhere you went, there were humans cursing and darting between the shade of buildings and vehicles.
We were taking refuge in our basement living room and plodding through our bedtime routine. Despite eating a pile of mashed potatoes with lab-grown chicken and peas for dinner, she was hungry again after her shower, so I made her ramen. She slurped that up then asked for a protein shake. This had been a regular thing for a week or so, this insatiable hunger, and I was starting to worry. I had given her a worm tablet in case she was being fed on from the inside but it hadn’t made a difference.
“Are you about to grow?” I asked.
She smiled, dimples appearing like Pop-Its on her round cheeks. “Miss Alice said that. She made me a sandwich because I finished my lunch all up.”
“Really?” I wondered if I should take her to the doctor. I needed to stock up on vitamin D tabs anyway.
“Can I have ice cream?”
I shrugged. Had to be growing. I dished her up a bowl and watched as she carefully spooned it into her mouth. I remember staring at her wide little feet, which I thought must have come from her dad’s side, splayed out like mini paddles behind her on the bench seat.
When I got up the next morning, she was sitting on the floor in front of the pantry eating cereal straight from the box. I noticed how her pyjama waistband was cutting a red line into the bulge of her belly.
“How long have you been up?” I asked.
She frowned, her eyes half closed. “Can you make me porridge with the raisins?”
I sat her up to the table with a bowl of porridge and went to get ready for work. When I came back, the porridge pot was lying on the floor with the wooden spoon beside it.
“What happened to my breakfast?” I joked as I picked it up and went to the sink but there was no reply. I scanned the room. She was lying on the couch, curled like a cat against the cushions.
“Are you sick, baby?” I said, sitting next to her and stroking her hair. Her eyes were closed, her brown curls hanging loose across her pink cheeks. I sighed. This wasn’t good. I had a meeting at 9 am with the Yellowknife crew. I needed to see how the prep was tracking and whether they had any recommendations for our team, who would be joining them in a few days. There was that slice in my chest as I imagined them taking off without me. I had missed out on so much already because of having a child. The first three years had been a mess. It was better now she went to kindergarten; at least I could work a solid week.
“Baby?”
I gave her a gentle shake. She didn’t stir. I shook harder but still nothing.
“Bijou!”
My voice cracked with panic. Her breath was warm against my hand but when I bent to listen to her heart, the rhythm seemed slower than it should be. I scooped her up, calling an emergency car on my way out the door. It was waiting outside the building by the time we got there. The sun was already raging in the sky overhead and I had forgotten my protection but I pulled us both into the back seat, closing the door behind me.
“Anything unusual in the past few weeks?” the doctor asked. “Any trauma? Complaints?”
“No. Just she’s been so hungry. I thought it was a growth spurt.”
“Hmm.” They made a note of this. “We’ll run some tests.”
“Is she okay?”
“She seems to be sleeping. Did she sleep last night?”
“I mean, she was asleep when I went to bed. But she was up before me.”
They wheeled her into a secure room and I sat behind a viewing window and watched as she was sent through various scanning machines, the eco-nurses fluttering around her like mice. I thought she would wake up from all the whirring and beeping but her little face was peaceful through the glass.
I had been to this hospital just one other time, when Bijou was born. She was an accident or a surprise, depending on your perspective. Kids hadn’t really factored into my life goals, especially since barely anyone seemed to be able to have them without help anymore. So when I found out I was pregnant, some delusional part of me felt she was meant to be. She was like a rare gem, discovered unexpectedly. This was the thinking that led to her name. In retrospect, I was clearly high on hormones. I didn’t tell her father. There was no point. We hadn't made any promises to each other and Jack had already moved to Alaska for the permafrost trials. He would be gone for years. The way I saw it, the trials were more important.
My ear buzzed.
“Esme, are you coming in?” It was Jonty. I had forgotten the meeting.
“Ah, something’s come up. Can you zip me in?”
An image appeared: the Alaska team—Jack included—arranged around a large table to the left, our Yellowknife team on the right peering slightly upwards, sitting on swivel chairs.
“Where are you, Esme?” Jonty asked.
“At the hospital with Bijou.”
My assistant Joss peered up, her brow furrowed. “Is she okay?”
Joss loved Bijou. She was making arrangements to have her own kids.
“They’re running tests. She’s just … asleep. It’s weird. I’m thinking diabetes?”
“They can fix that now,” Jonty said.
“Yeah, here’s hoping.”
I kept an eye on Bijou as I followed the meeting. Forecasts were looking good for the team to leave in five days’ time. First stop would be Vancouver, then the Northwest Territories where they would set up the permafrost trails, then they would meet Jack’s team in Alaska and set up the glacier converters. That would be the real test. There was a lot of prep to get through, especially when it came to packaging up the machinery. Joss and I would stay back and track the data as it came in.
A long series of beeps echoed down the corridor as the hatch opened on the secure room. I excused myself from the meeting and followed Bijou’s bed through to a ward where I sat waiting beside her on a green padded chair, the analogue clock on the wall ticking incessantly.
The doctor arrived, eyes downturned as they consulted their notes.
“She’s in a deep sleep.”
“Like a coma?”
“No, it’s not a coma. Her brain is active. She’s experiencing REM and she moves at times. We had to stop the bone scan because she rolled over. She even murmured something. I think we keep her on watch and hope she wakes up soon.”
I nodded, my gaze darting to the clock.
“Do you need to be somewhere? We can call you when she wakes,” the doctor said.
I considered this. I didn’t want Bijou to be frightened but this was an important time at work.
“Yes, please. As soon as she wakes.”
She didn’t wake up that day. Or the next. And the day after that, she had two friends in the ward, a four-year-old and a three-year-old, both sleeping. And there were more the next day, kids eventually lining the corridors, all asleep. Strung-out parents pacing and shouting at the doctors.
By then, it was all over the news. In every country in the southern hemisphere, children had lain down and gone to sleep. At first, the hospitals filled but eventually the kids were all sent home to their beds. Parents were given monitors to check blood pressure and fluids, catheters and diapers to keep their little ones comfortable.
There was an expert paediatrician making bold statements to the media and I was inclined to listen to her. She predicted the children wouldn’t wake until the weather cooled in the winter. She was calling it adaptation.
If it was true, I had three months. I’m only a little ashamed to say that I didn’t hesitate. I took her to Joss’s house, set her up in a bed there, and started packing. With her sleeping, there was no reason not to go on the research trip.
Sarah called while I was checking my supply list for the third time. I slid her to the top right so I could keep working while we chatted. Bijou was best friends with Sarah’s daughter, Hattie, and we had been friends since they were babies. The first time we spoke was outside the doors to a community playgroup for solo parents. We ended up getting coffee instead.
“Hattie is asleep,” she said, her eyes glistening wet.
“Oh, Hattie too.”
“Yes. I was hoping it wouldn’t happen to us.”
“It seems like everyone …”
“I don’t know what to do, Esme!” Her voice was loud and guttural, startling me from my list, which I quickly shrank down. “She’s my everything. She doesn’t need me. Children are supposed to run and jump. This is worse than when we lost the islands.”
I didn’t agree, of course, but it was different for Sarah. Aside from two mornings in Kindy, she and Hattie were together every moment. Sarah had gone through the gauntlet of IVF and now her baby was out cold. I still had my firstborn: my work. If it went as planned, the project would keep Hattie and Bijou safe. I had to keep working. That’s not to say I didn’t feel a twinge of that constant for mothers everywhere: the old guilt. It’s just I was able to see past it.
“You need to find something to do with your days,” I told her.
When we ended the call, I messaged Jonty to see if there was any work going at the lab. Perhaps Sarah could help input the data, take her mind off things.
We got weather clearance for the next two days. This was it. Jonty took a car over and we met the others at the airport. We were all buzzing with nerves and excitement; I almost forgot about Bijou altogether. While the luggage was being checked in, I messaged Joss to make sure she was still sleeping. She sent me back a video. My little girl’s face, calm and cosy against her pink pillowcase. I saved it for later.
We flew across the Pacific without incident, stopping for a clip-charge in Hawaii then continuing on to Vancouver. From the plane, I could see the expanse of the ocean, dappled and blue-green, white peaks where the wind lashed the surface. I pictured the lost islands, buildings and bones and infrastructure inhabited by seaweed and molluscs. If the project works, we could stop this.
We checked into a hotel in Vancouver to wait for a weather window in which to fly north. After unpacking my things, I went for a walk, ending up at English Bay where I sat on the sea wall watching swarms of tiny insects moving above the water. The surface was churning, a cold wind whipping up breakers. The beach was nearly empty—just a man walking by the water’s edge and a group of teenagers sitting with their backs to the wall.
A woman arrived pushing a stroller. She released her toddler onto the sand and he sank to his knees and began digging with a plastic spade, shouting to his mother that he was going to fill up his ‘butt-it’. The bucket was blue with a boat on the side and it reminded me of the sea mural I painted on Bijou’s bedroom wall when she was small. I felt around for a pang of missing her but there didn’t seem to be anything there. Sometimes a change of scene can do that to a person. Make them forget.
The woman sat a few metres away from me on the sea wall, her ginger dreadlocks poking out from under a Canucks beanie. We watched while her son chatted to himself.
“How old is he?” I asked, the wind blowing my hair across my face as I turned towards her.
“Nearly three,” she said.
“My daughter is four.”
She shuffled closer. “I detect an accent. Kiwi?”
“Yes, well done.”
“I know from experience it’s offensive to assume Australian.”
We laughed.
“Are you living here?” she asked.
“No, I’m here for work.”
“Did your daughter come? Or is she …?”
“She’s sleeping. I left her with a friend.”
The woman’s forehead wrinkled. “That’s why we’re at the beach. We don’t have long now until he’s due to sleep, if the predictions are right. It’s a little chilly out but he loves it.”
“Don’t worry, I’m sure we’ll figure this out.”
“They’re selling hibernation kits, so they get all their nutrients before they go down.”
“I guess that would help. They’ll do it themselves though.” I shrugged. “Mine ate everything she could lay her hands on for two weeks.”
“You seem calm about it!”
“I suppose I am. I’m a scientist—kind of comes with the territory.”
“Fair enough. It’s better anyway, this. Than the other things I’ve been hearing.”
“Oh?”
I prepared myself for some doomsday talk. There was no end to it with some people.
“My friend’s workmate's kid was that one on the news who got in the sea and swam off. Never came back.”
I nodded, eyes on the water.
“You didn’t hear? They don’t know if it was an accident or what. She tried to grab him. They could see him still swimming miles out, popping up every now and again. Then he was gone.”
Ah yes, I had read about this. It sounded like a hoax.
“I heard of it,” I said.
“It’s real. It’s happening all over. But the government is covering it up.”
I nodded again, meeting her eyes which were wide with desperation. I was never sure what to say to conspiracy hounds—these stories often had an element of truth. I looked out at the churning water. I couldn’t think about this now. I said goodbye and went back to my hotel. The pang came. I missed my baby. I was relieved when the tears fell.
I ordered room service rather than eating at the restaurant with everyone else, figuring we would be spending all our time together soon. I also wanted to get a call to Joss before she went to work so I could whisper a few words into Bijou’s ear but Jonty called as I finished eating.
“There’s a window,” he said. “Pack your stuff.”
The weather window was small and it was closing fast. Thirty minutes later, we were in a car to the airport where they hurried us through the terminal to a tiny wafer of a plane. The flight was nightmarish. As the plane reached altitude, the wind whipped the wings in both directions and lightning crashed outside the windows. This went on for a full hour. Jonty and I eyed each other across the aisle, both clinging to the armrests, vomit rising in my throat. When we touched down in Yellowknife without incident, we all clapped like idiots for the eco-pilot.
After breakfast at our lodge the next morning, we walked down the main street of the old town past a collection of low-lying, faded shopfronts and shingle-roofed buildings. We climbed to the top of the Pilot’s Monument and looked across the Great Slave Lake, a white expanse reaching northward far and away to where small colourful boats were beginning to freeze in place. The sheet ice rocked from side to side near the shoreline.
“Look at that freeze!” our intern Shalini said, smiling and hugging her chest.
As we watched, a young arctic fox with pure white fur darted out from behind a rock below us and disappeared into some bushes. We let out a collective gasp, followed quickly by giddy laughter. I smiled over at Jonty, who stood starstruck, shaking his head.
Our guide, Gerry, arrived that afternoon in a rusty red pick-up truck to take us to one of the permafrost study sites. He had scraggly grey hair and wore a checked wool jacket that reminded me of my uncle. We loaded our gear into the tray with Gerry’s help, carefully tying it down so the convertors wouldn’t get knocked around.
“I was born here—and I’m not about to leave, either,” he told us as he directed the truck over rutted gravel roads that stretched to the north of the lake.
Steam was rising as we approached the site, billowing white from a huge gaping hole in the land, which was partially filled with snow.
“It’s starting to freeze now with the snow we’ve been having but it’s been doing that since last April,” Gerry told us, gesturing at the steam. “So much of it, you can see it from town. And it’s not just here, there’s pockets all over where it’s bubbling up and the land is slipping under. People who live in the boonies, their houses are sinking. It used to be ice was holding it all up.”
We parked next to the slip, and Shalini and Michael got to work setting up the convertors. Jonty and I took the numbers. This ground needed to remain below zero, at least, to keep the gases in the ground, but it was two degrees right now. So much for permafrost. There was work to be done, for sure.
Two days later, with convertors set up in eleven spots across the Northwest Territories, we headed back to that first slip. It was a crisp, clear morning and the temperature had dropped to negative five. The night before, we had seen the Northern Lights, gloriously arching and shifting across the sky in shades of purple and aquamarine. Afterwards, we went to Wildcat Cafe and celebrated the sky with glasses of wine, sitting under the low ceiling and feeling the warmth of a century’s memories soaking through the log cabin walls.
We were quiet in our hangovers the next morning as we approached the site where a thin snake of steam plumed from the ground. As we tumbled out of the truck, everyone stopped in their tracks. Diamonds covered the ground in every direction, tiny, crystalline and perfect, refracting the sun’s heat, insulating the ground just as they had in our South Island trials and just as we hoped they would when we took them to the big guns, the Alaskan glaciers, in three weeks’ time. The sun shone down on the converted material, making rainbows that danced in all directions, criss-crossing over each other with fresh-born colours and miraculous plays on light.
I bent and ran the diamonds through my fingers like sand. It was a marvel I had dreamed about for years, imagining this moment when we could convert the carbon at site. If the data came back how we hoped, we could bring the project to cities. We could bolster the beaches, so that boy could keep playing with his bucket and spade. We could reverse some of the damage, before it was too late. It was a potential gamechanger. A solution. I had been working my whole life for this.
“Well done, team,” Gerry said, shaking our hands, giving us a cracked-tooth grin.
The next morning, I checked in with Joss. Bijou was still resting peacefully. She told me how the UK and US researchers were calling it a coping mechanism and some were going so far as to use the word ‘evolution’. I couldn’t get my head around that, not with all that was happening on the ground with the project. As I ended the call, Jonty zipped in.
“Thought you should know, Jack’s coming.”
“Here?”
“Yes, he’s arriving this afternoon. He wants to help us gather the data and make sure the machinery gets to Alaska safely.”
“Huh,” I said.
“Thought you would want to know.”
After checking the convertors were still humming away at our secondary test sites, Garry drove us to meet Jack at the airport. When he walked across the tarmac, my breath caught in my chest. He still looked the same, with those golden-brown curls and soft hazel eyes, his signature wool sweater pulled over his broad shoulders. I had forgotten the friendliness of his face, so much more affecting in person. He hugged us all in turn, grinning with his annoyingly perfect teeth.
We chatted about the study sites and the glory of the converted material while we drove to the lodge. Jonty found him a room and everyone left to have showers and rest before dinner. I was reading in the living room when he emerged freshly showered and wandered over to peer out the windows. I may or may not have been waiting for him.
“Keen for a walk?” I asked.
“Oh for sure, I need to see this place,” he said.
He climbed into a huge, red puffer jacket and we stepped out onto the icy path. The sun was low over the town and the roads were quiet.
“How’s Bijou?” he asked.
“Joss says she just sleeps. Her vitals are fine and there’s brain activity.”
“What’s your verdict?”
“I haven’t got one yet.”
“Fair enough.”
“Yours?”
“Like they’re saying, it’s a form of adaptation. To the environment. It makes sense. I’m wondering where the balance is, though, whether there’ll be longer wake times in the winter.”
We passed some small houses, dimly lit inside. The moon was rising globe-like over the lake, its edges pale and melted.
“Is this anything like Alaska?” I asked.
“Ah, kind of. The scale is next level, though. You’ll see,” he said.
We stood looking out at the lake, which shimmered with the freeze. The cold was cutting into my mittens. I was thinking about the Alaska leg of the trip. Getting there was my ultimate goal, had been since I was a child.
“So, look,” Jack said, startling me from my thoughts. “I might be way off—but is Bijou mine?”
I tore my gaze away from the ice and peered at his face. It was surreal, him asking that. I felt like I was in a dream. His face gave no clues.
“She is, yes,” I said.
I flinched when he patted my arm with his gloved hand.
“I thought so but I wasn’t sure,” he said.
“I’m sorry. It was hard. You were here and the work …”
“It’s okay. I’m sorry too.”
I swiped at the tears welling in my eyes. “To me, it felt like the science was more important.”
He nodded. “I get that.”
We were silent for a moment. I wasn’t sure what else to say.
“Should we walk a bit more?” he said.
We skirted the shoreline, the stars electric overhead. They were so clear, they felt closer than I had ever seen them. After a while, he stopped and began to dig into his jacket pocket.
“Could you give this to her?” he said, handing me a small cardboard box. “It was my grandmother’s. It’s not worth much now, of course, but children like this sort of thing. And I would like her to have it, if you don’t mind.”
I took off my gloves and opened the box with instantly chilled fingers. A fine gold ring was seated on a bed of cotton wool. It was a good-sized diamond, for its time.
“Wow,” I said. “An original.”
“Totally organic,” he chuckled.
“It’s beautiful. Of course I’ll give it to her.”
As we turned to walk back for dinner, he flashed me his annihilating grin and for a moment, I felt like there was still something there.
The feeling didn’t go away when we sat to eat dinner with the rest of the crew. Chat was mostly about the results of the tests and the trip ahead but my eyes kept drifting back to Jack’s. Then, a ping from Joss. Bijou was beginning to get restless. She was stirring, opening her eyes now and then. The weather was changing and Joss was worried she would wake soon. Can you come home?
With all the weather delays, Bijou had been awake for six hours when my plane touched down but it didn’t matter. When I came in, trailing my suitcase, she only looked up for a moment from the plastic sea creatures she was playing with on Joss’s living room rug, said hi, then went back to her game. I crouched and hugged her but she waved me away, engrossed. She looked the same, just sleeker somehow.
“It’s like she has no idea time has passed,” Joss whispered to me over coffee.
“’ll get her out of your hair,” I said. “Thanks so much, honestly. You don’t know how grateful I am. I hope I can return the favour one day.”
“You can,” Joss said, patting her stomach.
I flew my arms around her. “Oh! So happy for you!”
“Thanks, I’m so excited. But I want to hear all about the trials before you go, if you’re up for it? Shall we go for a walk? Are you tired?”
“No, a walk would be good.”
“Yeah, the hibernation team is saying it's best if they stretch their legs as soon as possible after waking, once they’ve eaten and toileted.”
“She’s done all that?”
“Yep. She had some porridge.”
“With raisins?”
Joss nodded. I watched as Bijou made her octopus hug the whale, a narrative happening under her breath.
“Bij? Shall we go to the beach?” I asked.
“Yes!”
And the toys were cast aside.
Joss and I walked with Bijou between us, swinging her in the air on the count of three. It had been raining for weeks on end according to Joss but that day was overcast and dry.
“You might be surprised by the beach,” Joss said.
It was supposed to be low tide but the water was only a couple of metres from the shoreline. People were sitting on the sandbags, enjoying the breeze that came off the water. Out deep, it seemed to churn like I had seen in Vancouver.
“We’ve been having these surges. They’re talking about adding another layer of protection,” Joss said as we sat with our legs dangling, watching Bijou take the stone steps one by one on her approach to the sand.
She stood with her skinny ankles in the water, her feet turned outwards, and shouted for me to join her.
“One minute, Bij!” I called back.
I thought about this encroaching waterline, wondering if it was time to get the convertors deployed worldwide. If it was time to get the team back over here after all. I thought of Jack. He had gone with me to the airport. At the gate, he’d reminded me about the ring, which I wore on my finger for safekeeping. That’s what I was telling myself anyway.
“How cold was Yellowknife?” Joss was saying. “Because honestly, even at night, this summer was basically unbearable.”
“It was …”
But my words were lost to a sharp inhale as I heard a splash and then a surge and then something bobbed in the water a few metres out. A head and then nothing. I was wading out without knowing how I had gotten down from the sandbags and I was under the water, clawing for her. The waves assaulted my eyes and scratched at my arms and legs. My hands came back with nothing. I looked across the water and saw a small hand emerge, a good hundred metres from the shore. It seemed to wave, then disappeared into the deep. I clawed and screamed and splashed, trying to get out there. But I was dragged from the water with nothing in my arms, nothing at all. She was gone.