I have only one thing left to tell. How, on a sunny gunmetal day not long after we returned to the Balcony Cliffs, I went searching, as any scavenger would, near the place in the city where Borne and Mord had disappeared.
There, I found Borne again. I picked him out of the rubble. I brushed him off. He was weak, tiny—as small as the first time I found him. But it was him. He smelled like the ocean of my youth—the sea salt, and the surf, and the seaweed. But he might have smelled different to someone else.
I gathered Borne up as good salvage, and I took him back to the Balcony Cliffs. He did not speak, could not speak, but I felt as if he were still there, inside. He had killed so many people. He had done terrible things despite not wanting to do them. We had all done terrible things.
I put him on our balcony, right where Wick could see him, and promised myself that if Borne ever grew, if he ever spoke, I would end him. That if Wick wanted to take him, Wick should take him and use him for parts.
But none of those things happened. Wick did not take him. Borne did not move on his own; he was just a kind of plant, taking sustenance from the sun. Borne never spoke again, although I spoke to him and maybe I wished he could respond, but only a little. A lingering doubt, a lingering need, and I think you can forgive me that, at least.
We sit on the balcony on the good days, Wick and I, and we hold hands and look out at the light on the river at dusk. To those who know me, so many years later, I am just a middle-aged woman who lives in the Balcony Cliffs and takes care of children, a person who they see sometimes high above a river that is not as polluted as before, a river that one day may be truly beautiful.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My gratitude to bears for putting up with my nonsense about them. Bears are fascinating, intelligent, clever, awe-inspiring animals. They deserve our love and support. If you see one, please do not run. Instead, stand still. If necessary, fall to the ground, be still, and pretend you are a boulder.*
All bears are miraculous. Many humans are, too. Thank you to my first reader, my wife, Ann, and to Sean McDonald, my patient, brilliant editor at Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and everyone else at FSG for being patient and brilliant. Thanks to my UK, Canadian, Chinese, and German publishers for their early adoption of the novel. Thanks to my agent, Sally Harding, and the Cooke Agency—as well as Joe Veltre at Gersch. Thanks as well to Eli Bush, Scott Rudin, Alana Mayo, and Paramount Pictures for their enthusiasm and creativity.
Thanks to my stepdaughter, Erin Kennedy, and my grandson, Riley (Mr. R), for some of their thoughts on how Borne might speak. Special thanks to Erin for loaning me “long mice.”
Thanks to one of my literary idols, Steve Erickson, for taking an early excerpt from Borne for his wonderful magazine, Black Clock, well before I had finished the novel. His edits and his support meant the world. Additional thanks to Elizabeth Hand for red salamanders, and to Scott Eagle for telescope scales.
Finally, thanks to our monster cat, Neo, otherwise known as Massive Attack, without whom certain aspects of both Borne’s and Mord’s personality would not exist. For instance, attitudes toward lizards.