Following Pattan

Creative: Climate Vanguard, 12 November 2023

Illustration by Holly Brown

1.

Holdfast is the botanical term used to describe the taproot anchoring kelp to the ocean floor. Mila had always liked that word – the tougher-than-titanium unyieldingness of it: Holdfast. Without such an anchor, kelp fronds would simply float away, drifting to the whim of the Tides like gas-filled rafts. When kelp grips it grips tight, welding itself to the seabed to give itself a fighting chance of weathering the massed power of the ocean. Kelp cannot afford to second-guess. “This is the place I have chosen,” it declares, unfurling its twenty-foot, green-grown banner: “In the name of Life, I hold fast.” Mila admired this single-mindedness, which she’d come to recognize during her years working the water-pastures as indispensable for survival in an untethered world.

Ever since the birth of her daughter Phoenix, Mila hadn’t budged from Fowey – a village situated midway along the Cornish coast. Following the kelp’s example, she’d rooted herself firmly in its limestone bedrock, and had soon established herself as an essential member of the community, working hard in the water-pastures, pulling double-shifts during the monthly harvest, and volunteering, whenever the need arose, at the FuturePower plant. One of the reasons she’d decided to make a home for herself in the village was that the smell of brine, distant screeching gulls and sea-haar had a soothing effect on her; another was that the people of Fowey – most of whom were, like her, Followers of Pattan – kind and welcoming. But the main reason was that in her exhaustion, she simply could not imagine carrying on in her aimless drift.

As the years went by, the Tides claimed one building then the next, vanishing them like minutes from a brick-and-mortar sand-clock and forcing the village to shuffle slowly inland. Phoenix grew into a girl much-loved by the community, and Mila, in the spare time she was able to find between her farming and mothering duties, became an amateur anthropologist. She spent hours poring over old books loaned to her by the village librarian, sifting through records of distant cultures and comparing their ways and customs. The main fascination for her lay in the task (which grew to be almost an obsession) of identifying the various faces of Pattan and unearthing her globe-spanning guises and iterations. The year the church crumbled under the Tides’ press, Mila discovered Pattan in the interplay between snowdrift, thaw and reindeer migrations, wearing a crown of dripping ice and going by the name, honoured above all others by the Sami people of the Arctic North, of Fjölla. A few months later, when it was the elementary school’s turn to bow to the encroaching waves, she found Pattan in the rasp of the desert wind, known to the pastoralists of Namibia as Hozugua and carrying them whispered guidance and premonitions of rain. It was an incomparable pleasure for Mila to catch these glimpses of the Invisible One – the Wind-Haired Mother, offspring of spirit, moving like breath between the I and Thou …

Weaving anew from sundered thread

She sings to life the silent dead…

If it hadn’t been for the exceptional circumstances that had prompted the trip, Mila would quite happily have lived out the rest of her days in Fowey with her kelp and her books, raising her daughter in the sheltered enclave of the community. She had no more need for what the Fowey-folk referred to as the “wider world.” The bi-weekly reports issued by Earth Democracy with their policy updates and briefs for planetary planning were enough of a link, more than enough, to everything happening “outside” without physically having to step foot beyond Cornwall. But events had intervened. Her past had roused itself from its decade-long dormancy, and here she found herself, sitting with her daughter in a coach of the EARTH Express – this miracle of high-speed carbon-free travel – poised on the tracks like an arrow of slick fibreglass nocked and ready to be shot halfway across the world.

A honeyed voice oozed from the intercom: “Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the EurAsian Rail Transport Highspeed Express. We are delighted to have you on board with us today. This service will be stopping at Stockholm, Moscow and Beijing. We remind our passengers that all our windows are fitted with KronoLens. A selection of plant-based meals will be provided by our onboard team. We hope you enjoy the trip.”

Mila let her mind drift as she watched the final few passengers trickle onboard. She pictured the sun setting over the water-pastures, and tried to summon up the feeling of homecoming that often filled her in those moments. Her thoughts took her to a book she’d read about the  use of kelp in traditional purification rituals. Mila had marvelled at the fact that this plant had served the same (or very similar) ceremonial functions in cultures as distinct from each other as the Tinglits of the Pacific Northwest and the Shinto practitioners of Japan. But what was it exactly that was purifying about kelp? Mila’s inner scientist offered the first answer: it was to do with its ability to syphon excess CO2 from the air, rebalance oceanic pH, and nurture life by acting as a submarine fish nursery. Mila’s taste buds had a different take: it was to do with the umami flavour of kelp – the experience of having earth and sea touch palms on the palate in an association of pure balance. Or perhaps it was linked to its medicinal properties, purifying the blood with its antioxidants and bioactive compounds. Underlying these musings was a thought Mila would have had trouble admitting to herself; that those long hours spent among the bobbing fronds, devoted to the task in a way that exceeded the practical demands of livelihood, were given in the hope of purifying something in herself. Despite the moments of peace they had brought her, the water-pastures had let her down in this respect. Kay had kept on hovering – a bitter blemish always not-quite-gone. Grandma Kay, who Phoenix had never met, never even heard about, and whose blessing she would now never receive…

The EARTH Express departed, picking up speed by the second. It ate up the miles soundlessly, heading towards Beijing where an estranged mother lay in a ceremonial coffin, mourned by the world she helped save.

2.

Phoenix had never been so excited in her life, not even that time she and Freddy had glimpsed a selkie sunning itself near Sugary Cove (her best friend had thought it was a seal, but she was convinced otherwise: the creature had flashed her an unmistakably human smile before slipping under). That had been a different kind of excitement – the kind born from the tingling intrusion of folk on fact. Whereas that thrill had been short-lived, the one she was experiencing now, as she watched the landscapes whizz past the window, was a stretched-out thing, taut and buzzing like electrified wire. She still couldn’t quite believe it. Her dreams had been answered: she was abroad!

When she’d told Freddy about the trip, his first reaction had been disbelief. Phoenix is fantasising again – he’d thought. And why not? Nothing had seemed less likely than Mila deciding out of the blue to take her daughter on a speed-rail holiday to Beijing. His second reaction, once Phoenix had proven the seriousness of her claim by elaborating on the circumstances around the trip (at least, what she’d managed to piece together from her mother’s vague remarks), was a sullen silence. The third, once he'd worked through his jealousy and realised that vicarious involvement was better than none at all, was a level of excitement he hadn’t felt since that time they’d spotted a seal near Sugary Cove. His best friend was going abroad!

Phoenix was in such an absorbed state, focusing all her attention on the window to make sure not a single sight slipped by unnoticed, that she failed to register the man sitting down opposite her.

“Beautiful, don’t you think ?”

The rumbling voice startled Phoenix. She turned from the window and met the eyes of the man sharing their coach. His face was the cracked brown of roasted chestnut. He wore a flat-cap over his frizzed hair and an overcoat patched with symbols and slogans she didn’t recognise, which gave him an air of raffish authority. The man had been so silent since the start of the journey that he’d all but faded into the upholstery, to the point that Phoenix had forgotten he was there. Phoenix glanced over at her mum, saw that she’d dozed off with a book propped open on her knee, turned back to the man, nodded slightly, blushed, then stared once more out of the window.

“What’s your name, child?”

“Phoenix”

“Phoenix. What a beautiful name! A firebird rising from the ashes! Now there’s a name of hope if I ever heard one.”

She smiled, pleased by his words, but her eyes remained glued to the glass. For a time, the two of them sat in silence, each lost in thought as Russia unfurled its vastness before them. Then the man spoke again:

“How about we try out this new gadget of theirs? What do you say, Phoenix?”

He tapped his finger on the window and a ring-shaped dial appeared, glowing pastel green under the KronoLens logo. The man gestured with his hand and smiled encouragingly. Unsure what was expected of her, Phoenix pressed the tip of her index against the point on the ring marked with the number 2103.

“Now pull downwards. Go on – gently now.”

She did as she was told, and the years unwound beneath her fingertip. As she reached 2100, Phoenix hesitated; something about the century marker seemed to exert a soft resistance to her crossing, but a nod from the man emboldened her and she went on. At first, her eyes didn’t pick up any changes in the landscape. It seemed to hold the same alternating sequence of open steppe sparsely dotted with villages and bio-organic farmland, interspersed here and there with food forests and FuturePower plants. But around the 2060 mark, she started to notice some differences: the fields became more uniform, more angular, harsher in their geometry; the sky became greyer (not the grey of storm clouds but the smudged grey of industry); the villages grew steadily more decrepit; fewer swifts flung their kamikaze crescents through the sky. As her mum would have put it, Pattan was becoming unravelled. Frightened, Phoenix sped up, stripping back the centuries and watching wide-eyed as the land told its story in reverse chronology. Seasons bucked through their cycles, settlements rose and fell, armies swept from East to West, West to East, while the caribou tread the North-South axis in their innumerable herds. Occasionally, a scene of absolute clarity would emerge from the blur, such as the muzhik standing by his ox-plough, sharp cheekbones ruddy red, raising a hand to his bonnet in a good-natured salute as they passed, or the painted figure dancing firelit to the rattle of a deer-hide tambourine. Phoenix’s finger flew faster and faster around the dial until branches were whipping past the window screen, spruces and pines deep boreal green, thick-crusted with snow. The forest opened into a clearing and Phoenix laughed in amazement. A gigantic animal stood there, beautiful with its tusks and woolly fur: a mammoth! The sight brought a wave of relief; she’d made it to prehistory. Suddenly eager to return to the present, Phoenix took one last look at the majestic beast, then lifted her finger from the glass. 

Half an hour later, having told Mila the main highlights of her KronoLens journey and stuffed herself with snacks, Phoenix lay stretched out on the sleeping cot, resting her head on her mum’s lap.  She yawned. The excitement had taken its toll, and she suddenly felt exhausted. It didn’t take long for Phoenix to fall asleep, soothed by the combing motion of fingers through her hair.

She woke up to a puzzling sight: tears were trickling down her mum’s cheeks. She reached up to wipe them away, and Mila smiled at her in a way that was meant to be reassuring but only deepened her concern. 

“What’s wrong mamma? Why are you crying?”

“Oh darling. I’m sorry, you shouldn’t have to see me like this. There’s so much I haven’t told you, I honestly don’t know where to start. But you deserve to know about the woman whose funeral we’re travelling to. She’s your grandmother, after all. I think it’s time you heard the story of Grandma Kay.”

3.

It would be wrong to say that Kay was a revolutionary by nature. In fact, she was about as far removed from the figure of the barricade-straddling, flag-waving firebrand – the image conjured in the minds of most at the mention of revolution – as it was possible to be. Nevertheless, ever since she was a girl, Kay had had a certain understated charisma; watchful and self-possessed, her quiet intensity could tune a classroom’s noise to hushed expectation with a single spoken word. And she’d always carried something burning within her, red-hot like a little ember, rousing in her a desire to act, to find a way to put an end to the injustices, fix the fixable, discard the broken, build anew, and press poultices to all the world’s wounds. Later, when the opportunity came to take on a leadership role in the Life Movement, which by the 2030s was beginning to garner serious support as an alternative to the death-deal of late-stage capitalism, it was this ember that kept her from holding back. She stepped up out of necessity: the planet was there to be healed.

Kay grew up in Ho Chi Minh City at a time of accelerating climate breakdown. The Great Asian Heatwave held the continent in its grip for almost a decade, baking the ground bone-dry and causing massive crop failure and immiseration. In a cruel swing between extremes, drought gave way to deluge in the spring of ‘39; five years’ worth of rain fell in the space of two weeks, flooding urban centres, displacing millions, and killing hundreds of thousands. Asia found itself up to its knees in floodwater tainted with sewage, chemical runoff, and the cloudy refuse of a world gone sour. People looked about  in bewilderment as all their worldly possessions, everything they valued and held dear, was either swept away, lost to dissolution, or sunk to the bottom of a continent-spanning swamp. It was then that it became clear, finally, that everything had to change.

When the rains came, Kay was eighteen, studying marine science in Beijing, and already politically active on multiple fronts. Tirelessly, she set about appealing to NGOs for emergency aid, lobbying governments to adopt deep adaptation programmes, and mobilising youth support. Whilst many of her peers were reduced to a state of paralysis by the year-by-year implosion of planet Earth, Kay found her resolve growing with each crisis. The ember in her glowed with the certainty that a better world was still possible, and gave her the strength, grit and determination to push for its attainment.

Little by little, her efforts, and those of millions like her devoted to the Life Movement, began to bear fruit. The comprehensive restructuring of global politics between 2042-2045 was a key turning point, paving the way for the democratic adoption of a two-pronged programme of rapid emissions cuts and ecological recovery. The following year, Kay was part of the team that drew up the charter for the newly-founded Earth Democracy. This new governing body decommodified the means of survival – energy, transport, healthcare, education, food, and housing – delivering for all on Earth a dignified, purposeful life within planetary boundaries. A new story was being written, and Kay was at the heart of it, leaving her mark of authorship in the ink of planetary regeneration. 

“She was a hero, Phoenix – there’s no denying that. But she was never the best of mothers. Or rather, she was never a good mother to me. All the love she was capable of giving was given to the world (the “planetary family”, as she called it). I guess the idea of devoting herself solely to me would have seemed selfish to her given everything that was at stake. She mothered on a different scale, helping the Earth through a rude adolescence with patience and care, whilst I was left feeling unvalued and alone.

I was a distraction from this bigger picture – at least, that’s what it always felt like. It was worse than just neglect. The way she’d look at me… I think it might have had something to do with my father’s absence. He’d come and gone from my mother’s life leaving behind only a spare uniform, a photograph, and me: a living, breathing reminder of her abandonment. That’s a difficult way to live, Phoenix: to feel quietly reproached for your very existence. 

It hurt, but I put up with it, and despite it all, I loved my mother immensely. She was my idol. I would have done almost anything to win her approval, given almost anything for the cause that was her all. But Kay took away the one thing I wasn’t prepared to give.”

For Kay, the idea of retirement was an inconceivable one. While there was still work to be done and she still had the strength to take it on, she could be relied upon to do it, and do it well. In the late ‘80s, as Kay was closing in on her sixtieth birthday, she spearheaded a coral rehabilitation project aiming to reintroduce live reefs to the Indian Ocean. Collaboration with lab biologists had produced a new breed of coral gene-edited to ensure survival in overheated seas, and volunteers were needed to affix the young polyps (or “nubbins”, as they are called) to the bleached reefs off the coast of the Seychelles. One of the names on the volunteer list was that of Pax Devine – a renowned marine biologist who was also Kay’s son-in-law. He desperately wanted to be there, seeding new life under the waves.

The ocean has always been a force that gives with one hand and takes with the other, but in the twenty-first century, as climate breakdown  reduced the predictability of extreme weather events, and sent the thermohaline current juddering and jolting in its tracks, threatening to shut it down altogether, the balance tipped towards destruction. In such circumstances, attempting to rehabilitate a marine ecosystem was far from a risk-free enterprise. Anything could happen out there, and Kay knew it. She’d lived too long to be blind to the dangers. She’d weighed the benefits against the risks and had decided, after much deliberation, to give her son-in-law the nod.

“One thing my mother did not take into enough consideration was the fact that I was eight-months pregnant at the time. You were only a month away from entering the world. I begged Kay to talk to Pax, to help dissuade him from taking part in the project, or at least to postpone the whole thing until after your birth. I’ve always been able to trust my intuition, and I remember feeling a dreadful sense of foreboding. A part of me knew, with the gut’s aching certainty, that if my husband went out to sea that day, I would never see him again.

Kay didn’t listen. She said that risk was inevitable in any profession, and that Pax would be doing crucial work, putting himself on the line for the sake of oceanic life – the highest possible calling for a marine biologist. She was so caught up with that ember in her (which still hadn’t cooled in all those years) that she didn’t recognize the one glowing in me, red-hot and shaping into a beautiful girl. I couldn’t afford to lose Pax, not then. I needed him by my side, cradling our little firebird in his arms.”

Pax Devine died at sea on the 6th of February, 2090. A snap storm caught the crew off-guard, and Pax’s safety tether, caught on a serrated reef-edge as he was thrown by a powerful current, was severed before he could be reeled to the surface. His body was never recovered. 

Although the project was marred by the tragedy, its outcome was far from unsuccessful. The polyps affixed by Pax held fast, and have since flourished, proliferating by the year, and demonstrating that there is a future for this most prodigious and invaluable of marine ecosystems. Pax would have been proud to know his death wasn’t in vain.

“At the time, it seemed to me that Kay had committed the unforgivable. Not only had she deprived me of a proper childhood, but she had done the same to you, condemning you to grow up without a father, just as I had. Over and over, she’d saved the world – mine, yours, that of generations to come – but had done so at our expense. We never talked again. 

I joined a company of travelling people who helped me process my grief and introduced me to the Ways of Pattan. You were born in a canvas tent, sung into the world by a robin who came to perch on the doula’s shoulder as you gave your first cry. After a year of drifting, the road led us to Fowey. I fell in love with the gulls, the haar, the beautiful water-pastures, and heard your father’s voice in the hushing Tides. I decided to settle. 

The years brought relief but no resolution. I wasn’t sure if I would ever get to see my mother again. When news came of her death, I felt an overwhelming need to go to Beijing and pay my respects. This was my chance to purify all that had festered between us. For all her faults, she was a remarkable woman. Pattan’s resurgence – all this newspun life around us – has so much to thank her for. She was a hero, Phoenix. If you have to remember one thing about Grandma Kay, let it be that.”

4. 

Every once in a while, starlings flock together in their hundreds of thousands to perform an aerial dance. Their preferred time to do so is at dusk, backlit by a pinkening sky. The performances are a virtuosic display of synchronous movement; black sandgrain specks thicken and thin, darken and lighten, bunch and stretch, slacken and flex, seeming to the eye like an organism revelling in its own limitless fluidity. Such phenomena are known as murmurations. Mila had always liked the word. It had the feel of pent-up breath released – a sigh slipping out from between barely parted lips.

A week had passed. Phoenix and Mila were back on the EARTH Express, arrowing towards Cornwall. Phoenix was gazing out of the window, a pensive look on her face. This wasn’t the same buzzball of excitement that had boarded the outbound train. This was a changed girl – more settled in herself, a little graver, aged with knowing. Mila was sitting next to her daughter, holding her hand as they watched the landscapes pass by, countenance soft with contemplation. The funeral, with all its pomp and ceremony, already felt a world away. Grandma Kay had been laid to rest.

”Look mamma!” 

Phoenix was the first to spot the starlings. Black on pink, the flock spun its exuberant dance above fields stretching all the way to the horizon-line. Flitting with ease between shapes, the murmuration became a kelp frond waving in a Tide-swept water-pasture, then a closed first unfurling to an open palm, then, in the moment before dissipation, the world-affirming smile of Pattan herself. Neither mother nor daughter had ever in their lives seen anything more beautiful.