Chapter 14. Sand Maila Isle, at the edge of the Empire
Sand saw to her own stitches that night, after she’d brought her haul of mangoes back to the village. No one commented that she hadn’t brought a full bag. She wasn’t sure anyone noticed at all. Everyone else was focused on the completion of their own tasks. Once everything was gathered, Grass began to sort through it. That was her task. Sand couldn’t remember a time when it hadn’t been.
Surely, though, there must have been a time? Grass’s face was scarred as a fallen coconut, the brown backs of her hands spotted as a seal’s fur. Her hair was still black, and her back straight. She wasn’t ancient, but she wasn’t young either, and there must have been a time when she’d been young.
The others all lined up for their dinners, waiting patiently for the food to be scooped into bowls at the cookpot. Fish stew by the smell of it, probably with a side of mango and the hard grains Cloud always harvested from seagrasses.
Sand dipped the needle in and out of her forearm, flinching at the pain and yet relishing it. It seemed to sharpen her senses and her mind – which had felt dulled until she’d fallen from the tree.
She tied it off at the end and gnawed at the string to sever it. And then she went to talk to Grass, whom Sand judged was the eldest among them still living.
“When did you come to Maila?” she asked Grass.
Grass frowned up at Sand, her spotted hands sorting everything into piles – things to eat now, things to eat later, things to save for as long as possible. “Come to Maila?” she repeated. “I’ve always been here.”
“You grew up here?” The words tasted strange on her own tongue. She couldn’t imagine a child-Grass, running about the island. With parents, friends, family. The image wouldn’t cohere. And then Sand thought of herself here as a child, and found she had no concept of herself as a child at all. There must have been a time she’d been a child. She frowned. She couldn’t remember her parents. Surely that was a thing one remembered.
“I’ve always been here,” Grass said.
“Yes, but what about before?”
“Before what?”
“Before Maila. Someone must have come from somewhere…” Sand trailed off, suddenly unsure what she was asking. They had always been here. The thought reverberated in her skull, like a chime struck true that wouldn’t stop ringing.
No.
It wasn’t true. How could it be true? They hadn’t sprung up from the rocks like some storied monsters. They were people, and people had parents. People had places they’d come from. Her eyes darted over the people waiting in line.
Glass, Cliff, Coral, Foam… Coral. There was something about Coral, some memory she couldn’t dig up. It was like a word she knew but couldn’t quite remember. And then it flashed in her mind once, like lightning.
Coral hadn’t been here for ever. The thought tried to wriggle away from her, a fish caught in bare palms. She clamped down on it.
Coral hadn’t always been here.
Sand strode to her, her breath coming short, her limp jolting her injuries. “Coral.”
Coral barely turned, despite the urgency of Sand’s tone. Long eyelashes fluttered against her cheeks. “Yes?”
“When did you get here?”
“I’ve always been here,” Coral said, not meeting Sand’s gaze.
The longer Sand held onto that clamped-down thought, the clearer it became. “Four nights ago, what did you bring back to the village?”
“I always bring a bag of clams.”
Sand resisted the urge to shake Coral by the shoulders. “You don’t. You didn’t. Four nights ago, we had no clams. Someone…” The thought fuzzed again, fogging up like her vision after water had splashed on her eyes. Someone else? She tried to focus on it and then gave up.
It didn’t matter. Someone else had done it at some point, though Sand couldn’t remember who. “It wasn’t always you. Think. How did you get here?”
“A boat,” Coral said. Her mouth remained open, as if she were shocked by the words she’d uttered. And then she frowned, twining her hands together. “That can’t be right.”
“It’s right.” How long would this clarity last? Sand wondered if she’d be back at the mango trees the next day, struggling to fill her bag, not remembering the day before. She pressed a hand to the wound she’d sewn up, and the feel of the thread beneath her palm helped her focus. Today was different. The day that Coral had arrived had been different. Sand didn’t know Coral, not really, but her every movement and gesture said one thing to her: soft. Limpid eyes like tide pools, every word voiced with hesitation. She needed to wring an answer out of her before Coral folded. “What sort of boat?”
“Is it important?”
Sand closed her eyes briefly, and she had some distant memory of praying to old, dead gods, the scent of musky incense thick in the air. She could smell it. She met Coral’s gaze. “It’s the most important thing in your life. It is more important than collecting clams.”
This seemed to have an impact at least. They both shifted forward as the line moved, but Coral pressed her lips together. “It was a small boat, with dark wood, but large enough for passengers. I think I was in the hold. It was dark. I don’t know, I’m sorry.”
“But you left the boat at some point. You had to get from the boat to Maila. You must have seen more.” She wished she could reach into Coral’s mind and pluck the memory from her.
“Yes,” Coral said slowly. The line moved again, only one person between them and the stewpot.
If they made it to the front, Coral would get her food and then she’d forget all over again, lost in the routines of the day. Sand knew it. She watched another ladleful of stew pour into a bowl with a deepening sense of despair. “What did you see? Tell me now. Please.”
Coral bit her lower lip. She raised her bowl, ready to receive her dinner.
Sand seized her wrist. “Think!”
The words fell from Coral’s mouth. “The sails. They were blue.”
And then a ladleful of soup dropped into Coral’s bowl. Her face went blank, as though a hand had brushed across a piece of slate, wiping it clean and leaving only faded marks of chalk behind.