When I reach the cave I remember Andalus. I do not think him capable of sailing it but it would be a disaster if he were to try and take the raft on his own. I go back down and tap him on the shoulder. He gets to his feet without looking at me.

I know the broken mast is a mere setback and due to overzealousness on my part. It does not mean it can’t be done and I am doomed to fail but it takes some time to realise this. I lie for two days in the cave, returning to the raft only to fetch provisions. I make two more marks on the wall. I make these marks very slowly.

On the third day I come to my senses. I fix the mast. It is a clean break and is repaired quite easily. I end up with a shorter, lighter mast, which is by no means a bad thing. I spend the fourth day foraging for tubers and grass seeds, determined to leave again on the fifth.

I leave Andalus in the cave all the while. He shows no signs of restlessness and spends most of the time sleeping. On the evening of the fourth day, examining my haul, I calculate that though I have made inroads into the provisions, which I cannot make up in one day, I still have enough for a nineteen or twenty-day voyage. It means I can leave for the second time five days after the first. I am excited once more.

The morning of the fifth day is quiet. There is a break in the rain.

It is warm. When I reach the shoreline, Andalus following just behind me, I remember that I have not allowed for the changing time of the tides. We are almost four hours early. I could try to drag the raft down to where it will float but the sand is soft and it will take me a long time and cost me strength I may need later. I will have to wait. I sit on a rock but am restless. I remember how I used to feel before a battle: a tightness in the chest, rapid heartbeat, a tendency to be distracted. It is something you learn to control. You have to otherwise you would not last long. In the moments before battle you cannot lose focus. I have lost my edge. The long days of island time have hardened my body but dulled my instincts for a fight. True, I might have lost this before. I remember the first day of the trial. Tora was waiting with me. I could not sit still, was pacing around the room, not listening to what she was saying, trying instead to think of what I would say. She got to her feet once, came over to me. I held up my hand, impatiently, to stop her. She did stop. A little taken aback perhaps. I felt regret. But I was angry too. Angry with my people. Angry with her. She was no longer with me but was trying her best to be supportive. I stood behind her and kissed her head. Her shoulders shook a little. I did not hold her. It was my day, not hers. I get to my feet and set off down the beach at a rapid pace, almost running. I feel Andalus looking at me but I do not look back. He can do nothing while the tide is out.

I resolve to walk as far around the island as I can for half the time remaining then walk back. It is, I think, a way of saying goodbye.

Since the arrival of my companion I have not had time to go on my explorations, my investigative walks. His arrival has increased the time I spend on essential tasks and decreased the time available for expanding knowledge of the island and its creatures. It is like that with people, the ones left over: too busy surviving to rebuild our knowledge. Except me. I was never too busy to try to piece together our story, to try to remember what we used to be. I feel resentful that I have been pushed into this mode by Andalus but it was with a higher purpose, that of my return, a return that will increase the store of knowledge and heal a bit more of the past.

But I make a detour first. Something I have sacrificed, besides my swims, besides my work, is my visits to the stone field. I go there now.

I have not been here but I have not stopped thinking about it, about what it means, about what it means to me. The rocks glisten. Many are half sunk in mud. I kneel down, rub the surface of one. It is smooth. I pick it up. A worm burrows into the soil where the stone lay.

Monuments are to honour the dead, to remember them. I try to picture the faces and I try to shut them out. It is no way to live. Like the bodies, the memories in shallow graves. I walk over them. My feet scuff the dirt from their faces.

I rub the mud off the stone. I take it back to the raft. It will return with me. A gesture, I know. Only a gesture.

I am saddened by what I see on my walk. Saddened for two reasons. With such a long break since my last time on this part of the island I can more easily notice the changes. Before, seeing the same piece of land once a week I would notice the water’s creep in inches if at all. It was only by comparing it to my memory of where it had been weeks previously that I would really notice a difference. Week to week there was little to see. Now though, the change is stark. A large part of the cliff face has collapsed and water has seeped into new areas of grassland. Not seeing it for so long has made the pace of change appear more rapid. Yet I do not know, without doing calculations, which of three possibilities it is: whether it is only an appearance, an illusion caused by the change in gaps between observations, whether the pace really has accelerated, or even whether I made a mistake and the island is and always has been disappearing more quickly than it seemed. Though either the second or third possibility is troubling, I resolve not to let it bother me. I am, after all, leaving the island behind. Still, I do not like the uncertainty. I am not someone who tole rates uncertainty, unanswered questions.

The other reason I am saddened is a more sentimental one. Bleak though it is, it has been home and has nurtured me, held me to its wet bosom like a mother clinging to a child caught in a flood.

I see the rocks lying on the beach from some distance. They are like carcasses of a sea animal I saw once many years ago. Fifteen of them. I look round and can see more still embedded in the cliff walls.

It is as if the island is starting to give up its treasure. A sparse treasure indeed. They look like humans too, prostrate on the strand.

I run my fingers over the one that is paler than the others. It is slightly warm, warmer than expected. The ridges in it like skin. There is something wrong with this scene, the bodies on the beach. I cannot put my finger on it. I leave it unsettled.

When I return, the tide is lapping at the raft and it is time to leave.

I help Andalus on board, push the raft out further, climb on myself, hoist the sail and we are away again. This time there is no strong breeze and the sail is barely full. There are no surprises. We float away from the island like a couple of pleasure seekers, a pair of friends on an adventure for a day. I look back once. I see the beach, the cliffs in the north, my cave. The island is already grey, darker than the sky.

From out here, it is a vast canvas of grey and in the centre, growing ever smaller, my life for the past decade, sinking into the sea, like a pebble dropped into a pool.

We drift for days like this. We eat, sleep, fish, drink. Sometimes I row. It is like life on the island before Andalus, having my routines back. The raft floats atop the shining sea. There is nothing else. No other vessel, no birds, no dolphins, no sound. I see the clouds reflected on the sea. Wrapping my coat around my head I hear my breathing, the water lapping against the wood, the occasional flap of the sail.

Andalus sometimes snores. We sit at opposite ends of the raft. I am always hungry but not overly so. I am always thirsty too but again I can cope. I know how to ration myself. Andalus does not show dissent over the rationing. He does not show dissent at all. He lies with his hand in the water, the other across his brow. A feminine pose, the pose of a fop, a man of leisure. I wrap my coat around my head to block it out. The water, the raft, the man sitting opposite me, a silver fish, my wrinkled hands. I think of the going away and of the homecoming. My breathing grows louder in the dark.