There are patterns on my eyelids made by the light. I open and close them, again and again, hoping the shapes will go away. They return brighter and brighter. I begin to see their faces. Their faces start to come back. I am surrounded by trees. From each branch hangs a corpse. Ants crawl over their skin. The corpses stretch back into the grove, back far into the dark of the orchard. The black bodies sway gently in the breeze. I can hear the ropes creak.

It is late afternoon when I get back to the town. I make my way to the shelter. Andalus has re-appeared. He is dozing in the late sun, leaning against a wall. I sit next to him, our shoulders touching. He wakes but does not move. I tilt my head towards him. In a way his bulk is comforting. Real. I pat him on the hand. ‘Andalus,’ I say. ‘Andalus. I am getting nowhere. I came here to save us but I am getting nowhere.’

He does not answer. He has his arms resting on his legs. An image crosses my mind. I saw this picture as a child. I found it in a ruin my group came across as we moved south. In the picture were creatures shaped like men but with bigger jaws and heavier foreheads. They were covered in black hair and standing in a forest of the lushest green. To my child’s mind they were both frightening and alluring. If I think back, perhaps that is what helped make me more curious about the past than others: a picture of strange beasts in a strange land. I showed it to no one. My parents had been dead a long time – I only ever had a vague idea of what they looked like – and I had few friends. But it was something I would not have shared even if things had been different.

I kept it for years. One of the animals was sitting in exactly the same position as Andalus is now. How has he come to this? I am beginning to believe he is not simply traumatised by whatever happened to him in Axum but has lost his reason as well. The possibility has to exist that nothing happened to him. No big trauma, no big event, no mutiny, uprising or trial. Perhaps he lost his reason and simply wandered off one day never to return. Kept alive by the colony as an indication of humanity to a once-great ruler, one day he simply slipped his velvet shackles and sloped off. A not entirely unreasonable explanation.

I think again of another possibility. He is cleverer than I am. He spies me on an island, begins an act, an elaborate ruse. I bring him back, he worms his way into favour here and leads an army back across the seas and the plains to re-conquer Axum, take it back from the mutineers, from the third force, and impose law and order. He is biding his time, waiting for the right moment to speak. In the end his play will out.

I wonder how it would be if the situation was reversed. If I had been exiled, sailed unknowing into Axum territory, encountered Andalus alone on an island, what would I have done?

I continue: ‘They are hiding from us, Andalus. Of that I am becoming convinced. What other explanation could there be? It has only been ten years. They have locked away Abel and Tora. Either that or Abel is directing it. His name is still on the wall. Anyone who knows me well remains out of sight while I wander the streets. While I am here their lives are in hiatus. The only people allowed on the street are children and the ones they know I won’t know.’

I lean my head against the wall.

‘Of course, I have no proof of this. It is merely a theory. And I don’t understand why. Why not put an arrow through me and be done with it? Why not face me and say, “No, you are not allowed. Be gone.” It seems weak. A mark of weakness.’

I look over to him. ‘I need your help, Andalus. I will get to the truth.

I will force it out of these people one way or the other. I will force them to acknowledge me, like I, like we in fact, forced them to face the truth of our situation all those years ago. But it will be quicker if you help.’

I turn to him. ‘Don’t you want to fix things? Don’t you want an end to all this? To all the thoughts, all the ghosts, the hundreds of ghosts?’

And then he shakes his head. It is so slight I might have imagined it. I wait but there is no further movement.

‘Is that your answer, Andalus? Is that your answer? No? Don’t you feel anything?’

His head is pointed away from me now. It is still. Perhaps he was just moving to get away. Not answering. His eyes are closed. I pull his face towards me and they open. ‘Did you give me an answer?’

His eyes have a vacant look. They remind me of the ocean we sailed across. Blue-grey. Lifeless. But somewhere in there, drowned perhaps, a sapphire city, a memorial to a great man, a memory, a history.

When I arrive at Elba’s later, Amhara opens the door. Before I can say anything she has run off leaving me to enter the flat on my own.

‘Hello?’

‘In here. In the kitchen.’

Elba is bent over a small stove.

‘I thought all those had long since been confiscated,’ I say, nodding in the direction of the stove.

She laughs. ‘No. We are allowed now.’

‘So you do acknowledge things have changed,’ I say.

She looks around, a puzzled expression on her face. ‘Of course. Things change all the time.’ It is as if she is challenging me. There is a smell in the kitchen that makes my stomach rumble. I have not eaten all day. Amhara rushes in and goes straight to her mother, whispering in her ear.

Elba turns around. ‘My daughter would like you to tell her a story.’

She smiles apologetically. Amhara turns sharply and looks angrily at her mother. It is only momentarily though and I might be mistaken. I decide to ignore it.

‘A story? Let me think. Would you like to hear more about the island?’

She nods her head but does not look at me.

‘Well then,’ I sit down at the table. ‘I lived in a cave on the island. It rained all the time. Not like here. I had not seen the sun for ten years, other than as a white disc through clouds. It was a dull world: grey, brown, pale green. These are not the colours of life. I might have given you the impression last time that the island was paradise. It was not.

It was a hard life. Not unbearable certainly. But not to feel the sun on your skin for ten years, only the rain, is not a good way to live. And the silence. I would see things.’ I stop abruptly. I had not meant to say that.

‘Who else was there?’ asks the child.

‘Who else? No one. No one else was there. It was just me. Me, the birds, the fish, the worms.’

‘What did you see?’

I look hard at her, then at Elba. ‘I saw people. I mean, I know they weren’t actually there but if you’re alone for a long time you start to imagine things. And part of me wanted them to be there, wanted them to come back.’

‘Did you miss your friends?’

I am glad she has slightly misunderstood. ‘There was a woman,’ I glance over at Elba. ‘There was a woman I missed. I hope she missed me a little. There was another man. He was once a friend of mine. I did not miss him much.’

‘Why not?’

‘He was the one who sent me away, who conspired with the townspeople to have me removed from power and banished to the edges of Bran.’

‘Why did he do that?’

I pause. ‘People felt a change was needed. I was no longer needed.’

Amhara thinks for a while. ‘So you were alone.’

‘Yes. But then one day I found someone. I was walking along the coast and I spied him from some distance off lying on the sand. He had been washed up. I nursed him back to health gave him food and shelter.’

‘Where is he now?’

‘I brought him back to Bran. He is a very important man. I knew I had to bring him back. Our future might depend on it. I left him where I am staying. He is not very talkative.’ I say this with a smile.

‘Why not?’

‘I don’t know. I suppose he had some kind of shock and is unable to speak for now. It happens sometimes. In war people see things they don’t like. It shocks them. Sometimes they become silent. I have seen it many times.’