He is looking up at the tree. As am I.

He stands looking up at the body hanging from the dead branches of the tree.

A sound escapes my throat.

Tora. My Tora. She looks the same as she did all those years ago when last I saw her on the beach, looking after me, the salty breeze in her hair.

All I can hear now are waves, like the ocean over the mountains.

There is a drop of blood in the corner of her mouth. A bit lip. A punch. Vomited up from the throat.

I am sorry. I am sorry.

She swings slowly from the branch.

Andalus stands still. He is fading away now.

I feel for my knife. I do not have it.

I reach out for Tora’s legs. I hold on to them. I sniff them. They still feel warm. They smell like her. Like living flesh. I look up at her. The sun, filtering through the branches, blocks her face. She is just a few hours dead.

Another sound from me.

I pick up a stone. I climb into the tree and saw through the rope with the stone. It takes a long time. Her body falls to the ground. Tora’s dress covers her face, her legs naked, dead.

Andalus does not move.

I get down from the tree and go up to him. I put my hand on his shoulder.

And then I hit him. I still have the rock in my hand that I used to cut down Tora. I lift up my arm and hit him on the temple. He sees it coming. He does not struggle. I watch his eyes as I bring down my hand upon him. I watch his eyes, and they widen but he does not scream, he does not say a thing. Again and again I hit him. Some blows slap against blood – a stone dropping into a pool. Some blows miss altogether. More and more miss. After a while there is no more sound. Nothing. And there is nothing in my arms, nothing at my feet. Just nothing.

I fall to my knees again. Then roll over. I am breathing heavily. I cover my face with my arm.

I lie there for a long time.

I stand up.

I stand up and walk away. I do not stop for two hours.

Then I go back.

I go back to the tree, back to the body. There is just one. Where Andalus’s should have been is nothing. No blood. No body. Nothing.

I understand now. What he was.

Or, I already understood but did not know I did. Did not admit I did.

I scrape out a hole in the dirt. I place her in it. I cover her with rocks, starting from her feet. I look at her face with every stone I place on her.

I do not hurry. She looks peaceful. Her skin is grey, tight. She looks dead. A bug crawls from her mouth. I bury her facing upwards, naked, open to the earth. It is our custom.

I lay down next to her. The night draws in and I wrap my coat around me. I feel beetles scraping at my ears. I sleep fitfully, shivering. I dig into the earth with one hand. It is warm. I lie asleep with one hand buried and the dust sifts over me.

In the morning I see them. Twenty, thirty of them. They are far off.

They shimmer. Disappear, re-appear. They carry sticks, clubs, spears.

I begin to run.

Whenever I look over my shoulder I see them. I dare not stop nor think. I grab fruit from trees as I jog past. I drink heavily at streams.

The black bodies on the horizon chase me onwards. At the top of the mountain I see them spread out in the plain below. From the bottom I see them at the top, each one silhouetted against a white sky.

I sleep. I have to. But only for a few minutes at a time. I sleep on my haunches.

I run.

I run until I reach the shore and I put out to sea.

I watch them line the shore. They stand still. They do not gesture at me. I can see their eyes.

I watch them until they are over the horizon.

It is thirteen days since I arrived.

13

It is like coming home. I cannot deny it. The island, I want to say, looms out of the mist as I approach. But it does not loom. It floats to the surface of my vision early one morning as I lie in my almost becalmed boat.

A home I wished I would never see again.

It has been a hard crossing, a hard time of it. I left with little water, without catching any food. I grabbed as much fruit as I could. I have had one a day. The last were shrivelled. There was one fish left in the boat. It was covered in mould. Three days off the coast it began to rain.

That saved my life. I collected water using the sail. I tied a line to the side of the boat. Once a fish was enticed to the bare lure.

If I passed over the ruins and the statue again I did not notice. I was completely on my own.

I set my course due east. I did not expect to hit the island. Even with a compass, finding a small patch of turf in this immense ocean is a miracle. The island, it seems, has brought me home.

I feel my heart beat a little faster as I get closer. I think of the marshes, of the peat bogs, of the forest. I think of the quiet here, broken only by the occasional gull. I think of my cave, empty now.

I approach from the side of the cliffs. Their collapse has not halted while I’ve been away. Great swathes of rock and mud have slipped into the waters below. I see the large white rock on the sand.

The rain has not stopped either. It is light, very light. I am not sure whether it is rain or mist.

I put to shore in the same spot from which I left eight weeks ago.

The first thing I do is dig up some roots. I eat them raw.

It is like someone else has been here. An axe and a spade leaning against the cave wall. My water container standing out in the open, overflowing. Marks in the sedge. Marks on the rock. Things are where I left them but it seems so long ago it may as well be a stranger who did those things.

The cave smells. I notice in the corners, under the grasses, fish, rotting tubers, a bowl of gruel. I do not wonder at why they are there. I think back to the ghost of Andalus. I clear the food away. I am done with him now.

I come across some of my old notes. Without an almost constant fire, they have absorbed moisture and are damp to the touch, though still readable. I think of all the tasks I have: collecting food, digging peat, making notes. For a brief time I thought my days might not end on this sinking island. But it was not to be. Now I have to work out when the end will come, whether my absence has accelerated the end or postponed it. I lean against the wall. A choke escapes my throat.

I find I am struggling to remember Elba. Tora is the one I remember.

Her black hair, skin so translucent as to be grey. Eyes so dark sometimes you could not see the pupils. It is her I remember, her I think of. Her alive, I mean. I try not to think of the other. She is with me now more than ever.

I remember her standing at the shore looking after me. I remember her standing at the gate of the town, held by burly soldiers, as a fist hit me in the face. I can taste her fear. It sickens me.

And I remember Abel. I remember the night before I was arrested the first time. I remember my hand around his throat. His hoarse, harsh words, my stomach torn in two. I remember his words and my realisation that it was him, that it was all him. I remember him slumped in the chair as I left, staring after me but with eyes blazing, triumphant.

I struggle still to see the sense in it, to see the rightness of it.

I remember him in the hall three weeks ago. The same expression on an older face. The anger, the righteousness, the incomplete answers. I think back to Jura’s glances to the side, the closed doors, dropped eyes, shadows in the streets. Abel all the time, pulling the strings.

A man with a vision of a new world. I trained him well. A new world with no space for the old, no space for shadows.

What did it take to order the death of Tora? At which point was it decided: my return, her letter, her word to me from behind the locked door, her compassion for me, or was it simply my presence, my refusal to disappear?