Some days he feels like—it’s so hard to put to words—he feels as if he’s on a precipice, teetering on the edge, and if he just falls over he’ll remember everything. Like having to sneeze, but not being able to. It’s all there, but he can’t quite reach it.

  He’s unsure how long he has been here. The days have blurred together, one day the same as the last, broken up only by the faces of the people taking care of him.

  He is bored.

  His skin itches underneath the casts.

  His head hurts.

  He wants to remember.

  He NEEDS to remember.

  He just . . . can’t.

  Then one day, a day exactly like all the others, there is a new face. A black man, middle aged, wearing a suit like a Western businessman, with kind brown eyes and straight white teeth, and large, gentle hands.

  “I am James. I am a doctor. Do you understand me?” This is in thickly accented but fluent English.

  “Yes, I understand you.”

  “Do you know what is your name?”

  “I can’t remember.”

  “Do you remember anything? How it is you came here? Where you came from? You remember anything?”

  A shake of his head. “No. I have . . . pictures, images of things, but . . . nothing about who I am or where I came from.”

  A grave nod. “I see, I see.”

  “I feel like . . . I feel like I COULD remember, if I try hard enough, but . . . I just can’t.”

  “No, no. That is not the way.” James crouches, gently checks his arm, leg, and then his head, and then does the thing with the flashlight and his finger. “You suffered very much. Your head . . . this especially was badly hurt. I think your memories, they will return, but we must help them. To try too hard, this will not work. You must help the remembering, but gently.”

  “How?”

  James rises from his crouch and walks away without a word, but with purpose in his stride, and returns a few moments later with a spiral-bound notebook and a ballpoint pen. “The pictures in your head, write them down. Tell yourself a story about the pictures. A real story, a fake story, it does not matter. Just make the little pictures into bigger ones. Tell stories about yourself. They will feel like stories, or maybe, if you are lucky, some will feel true. This is to help your memory learn to work once more. In your brain, in your head, things were hurt. We must help them heal and give them time.”

  “What if I never remember?”

  James tsks his tongue, shakes his head. “No, no. You must not think this way. If you have the pictures, you have the memories. You will remember.”

  “Where am I?”

  “Africa. Near Conraky, in Guinea.”

  “Oh.” This doesn’t mean much to him. “How long have I been here?”

  “Over one month. Four weeks and some days.”

  “Where did I come from?”

  “Fishermen found you in the sea. Many injuries, no identification.” He pauses. “One of the fishermen who found you, I saw him just the other day. He asked about you. He told me you said only one thing, over and over again: Ava, Ava, Ava.” James watches the effects of his words very closely.

  Ava.

  Ava.

  Ava.

  Three letters, and with them a whirlwind of images.

  The hand, candy-apple nails and delicate purple-blue veins. The sweep of ink black hair on a crisp white pillow. Vivid, virulently blue eyes.

  His throat seizes and his muscles contract. His jaw clenches and the blue sky seems darker, and a sense of longing slams through him, a need, a desperation.

  “Ava.” He whispers the name, the three letters.

  Well, only two letters, really: an A, a V, and another A. Two syllables. A breath, his teeth closing on his lower lip, and another breath.

  What does it mean? This name, the hair and the nails and the eyes, who is she?

  She is . . . everything.

  What does that mean, though? He can’t comprehend it all.

  “This means something to you, this name?” James asks.

  A heavy, slow nod. “Yes.”

  “What does it mean?”

  A shrug of his shoulder. “I . . . I don’t know.”

  “Ava . . . what does she mean to you?”

  “Everything!” he shouts, sudden and loud. “She means EVERYTHING!”

  James is unperturbed. “Good, very good. You have a name, an important one. Write a story about her. She is in you, somewhere. Find her.”

  Find her.

  Find her.

  James is still speaking, but the words do not register.

  Eventually, he is alone once more, in the wheelchair under the shade of a tree. The notebook is on his lap, open to the first page, the pen held awkwardly in his right hand.

  The white space and blue lines of the page . . . it feels familiar. Like an invitation.

  He sits for a very long time, staring at the page, holding the pen, letting images and fragments of memory roll through him, letting strings of words coagulate and cohere like clumps of driftwood collecting in the lee of a tree downed in a river’s current.

  Sunlight drowses into evening, and the mosquitos come out and the tsetse flies and the blackflies and the other biting things, and he is wheeled back into a long, low, narrow room dimly lit by a pair of naked bulbs, with rows of cots, most of them empty, except for two still thin forms: a sick, dying man, and a woman with missing limbs and vacant, haunted eyes.

  The nurses help him into his cot, and he sits with the notebook balanced on his right thigh. Stars twinkle through the window, filtered through the mosquito netting. Insects chirrup and bats flit and he even thinks perhaps he can hear a distant SSSHHHHH . . . SSSSHHHHH . . . SSSSSHHHH of waves on the shore.

  It is cooler now that it is night, but it is still hot, and the air is heavy and moist with humidity, so sweat dots his forehead and upper lip all the time, and sweat trickles down his spine, and his skin itches under his casts.

  Eventually, the swirling stew of images and sentences in his mind glugs sluggishly down to his fingertips and into the pen.

  He grips the warm blue thin plastic tube between his forefinger, middle finger, and thumb, and touches the ballpoint tip to the first line of the first page.

  In fits and starts at first, and then with increasing fervor, he begins to write.

  * * *

  Petrichor is heavy on the air, the thick scent of rain. Bread baking, somewhere. A dog barks. Voices chatter, a low, meaningless murmur of dissonance. Wind blows past the window, whispering and whistling; rain clatters and patters and hisses. A bell dongs rings in a church steeple, and a ship’s bell answers with a jangle and clang.

  Calum is restless. A wildness fills his blood, a sense of urgency rousing him to pace across his room, back and forth, back and forth, the hitch in his step and the thunk of his false leg on the wooden floor creating a rhythm: shuffle-thud . . . shuffle-thud . . . shuffle-thud.

  His door creaks open, and Da appears. “Cease that infernal pacing, would you, Calum? It’s enough to drive a man mad, the endless pacing.”

  “They should be back by now, Da.” His voice is a permanent hoarse rasp.

  “They will be at the dock any day now, Calum. Tis a bit of a blow, nothin’ t’worry on.”

  “It’s been a bit of a blow for a week now, and not a word from them.”

  “What would you have them do, Calum, fly? They’re coming.” More gently, now. “She’ll be here, son. You’ll see.”

  Calum pauses at the window, staring out through heavy leaded glass into the snarling storm. He shakes his head, thick, unkempt red locks falling in his face. “I have an ill foreboding, Da. It’s like a stone in my gut.”

  “Are y’a witch, now, Calum, with the second sight to see the future?” His mockery is sharp, but well meant. “There’s no blood of Niall in your veins, son. It’s the storm, is all, making you restless. Come sit by the fire with me and have a glass, aye? You’ll do no one any good wearing yourself out with the pacing, not to mention the poor floor. You’ve worn a path in the planks by now.”

  Calum sighs. “How I can sit and fill my belly with drink when my wife is out there, lost in the storm?”

  “She’s not lost, Calum, you daft fool. She’s on a sturdy, well-built ship captained by a competent man with a lifetime of experience at sea. You helped build the be-damned ship yourself, and you’ve known Cap’n Patrick your entire life.” Da grabs Calum by the arm and physically hauls him out of his bedroom and sits him in an armchair by the fire, then pours a dram. “Stop worrying.”

  Calum takes a drink, then another. A third. But the whisky settles in his gut like acid, and he sets it aside with a growl. “I know, Da, but . . . I can’t shake the feeling.”

  “This isn’t like you, son.” Da’s craggy features wrinkle with worry. “You’re no more a superstitious man than I, to be putting stock in ill feelings.”

  “Exactly.”

  “She’ll be here.”

  Calum stands, shuffles to find his balance on the thick, gnarled wooden peg that functions as his left leg from the knee down. “I’m going to go down to the docks. I have to do something, Da.”

  Da catches at the gray cable-knit sleeve of Calum’s sweater. “It’s pissing out, and its past midnight. There’s nothing to see and nothing to do but wait. I know it’s hard, but its all there is.”

  Calum shrugs into a slicker, tugs the hood over his head. “I have to go.” He pulls a folded square of paper from his pocket, the last letter he got from her, two months ago, holds it up for Da to see.

  Da sighs heavily. “Calum, what will you do?”

  “Whatever I can do. Anything. Everything.” He stomps toward the door, a heavy boot step, and a thunk of his peg. “I have to do something.”

  “You’re a one-legged shipwright, and you nearly puked yourself to death on the voyage over.” Da’s voice is hard, snapping out. “There’s nothing you can do, Calum. Sit, and wait.”

  Calum wrenches the door open, admitting a howl of wind and a spray of rain, and stomps out into the gale. Despite the slicker, he’s soaked to the bone within steps, and gives up trying to keep the hood tugged over his head. He peers into the darkness, guiding himself to the docks. There’s nothing to see but the occasional glimpse of jagged-edge waves lit by flashes of lightning. The rain drives in sideways sheets, twisted and blown by the wind, each droplet a stinging pellet hammering at Calum’s face and pattering relentlessly off his slicker.

  His heart is beating out of his chest, thudding wildly. Every instinct he has is screaming at him, telling him something is wrong, something is wrong, something is wrong.

  But what can he do?

  Nothing.

  He’s a one-legged shipwright and hasn’t stepped foot on a deck sine he lost his leg. There’s no captain willing to brave a journey now, anyway, not in this damned monster of a storm.

  But she’s out there, his sweet, precious wife. “Mary,” he whispers, “come back to me.”

  He clings to a post as the wind attempts to fling him off the dock and into the bay.

  He whispers a prayer to Mary, to Jesus, to every saint he can think of.

  His teeth chatter as his blood turns to ice, but he remains on the dock, waiting, praying, and hoping.

  At some point, he slips down to sit on the slick wooden planks, both arms wrapped around the dock post. “Come back, Mary,” he whispers, again and again. “Come back to me, my love.”

  At last, with the storm finally beginning to blow itself out, his eyes close and he nods off.

  When he wakes, the bay is fogged over, a thick pall of fog the color of sun-bleached bones obscuring everything, even the end of the dock, ten feet away, cannot be seen. He’s chilled to the bone, and a tight, thick fist has his lungs in its grip. He struggles to sit up, and a cough wracks him.

  “Mary.” He wrestles himself upright, every bone aching, every muscle screaming, cough after hacking cough doubling him over.

  Between coughs, he hears a telltale sound, the chuck of water against the side of boat. The air is utterly and completely still, as only it can be after a storm like the one that just blew out. Straining his ears, he listens.

  There’s a creak of shifting wood.

  The rattle of a spar clattering against a mast.

  “Hello?” Calum shouts. “Hello!”

  Silence.

  “Mary!” Softer, with a sob: “Mary.”

  The chucking and the creaking and the rattling continues, growing louder.

  And then a tall, fat shape appears out of the fog. A ship. Listing heavily to port. Sail in tatters. Mast snapped off, mainsail gone. The deck is in ruin, and there is not a single sign of life.

  The ship drifts slowly, as if set on course by an invisible hand, shoved from the open ocean toward the bay. It doesn’t slow as it scuds toward the dock, and shore. Calum realizes it isn’t going to stop, and he dances backward awkwardly as the wall of the ship’s side crunches into the dock, splintering planks, and grinds to a stop. It shifts further as it settles, listing harder.

  The silence is complete.

  “Mary?”

  The name of the ship—HMS Victoria—is blazoned with white paint on the side. This is Mary’s ship.

  “No. No.” He hobbles toward the ship, catches up against the slick wood of its belly.

  A line dangles off the side and he snags it, tugs to test it, and then knots the line to the dock. The tide is high and, using the taut line, he is able to haul himself hand over hand up the side of the ship, his one good foot scrabbling at the side, his peg scratching and thumping.

  With great effort, he heaves himself over the side, gasping, sweating, slamming onto the deck. He catches his breath, and then lunges to his feet. The top of the mast snapped off and crashed down into the deck, spearing through the planks to reveal the hold below. Peering into the gaping wound, Calum can see crates, bolts of cloth, barrels of foodstuffs, a boot, a dress, all bobbing in the dark water filling the hold.

  Calum limps toward the nearest door, leading to the captain’s quarters. The room is vacant, books upside-down on the floor, a jar of ink smashed, pens scattered, the window shattered. The guest quarters on the opposite end of the ship are the same, the violence of the storm wreaked its havoc here, too.

  “Mary!” He shouts her name, again and again, feeling in his gut the truth.

  He slides on his buttocks down the ladder leading into the hold, until he’s calf-deep in water. A crate bumps against his knee, and a barrel of tobacco bobs past. A bolt of calico half-unrolled catches against his thigh. Hardtack and biscuits in a broken crate.

  A corpse rolls to the surface, twisting and bobbing, bloated. Male, old—the cook. Fish have eaten his face, and Calum’s stomach twists.

  “Mary!”

  In the scant minutes of his presence in the hold, the water level has risen from mid-calf to past his knee—the ship is sinking.

  “No . . . Mary . . . Mary.” He scrambles back up the ladder onto the deck, and has to haul himself onto the dock from the deck, climbing upward as the ship sinks around him.

  He stands on the dock, watching, as the Victoria sinks.

  Da appears out of the early morning mist and tries to pull Calum away. “It’s over, son. She’s gone. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, son, but it’s over, it’s done.”

  “No, no. No. Mary. I have to find Mary.”

  Da gestures angrily at the bit of mast poking up out of the water of the bay. “You found her, son. She’s there.”

  “No!” Calum slams a fist into Da’s chest, knocking him backward. “She’s not. You don’t understand, Da!”

  Down the quay, at another dock, a grizzled old man readies his small fishing boat. Calum spies the old man and the tiny boat, and hobbles with determination toward him. He reaches the dock, and grabs at the side of the fishing sloop.

  “Are you going out?” he asks.

  The old man nods. “Best fishing, just after a storm.”

  “Take me with you.” Calum gestures at the Victoria. “My wife was on that ship, and I—I have to find her. Please, help me. Take me out.”

  “The sea has her, lad. You won’t find her.”

  “I have to try.”

  A hard, rheumy stare. “You’ll sit where I say to sit, and you won’t touch nothin’. My ship, my rules.”

  “Fine, agreed, thank you!” Calum straddles the side of the ship and slides down onto the deck, hopping and hobbling to the crate indicated by the old fisherman.

  Da watches, hands in his graying hair, as the sloop vanishes into the fog.

  A wind has picked up, shifting the fog into skirling eddies, and it is this wind that blows the sloop out of the bay. The fisherman guides his ship with the easy familiarity of a lifetime’s knowledge of the bay and the surrounding area. He listens, head cocked, and then when the clap of the gentle waves echo off the docks and the quay, and the warehouses fades and become a louder kind of silence, he unfurls the sail all the way, unhurriedly tying off lines until the sail bellies to catch the wind.

  Calum sits on the crate, staring out into the fog and the waves.

  “She was coming from the east,” the fisherman rasps. “So it’s east we’re heading. She’ll have left a trail behind her. Corpses and the like.”

  “How did she make it into the bay? The sail was ruined and the air was still.”

  “Happens, sometimes.” A shrug. “Chance, perhaps. Some say the mer-folk will sometimes return a ship to shore like that, give her a push.”

  “Mer-folk?”

  Another shrug. “Call it superstition if you like, believe it or don’t, I care little enough. I’ve seen ’em.”

  “Mermaids?”

  A nod. “Got blown out to sea, once, many years back, got all twisted around and lost, thought I was sailing for shore but was heading out to sea. Spent days out there, ran out of food and water, thought it was the end. Wind died, becalming me.” A long pause, eyes roving the waves. “Saw a face in the brine. A woman. Swam right up and stared at me. Seaweed in her hair, fish scales where her legs should have been. Barnacles growing on her skin. Teeth like knives and hungry eyes. Not a lovely thing, but a fearsome one. I had a full net from my catch aboard, so I tossed the whole rotting mess of fish overboard, and there was a big commotion under the surface. Guts and scales and fish eyes floated up to the surface and, soon enough, I felt my ship moving, being pushed, pulled, I don’t know. When we reached the surf-break they let me drift back in, just like the Victoria did.” A hard glare, daring Calum to laugh. “That’s the damned truth, like it or not.”