‘Were you with him?’ she asks gently.
‘We fell asleep talking,’ he says, struggling to keep a lid on his grief. ‘I’ve just brought him in.’
‘He would have liked that.’ Her brow wrinkles. ‘Did you see anybody else out there last night? I thought I saw somebody near the gate. It looked like they were waiting to talk to him.’
‘I was down in the bay,’ says Seth. ‘I heard a voice, but I couldn’t see who it belonged to. Whatever they talked about upset him, though.’
‘Wasn’t much that could upset Grandfather,’ replies Emory, surprised. ‘Any idea what it was?’
‘None.’ Seth fiddles with the strap of his sandal, trying to dislodge a pebble. He’s desperate for the questions to end.
‘It will be on his memory gem,’ says Emory suddenly, leaning into the cart to examine Matis’s neck, only to find it missing. ‘Where is it, Abi?’
‘The cord was loose,’ I say. ‘His memory gem fell into the ocean last night.’
Emory’s eyes widen, as Seth lets out a despairing wail. He was braced for his father’s death, but not for him to be scrubbed from the world entirely.
Emory lays a gentle hand on Seth’s shoulder, which immediately tenses, forcing her to remove it.
Her face hardens, along with her thoughts. ‘How close did Grandfather actually get to the water last night?’ she asks.
‘How could that possibly matter?’ he demands angrily.
‘Have you ever heard of anybody losing their gem before?’ she snaps back. ‘Don’t you think it’s strange that it managed to unknot itself from around his neck, then carry itself into the ocean, taking with it our only way of knowing who he was talking to?’
Seth glowers at her, his eyes raw. ‘You’ll never stop, will you?’ he says disbelievingly. ‘You don’t even know how. You just keep picking, regardless of how much it hurts people.’
‘There’s something strange –’
‘No,’ he says, wagging a finger at her. ‘Matis told me to have patience with you, but the well’s dry. I can’t do it any more.’
‘Dad –’
‘No,’ he says, taking a step away from her. ‘My father’s dead, and all you want to do is kick over his body to satisfy your pathetic curiosity. I’m done, Emory. Stay away from me.’
Picking up the handles of the cart, he drags his father’s body towards the furnace in the infirmary, leaving Emory alone in the dirt.
NINE
Our painter, Magdalene, is dressing her son, Sherko, for school. His peplos is too large, and she’s trying to add a few stitches to tighten it, while he squirms, and groans, and fidgets. He’s been standing still for almost four minutes – an eternity for a young boy.
She’s biting back her frustration, which is easy to do when you’re gripping a length of cotton between your teeth. Their morning got off to the wrong start when she discovered dirty footprints weaving their way through the door. Sherko obviously forgot to clean his sandals before he came in last night, but he wouldn’t admit it.
Not for the first time, Magdalene’s wondering if she made the right choice becoming a mother.
Anybody in the village can apply to be a parent. They need only ask me, at which point I assess their temperament and suitability, then make a decision. It’s too important a job to be left to best intentions, which is why I reject most applications and make successful candidates undergo rigorous training. Usually, this gives parents a sense of pride, and a confidence that they’re up to the task. This morning, Magdalene is finding that confidence hard to come by.
‘Mum,’ asks Sherko, in the voice of a child loading a new salvo of irritation onto his tongue.
‘Yes,’ she replies, carefully pushing the point of the needle through the cotton.
‘Why did you straighten all the pictures?’
‘I didn’t,’ she says distractedly.
The walls of the dormitory room are covered in her canvases. They’re all different sizes and subjects, done in oils, watercolours, pencils and fabric. About the only unifying feature of her artwork is that they’re usually all hanging crooked. She blames a combination of untrustworthy walls, bent nails and wobbly hammer heads.
‘Yes you did,’ he argues, thrilled to be right. ‘Look. They’re all straight.’
Her eyes flick up to the walls. He’s right, they’re straight. Craning her neck, she looks behind her. Every one of them is level.
Her heart stops. This isn’t the first time it’s happened. He’s been playing this trick for months.
‘Maybe Adil did it,’ he reasons.
Magdalene stiffens, unused to hearing that name spoken aloud. Adil is her grandfather, and he used to straighten the pictures every night before they went to bed, claiming he’d have nightmares if they were wonky.
‘Adil isn’t allowed back into the village,’ she says tightly. ‘You know that. I’m not even sure he’s still alive.’
‘Why was he sent away?’
‘He …’ She trails off, unable to voice her shame.
Adil was one of Thea’s apprentices, the only survivor of the boat wreck that killed Emory’s husband. They recovered him a week after the accident wandering in the wilderness, but he couldn’t recall a single thing about what had happened.
It was immediately clear something was wrong.
He was no longer subject to curfew, or restricted in his movements, meaning he could go wherever he wanted on the island at any time. He suffered from terrible headaches, his lucidity coming and going. One minute he’d be making jokes with his friends, same as he’d always done, and the next he’d be screaming about giant earthworms and faces pressed against glass. Magdalene would wake up in the morning to find he’d spent the night scratching strange maps onto the walls, and writing the names of the dead apprentices in endless lists.
Thea examined him, but couldn’t find any explanation for these episodes. A month after the wreck, Adil burst into Niema’s classroom and attacked her with a scalpel, demanding she dig up what she’d buried.
Luckily, Hephaestus was nearby.
He managed to save Niema, but Adil fled the village and never came back. His punishment was exile.
That was five years ago, and Magdalene’s still angry at the way he was treated.
Before he lost his friends, her grandfather was scholarly and inquisitive, an exponent of civility in all things. He adored beauty, and encouraged Magdalene’s interest in art. There’s no amount of provocation that would have led him to hurt Niema, or even consider it.
Clearly, he was changed by the wreck. He deserved compassion and treatment, not banishment and scorn. She genuinely believes that if he’d attacked a villager, rather than an elder, he would have received it.
‘Is Adil coming back soon?’ persists Sherko, paying no heed to his mother’s discomfort.
Magdalene returns her attention to the straightened pictures surrounding them, then shakes her head thoughtfully.
‘He’s been gone a long time. Even if he’s still alive, I’m not sure we’d recognise him if he did.’
TEN
In a train carriage to the east of the village, Clara is woken by her best friend, Hui, who is practising a new concerto on her violin.
I’ve asked her to play it tonight in front of the village. Her performance this evening is one of the many crucial moments that have to occur to deliver the utopia Niema’s demanding. One bum note and the future will go rattling off on a new trajectory.
‘Hui,’ pleads Clara, flailing at her friend weakly, while keeping her eyes pressed shut. ‘I only just went to sleep.’