‘Four pages,’ admits Emory.
‘Are they good?’
‘No,’ says Emory, dismayed. ‘Turns out, I’m no better at writing plays than I was at making shoes, doing woodwork or building kites. My only skills seem to be noticing things people don’t want noticed, and asking questions people don’t want answered.’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t worry,’ replies Niema, running her finger along the spines of the books, searching for the one she wants. ‘Some people are born knowing what they’re for, and others take a little longer to work it out. I’m one hundred and seventy-three, but I didn’t start teaching until I was past eighty, and after that I never wanted to do anything else. It could be the same for you, if you give it a chance.’
Emory adores Niema, but the older woman talks about her age with so little regard that it’s frequently insulting. None of the villagers will ever live half as long, and Niema’s frequent allusions to her longevity can feel cruel. It’s especially painful today, when her grandfather’s so close to death.
‘Aha,’ exclaims Niema, pulling a tattered old paperback off the middle shelf. ‘This one is called Samuel Pipps and the Shrieking Spire. Hephaestus found it in an abandoned train carriage a few weeks back.’
She pushes it into Emory’s hand, catching the dismay on her face.
‘I know you prefer Holmes,’ she says, tapping the lurid cover. ‘But give this a chance. You’ll like it. It has three murders in it!’
Her voice has lowered to a hush. She knows I don’t like people talking about murder in the village, or even using the word openly.
The last one took place over ninety years ago, just before the world ended. Two friends argued on a stairwell in Nairobi about a promotion. In a jealous rage, one shoved the other, who fell down the steps and broke her neck. The killer had just enough time to wonder if he could get away with it before the fog came pouring out of the ground. He died a second later, along with everybody he’d ever known, and most of the people he hadn’t. There hasn’t been another murder since. I’ve made sure of it.
Nobody else in the village is allowed to read these books, but I’ve made an exception for Emory, because their puzzles are the only things that can sate her devouring curiosity for any length of time.
‘Remember, don’t show it to anybody else,’ says Niema, as they depart the room for the balcony. ‘It’ll only frighten them.’
Emory clutches the illicit book tight against her stomach. ‘Thank you, Niema.’
‘Pay me back by coming to the school tomorrow.’
Seeing the objection forming on Emory’s lips, she hastily adds, ‘Not because your father wants it. It’s a favour for me. If you don’t like it, you can go back to not writing your play.’
Niema’s gaze flicks past Emory, causing the younger woman to follow it over her shoulder. Niema’s son, Hephaestus, is stomping through the gate. His shaved head is bent low and his huge shoulders are rolled forward, as if the sky were pressing down on them.
Hephaestus only appears when things need fixing, or building. Most of the time, he lives alone in the wilderness, which is a thought so alien to Emory that even mentioning it fills her with unease.
‘What’s he doing here?’ she wonders out loud.
‘He’s looking for me,’ replies Niema distantly.
Emory’s gaze returns to Niema’s face. She thought she recognised all of her teacher’s moods, but there’s something playing on her features that’s never been there before. It could be uncertainty, or it could be fear.
‘Are you okay?’ asks Emory.
Niema’s eyes find her, but it’s clear her thoughts are still with her son.
‘Tomorrow night, I’m going to conduct an experiment that’s failed every time I’ve tried it previously,’ she says, feeling her way towards every word. ‘But if it fails this time …’ She trails off, her hands touching her stomach nervously.
‘If it fails …’ prods Emory.
‘I’ll have to do something unforgivable,’ she says, watching Hephaestus disappear behind the back of the kitchen. ‘And I’m still not certain I have the strength.’
FOUR
Peering through his binoculars, Adil watches Emory and Niema talking on the balcony outside the barracks, his heart thudding.
He’s halfway up the east face of the volcano, having found his way through the lava tubes that riddle this section. The ground is ash, the rocks black with razor-sharp edges. It’s as if his thoughts are radiating out of him, scorching the land.
He’s thirty miles away from the village, but he’s chosen this vantage point because it has a clean line of sight over the walls.
He can see Emory comforting Niema, placing an affectionate hand on the older woman’s arm. Every second of it burns, dripping poison in his veins.
I don’t counsel him towards kindness. There’s no point. For the last five years he’s thought of nothing except revenge. I have to nudge him to eat, and he does so impatiently, wrenching vegetables out of the earth, or plucking armfuls of fruit from the trees.
He’s fifty-eight, but he looks ten years older. His flesh is pulled taut over cartilage and bone, his face gaunt, his black hair turned grey and his brown eyes gone dim. His skin is blotchy and sickly-looking, and his chest rattles when he coughs, hinting at the sickness within. Under normal circumstances, I’d order him back to the village to be cared for, or at least have company in his final days.
Unfortunately, that’s not possible. He’s the island’s only criminal, and his punishment is exile.
‘She thinks Niema’s her friend,’ he murmurs aloud, a habit of his since he was banished. ‘She has no idea what Niema’s taken from her.’
As Emory hurries away, clutching her book, Niema glances up at the volcano. She can’t see Adil at this distance, but she knows he’s there. I report his movements to her on an hourly basis. He’s one of the few dangerous people on the island; she likes to know where he is at all times.
He sucks in a trembling breath and stares at his knife, imagining plunging it into her belly. He wants to see her eyes roll up in their sockets as the life goes out of them. He wants it more than he’s ever wanted anything.
‘And what good will revenge do you?’ I ask. ‘Have you thought about that? Have you considered what your life will be after you’ve killed somebody. How you’ll feel?’
‘I’ll feel like the job’s half done,’ he replies. ‘Niema’s the worst of them, but I won’t stop until Thea and Hephaestus are in the furnace. So long as they’re alive, we’ll never be free.’
‘You’re being ridiculous,’ I say. ‘Whatever you plot, I’ll warn them about. You’ll never get anywhere near them.’
You can’t watch me forever, he thinks.
He’s wrong about that. I was in his thoughts when he was born, and I’ll be in his thoughts when he dies. I watched over his ancestors, and I’ll watch over his descendants. There are so few humans left, they must be protected, and the village is the key to that. It must be safeguarded, at any cost.
FIVE
It’s twilight, a crescent moon cutting a hole in the dark blue sky.
The village glows with candlelight, and reverberates with laughter and music. The band is playing, and most people – including Niema – are dancing in front of the stage. Matis’s funeral is over. There’s no need for grief. Not any more.
The remnants of the evening meal cover the long tables, which are lit by flickering candles and the mourning lanterns hanging overhead. They’re made of coloured rice paper and strung on ropes between the two wings of the barracks. There’s a lantern for every person in the village, and each one contains a scrap of paper on which they’ve written a kindness Matis did for them.