‘What does that mean?’
‘No idea,’ he says, shrugging. ‘She’s been saying it to me for years, whenever I was upset, or a bit down. I asked her once what it meant and she told me it was a map to the future, but she never got round to explaining it.’
‘Don’t you want to know?’ asks Emory, exasperated.
‘Of course I do, but if she wanted to tell me, she would have done it already.’
Wiping the olive oil and breadcrumbs from his hands, he stands up heavily and links his arm through Emory’s.
‘How was the fight with your father?’ he asks, changing subject. ‘Did it distract you from being sad? I’m assuming that’s why you went down there.’
Emory casts a glance back towards the pool of lantern light in the bay, then smiles slightly, knowing there’s no point denying it.
‘I do a feel a bit better, yeah,’ she admits.
‘Your dad probably does, as well. You’re just like him. You run to the things that frighten you and away from the things you love.’ He sounds baffled. ‘Come on, I’ve finished my sculpture. I want you to see it.’
They walk towards the spot in the exercise yard where Matis has been working all week. The statue of Emory is standing on its tiptoes, having just plucked a stone apple from the boughs of the real apple tree above.
‘Do you like it?’ asks Matis, when Emory lays her chin on his shoulder.
‘No,’ she admits.
‘Why not?’
He’s curious, but not insulted. Art isn’t sacred in the village. It’s a bawdy, boisterous communal activity. Poems are interrogated even as they’re recited and bands will swap musicians in the midst of a song if they’re losing the beat. If an actor’s struggling in a play, it’s common for the crowd to call out lines, or improvise better ones. Occasionally, they’ll take over the part completely. Emory’s seen entire first acts rewritten by committee halfway through the performance.
‘Because it doesn’t see anything and it doesn’t ask questions, and it’s perfectly happy to be here,’ she says. ‘The only person in the village it doesn’t resemble is me.’
Matis snorts, slapping his leg. ‘Isn’t a single other person who would have given me that answer,’ he says, delighted.
Emory stares up at the candlelit windows of the barracks, watching the silhouettes moving inside, brushing their hair and preparing for bed.
‘I love the village, I really do,’ she says quietly. ‘I just don’t … there are things that don’t make any sense to me, and everybody just acts like they do, or that they don’t matter.’
Her thoughts drift back to her childhood, recalling the first time she discovered the elders could stay awake past curfew. Even as a child she knew it was unfair, but nobody else seemed to care.
I explained that villagers need more rest than the elders, but that answer didn’t sate her, especially after she woke up with a splinter in her heel that hadn’t been there when she went to sleep. A few weeks later, she found a fresh scratch on her thigh, then bruises on her arm. She never knew how they got there.
I tried to convince her that she was mistaken, but Emory was much too observant to believe such an obvious lie. She asked her father what happened to them after they went to sleep, but he treated the very question as a blasphemy. She asked her mother, who professed herself too busy to answer. She asked Matis, who laughed and ruffled her hair. Finally, she put her hand up in class and asked Niema, who kept her back after school.
‘Sometimes we wake you up after curfew,’ she admitted to the young Emory, after praising her bravery for asking the question.
‘Why?’
‘To help us with our tasks.’
‘What tasks?’
‘I can’t tell you that.’
‘Why don’t we remember?’
‘Because it’s better if you don’t,’ said Niema a little guiltily.
After leaving the classroom, Emory told everybody in the village what she’d learned, simultaneously awed at the power of questions and dismayed at the limitations of answers. She thought they’d be astonished by what she’d unearthed, but most of her friends met the news with a shrug, or else were embarrassed that she’d been so impertinent.
It’s been the same way ever since.
Their bright sunlit lives are blotted by shadows, and nobody cares what’s concealed in that darkness except her. Sometimes, she watches her friends at the evening meal and feels as distant from them as she does from the elders.
‘Why doesn’t anybody question anything?’ she asks her grandfather, focusing on him once again.
‘They like being happy,’ he says simply.
‘I’m not trying to change that.’
‘And, yet, answers nearly always do,’ he replies, waving away the mosquitoes. Dusk brings them out in thick, unrelenting waves.
‘This is my last night on earth,’ he says matter-of-factly. ‘So I’m going to say a few things I’ve always wanted to say, starting with this. Tomorrow morning you’ll wake up one friend short, and you weren’t exactly burdened with them to start with. Some of that isn’t your fault, but some of it is. You’re a clever girl, Em, but you’ve never had any patience for people who don’t see the world the way you do. That wasn’t a problem, except now Clara’s one of those people.’
‘Clara chose Thea,’ remarks Emory flatly.
‘And you don’t like Thea.’
‘She killed Jack.’ Her voice cracks on her husband’s name.
‘Jack’s dead because he rowed out in a squall and drowned,’ points out Matis.
‘On Thea’s order,’ she counters. ‘Jack and every other apprentice who was in that boat with him are dead because they bowed their heads, and did what they were told without question. They weren’t the first and they won’t be the last. People who choose Thea die, and I don’t want Clara to be one of them.’
Matis envelops her hands in both of his own, smothering her rage.
‘What’s the use of loving somebody so much they can’t stand being in the same room as you? Clara’s already lost her father. She can’t lose her mother, as well. Carry on like this, and you’ll be ten years older, wondering why you don’t speak any more.’
Emory holds his gaze for as long as she can, before she drops her head. ‘I’m going to miss you,’ she says.
‘Don’t do it for too long,’ he replies. ‘The more you look back, the more you miss what’s around you. That was your father’s mistake.’
He wipes away her tears with a rough, crooked thumb.
‘Speaking of which, have you seen that hopeless son of mine?’
‘He’s in the bay, angrily mending a boat.’
‘He never did learn how to be sad,’ replies Matis, sighing.
After squeezing her hand, he turns towards the gate. For a moment, Emory thinks she sees a hunched figure out there in the gloom, but she blinks and they’re gone.
‘I’ll come with you,’ says Emory, realising these are the last moments they’ll ever spend together.
‘I have words that are just for him,’ he says grimly. ‘It’s about time one of us said them.’ He glances at his granddaughter over his shoulder. ‘Your father was always too hard on you, Emory, but he does love you.’
‘I wish I believed you.’
‘I wish you didn’t have to.’
Emory watches her grandfather leave the village for the last time, before I gently nudge her into motion.
‘You’ve got six minutes until curfew,’ I say. ‘Get yourself to your room, otherwise you’ll be sleeping out here.’
Emory springs away, her sandals kicking up the dirt ground, but she’s halted by the sight of Niema and Hephaestus arguing in front of the metal staircase leading up to her dorm.
‘You promised me these experiments were over,’ yells Hephaestus, his voice guttural.