I remembered the day that Kip and I had first seen the ocean. We’d sat together, on the long grass overlooking the cliffs, and stared as the sea lapped at the edges of the world. And if he’d seen it before, he didn’t remember – it had been new to both of us.
Now I knew that the sea would have been a daily sight for him. He would have been used to it – probably didn’t even glance at it as he went about his daily business. The sea, which we’d sat and marvelled at together, would have been as familiar to him as the thatched roofs of his village.
It wasn’t only Kip that I had lost. Even the memories of what we had shared were being snatched from me, rendered false by what I’d learned about him.
Safest not to remember, I told myself, walking faster. Safest not to disturb the drowned city of my memories.
*
We had to navigate carefully through the unforgiving landscape. We weren’t only avoiding the Alpha villages, but also the inlets and fissures that penetrated even into the high slopes. Several times the route in front of us opened up into dark water, the gash of a crevasse. We walked all night, with only a brief rest at dawn. It was past noon when we left Alpha country and reached the edge of the straggling flatlands and the sea-mired spits. I stopped and looked back, one last time, at the Alpha villages behind us.
‘I heard it too,’ Zoe said, ‘when Leonard mentioned that The Confessor came from here.’
Piper was walking ahead of us, out of earshot. Zoe, one foot up on a rock, was waiting for me.
‘I figured you’d be curious, when we got here,’ she said.
‘It’s not just that,’ I said. I remembered her face at the campsite, when I’d caught her swaying with the music. I kept my eyes on the ground as we walked together. And for the first time, I ventured to say out loud what The Confessor had told me about Kip’s past. I needed to speak it. And I offered my secret to her like an apology, because I had intruded on her secret dreams.
I told her everything The Confessor had told me: how Kip had been cruel, and had delighted in having her branded and driven away. How, later, when he could afford it, he’d tracked her down and tried to arrange to have her locked in the Keeping Rooms for his own protection.
I told Zoe how Kip’s past had tangled everything that I felt. When I looked at the Sunken Shore and tried to imagine his childhood, I couldn’t recognise him at all. Instead of recognising Kip, I was recognising Zach. Zach and Kip had shared the same resentment and anger at having a twin who was a seer and refused to be split. I’d been fleeing from Zach, but the more I thought of Kip’s past, the more I saw Zach in him. And The Confessor – I had feared her most of all, but when I’d heard about her childhood, I recognised my own story. She’d been branded and exiled, just like me.
Everything was backwards. Everything was doubled, a mirror facing a mirror so that the picture regressed infinitely, and no end was possible.
When I’d emptied myself of words, Zoe stopped walking, turning again to face me, blocking my way.
‘What did you hope I was going to say to you, when you told me this?’ she said.
I had no answer.
‘Did you think I was going to let you cry on my shoulder,’ she went on, ‘and tell you it was all OK?’
She grabbed me, shook me slightly.
‘What difference does it make?’ she said. ‘What does it matter what he was like? Or The Confessor? There isn’t time for you to indulge in all of this soul-searching. We’re trying to keep you alive, and not get killed ourselves. We can’t do it with you moping around. You’re slipping further into the visions, too. We’ve both seen it – how they get to you. How you scream and shake, when you see the blast.’ She shook her head. ‘I’ve seen it happen before. You need to fight it. And you can’t do that if you’re obsessing over Kip. You’re still alive. He’s dead. And it sounds like he wasn’t such a great loss after all.’
I hit her, full in the face. I’d struck out at her once before, months ago, when she’d made a similarly disparaging comment about Kip. But that had been a chaotic grappling in the half dark. This was more precise: a single punch to the face. I didn’t know which of us was more surprised. Nonetheless, her instincts didn’t let her down: she ducked to the left, deflecting most of the blow, my fist grazing along her cheek and ear. Even so, my knuckle cracked against something hard – her cheekbone, or jawbone – and I heard myself yelp.
She didn’t strike back, just stood there, one hand raised to the side of her face.
‘You need to practise more,’ she said. She rubbed her cheek, opened her mouth wide to test the pain. A red mark was surfacing on her jaw. ‘And you’re still not following through enough.’
‘Shut up,’ I said.
‘Open and shut your fingers,’ she instructed, watching me as I winched my fist open and closed.
She took it and turned it over, methodically bending each finger. ‘It’s just bruised,’ she said, dropping my hand.
‘Don’t talk to me,’ I said. I shook my hand, half expecting to hear the rattle of bones knocked loose.
‘I’m glad to see you angry,’ she said, smiling. ‘Anything’s better than having you wandering around like a ghost.’
I thought of Leonard’s words to me. Girl, you’re hardly here.
‘Anyway, it’s not even me who you’re angry at,’ she said.
‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’ I shouldered past her to follow Piper, who was nearly out of sight.
She called after me. ‘You’re angry at Kip. And it doesn’t even have anything to do with his past. You’re angry at him because he jumped, and left you behind.’
*
We walked in silence for hours. The peninsula that Piper led us to was really a string of islands, linked tenuously by a thin strip of land. The tide was already beginning to creep up the sides of the isthmuses, leaving just a narrow passage from one island to the next. In mid afternoon we set out across the final strip of stones, the last island ahead of us. It loomed tall, even now that the sea had claimed its lowest reaches. The tide was almost at its highest; the only way to reach the island was across a slim thread of rocks, already slippery with spray.
Piper was still ahead of us, already half way to the island. I turned back to face Zoe, who was just behind me.
‘When are you going to tell him about Kip?’
‘Keep moving,’ she said. ‘This path’ll be underwater in a few more minutes.’
I didn’t move.
‘When are you going to tell him?’ I said again. A wave splashed my leg, a shock of cold.
‘I figure you’ll do it yourself, soon enough,’ she said, pushing past me and clambering onwards on the slippery rock.
I should have been relieved. But now the secret was once again mine, so was the responsibility. I’d have to tell him myself. And to say it out loud again felt like an incantation: as if each time I uttered the words, I made Kip’s past more real.
Piper and Zoe had paused on the brink of the final island. Piper blocked the way, crouching at the point where the isthmus met the wooded slope.
When I tried to edge past him, he stood and yanked at my jumper, pulling me back. ‘Wait,’ he said.
‘What are you doing?’ I said, shaking him off.