Chapter 7: What the Water Says

The voice came again that night, and this time I followed it.

I put on my coat and went down through the sleeping town to the top of the sea stair.

Zoe was safe with Stavros snoring in the chair beside her cot.

The water at the foot of the wall lay black and flat.

It always did when I came near.

I sat on the third step above the tide line and listened.

"Halia," the sea said.

It was not a loud voice.

It never was.

It came up out of the dark in a whisper that I felt in the roots of my teeth.

"Halia."

That was not my name, and it had been saying it to me for ten years.

I heard a step on the stone behind me.

"I thought you might come here," said Kyros.

He had a lamp in his good hand and a coat over his shoulders, and he stopped a few steps above me.

"You said you wouldn't come to the loft."

"I'm not at the loft. I've been sitting at the top of my own stair every night since you left."

"Ligeia said something to me in the market," I said. "She told me to ask what you buried."

He went very still.

"What did you answer?"

"Nothing. I came here."

He sat down beside me, with a careful gap between us, and put the lamp on the stone.

"I don't know what I buried," he said. "That's the truth, and it's the worst part of me."

"Explain."

"Ten years ago I woke in my own bed with a cut on my head and no memory of three days."

"And?"

"The tide-seat was empty in the council hall. The court told me there was nothing to find. I let them."

"You let them."

"I told myself the missing days weren't mine to chase. I was lonely, and I didn't want to know why."

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