But even through the beard, I know.
He is the same man I remember from a long-forgotten dream, from a childhood that was haunted by thoughts of this island.
But it’s more than this.
Helen was right.
The man I met that night off the coast of Nova Scotia was in hismid-thirties, tall and broad-shouldered. He should be in his fifties by now, body slightly more slumped and used up. But this man in front of me is unchanged from the man I met almost twenty years ago. Dark, damp hair, shoulders towering above me, long-sleeve cotton shirt rolled up to his elbows.
This is the same man.
The same.
As if time has stalled or slowed around him—like a photograph left undeveloped.
He hasn’t aged a day.
The air seems to shake around me—in disbelief, in confusion—a tinny vibration pressing against my eardrums. “Do you have a boat?” I ask, head pulsing with too many questions that I don’t have time to ask. Because I know I need to get back to the mainland before we drift too far out into the Atlantic.
He takes a few steps back from the bed. Shakes his head. “Lost it to a bad gale some years ago. And it widnae do ye any good unless ye could see land.”
“We can’t be that far from the Faroes yet.”
He turns to the window, features cast in silhouette—a face that’s been carved by the sea-winds, a sleeplessness about him, an exhaustion, eyes like a long-awaited storm, as if they are always watching for something: for the rain to come, for death, or something else. He is a man who shouldn’t be here, who shouldn’t look as young as he does. “The Faroe Islands?” His mouth slackens, and I can’t sort out what it is, but he is different, somehow, than how I remember. The way he moves, breathes, the muscles in his forearms tensing as he slides his hands into the pockets of his wool pants.
I place the glass of water on the side table, beside a candle stub burned low. “I can’t stay here,” I say, releasing a shaky exhale. “I need to get off.” I never intended to be here this long—I only wanted to see the island, step foot onto its shores, to prove it was real. To know, once andfor all, that I didn’t make it up all those years ago. And then I would swim back to the mainland, to Helen, having seen the truth. With a story inside me I couldn’t deny.
“Ye shouldnae come in the first place,” he answers, a severity to his voice, an irritation.
“When we get close to land again, I can swim back to shore.”
A twitch pulls at his temple. “Nae tellin’ when that’ll be.”
Pain races down my hip, and I blow out a breath, resting my head back. But when I pinch my eyes closed, trying to conjure up a different outcome, a way out of here, memories slide like sand through my mind, to the last time I was here. With trembling fingers, I reach into the collar of my shirt, searching for the chain around my neck… but it’s gone. My eyes flick up, meeting with his.
Stillness passes between us, his face unreadable.
But from his pocket, his hand unfolds, revealing the chain sitting like a pool of silver in his palm, the locket like a glaring eye. He took it from around my neck while I slept.
“Why do ye have this?” he asks, running his thumb along the edge of the locket, as if it were an old friend he is trying to recall. “There was a wee girl who was here,” he continues. “She stole it… I never saw it again. How did ye get it?”
Guilt tightens in my chest, and my mind whirls—at the unfathomable nature of this moment, this conversation. “I took it,” I admit, my eyes flicking to the window, the doorway, observing every detail, wondering if any of this is real. If I’ve lost my mind. If I drowned out there at sea, and this is some momentary illusion before I tumble into the afterlife. “I’m sorry,” I manage. “I never should have.”
He closes his fist around it, like he doesn’t want me looking at it. His. But when his eyes lift, there is a new thread of curiosity in them. “That’s not possible. The girl was here only a year ago.”
My heart thuds like a small, clipped bird. Desperate, panicked, needing a way out. “It was twenty years ago.”
He slides the locket back into his shirt. The chain still holds the small, delicate shell that Nana gave me. But I don’t dare ask for it back. I am a thief. A stranger in his house. Again. Still, a shard of relief ripples through me, knowing the locket is back where it belongs.
“You haven’t aged,” I tell him in a near whisper. “You look just how I remember…” My voice falters, breaking under the weight of how impossible it is.
He walks to the bedroom window, touching the curtain. “The sea can play tricks on a person.” A gust of wind throws rain against the glass; the house rattles. “Ye learn not to trust what happens out here.”
The last twenty years of my life, all the time I spent trying to convince myself that none of what happened that night was real, is now crumbling in my hands. I feel both relief and something close to shock as I stare up at the same man I met all those years ago.
“Ye need rest,” he says now, turning away from the window, the dim light sliding along his face: the scruff of his beard, the quietness of his eyes. I shouldn’t be here. This shouldn’t be happening. “Get some sleep, if ye can. Storm might sound bad, but trust me, this house has weathered far worse.” He stops in the doorway, hesitates. “I don’t know yer name.”
My throat feels too dry, my head feels too full of thoughts, but I say, “Ellie.”
