I only plan to be here a couple days. And the flight back to Seattle should give me just enough time to get my story straight. Somethingsimple: My nana was ill, getting on in years, had to go make sure she was okay. But all is fine now, nothing to worry about. Just the aches and pains of old age. If they ask me what kind of illness, I’ll shrug it off, say the doctors are still running tests. I don’t want to tell a lie so specific I’ll have to remember it later. And people are often less inclined to prod for details if they can see you don’t want to talk about it. It hurts too much, best to leave it alone.
When I arrive at the lobby, wheeling my suitcase through the small, sparsely furnished room to the front desk, I find the place bustling.
“Checking in?” the round, stubby-nosed boy behind the desk asks.
I nod. “Ellie Mills.”
He punches my name into the keyboard, eyes trained on the computer screen, and asks where I’m from. I can tell he doesn’t really care about the answer, but I say, “Seattle,” looking away from him to a group of two men and a woman who have just entered the lobby, speaking in low, hurried voices. The men are wearing button-up shirts, and the woman is wearing a blazer. This is a business trip—work-casual—they aren’t a family on vacation.
But what business is there in the Faroe Islands?
“So you’re used to the rain,” the boy comments with a forced grin, as if making a joke.
“Is the hotel usually this busy?” I ask.
“Sometimes, during whale season.” He makes a face, enters something else into the keyboard. I just want him to give me my key so I can slink into my room and get into the shower. I’ve hardly slept, the time difference is starting to wear on me, and I feel like I’m rattling around in my own skin. “You here to see the ghost ship?” the boy adds, turning his attention to a printer that is spitting out my reservation in slow, chugging motions.
“What?”
He flips the printed paper up onto the counter. “Sign here,” he says. “Will you need a parking pass? There are only a few spaces in front of the hotel.”
I shake my head and sign my name on the bottom of the reservation. “What did you say about the ghost ship?” I press, sliding the paper back.
“That’s why we’re booked out. They all came to see the ghost ship.” He nods across the crowded lobby, through a doorway into another room that I hadn’t noticed when I first walked in. It looks like a small restaurant, the quaint B&B kind, where an elderly woman is likely the one cooking all the meals. There’s even a bar with half a dozen stools—all filled—and a young man pouring pints of beer. He looks to be related to the one at the front desk. His older brother, perhaps. “Mostly tourists, come to take photos. But there’s media, too.”
My eyes swivel to the two men and woman who are striding into the restaurant now. They’re still talking, and it’s clear that they’re journalists. But then a group of three older women pass through the lobby, binoculars strung around their wrinkled necks—they’re the tourist kind, come to see proof of a fabled island, the kind of enthusiasts who probably go to Iceland hoping to see fairies or enchanted portals to other lands.
But what kind am I? Someone who probably shouldn’t be here at all. Who never should have come.
The boy hands me an old-fashioned metal key, and I give him a quick nod in thanks, then retreat to the narrow set of stairs carpeted in a green-vine motif, up to my room.
There is something preternatural about the Faroe Islands.
The sky is a dust-mote gray when I leave my room the next morning and walk out into the fog. The air is suspended in endless twilight this far north. It feels like something sinister waiting for me in the dense sea air, ghostly figures of drowned sailors wandering the jagged coastlineand docks, reaching out for the living, searching for a way back. We often long for what we no longer have.
I make my way down to the waterfront, drawn by some urge I don’t have a word for. I read somewhere that humans have an innate fascination with water—it’s in our DNA, a survival gene that makes us want to be near a source of water.
I stare out at the few ships bobbing in the harbor, the rest of the fleet already gone out to sea. A man wearing standard yellow waterproof overalls is walking up one of the docks carrying a blue crate, with a rope slung over one shoulder. He’s so well placed—a rosy-cheeked, barrel-chested fisherman—that it almost seems artificial. A man paid by the local government to wander the docks, giving tourists something to snap photos of.
The Faroe Islands are known for their salmon fishing. The remote northerly location and cool waters are a perfect habitat for wild Atlantic salmon, and it’s a major export for the islands—or so I read in a brochure inside my room.
I watch the man in overalls a moment too long, and he looks up, catching me staring, so I turn away.
Up a meandering road, my feet carry me away from town. In the lobby, I overheard people talking about a local bus, a way to get around the scattering of islands, but I have no interest in sitting side by side with tourists and reporters out searching for a myth. And even though it’s been two decades, I don’t want to risk anyone recognizing me either.
The Faroe Islands are like a layered cake, broken apart, dislodged from one another by tectonic shifts long ago, and the easternmost village in the chain is Hattarvík—a town perched on a tiny island that looks, ironically, like a small hat at the top of the cake.
I don’t know where the tour group spotted Saltwell Island, but I heard several people mention Velbastaður or Strendur, though most of it sounded like speculation. From what I could tell, the journalists seemed to be heading out in varying directions, hoping luck wouldlead them toward a chance sighting. And my strategy isn’t much better.
I walk and the sky begins to clear, the dull autumn sun scorching away the low fog, and I can finally see out over the Atlantic for several miles. My face warms in the sunlight and there is a soft, honeyed wind drawing up the scent of wet grass and sea air. I watch the ocean for any hint of land scraping along the horizon, for the sun glinting off wavy farmhouse windows. Each bend in the road feels like the promise of something waiting for me, if only I walk a little farther, another hour, I’ll finally see it floating just a mile or so off the shore. And then my childhood self, my lingering doubts, will finally be put to rest. Buried for good. I will drop to my knees and cry, or maybe scramble down the rocky embankment and wade out into the water, unable to fight the need to once again feel the island beneath my feet.
But this doesn’t happen. The Atlantic remains flat and unaltered.
When the sun is nearly set, countless miles beneath my feet, a family in a maroon four-door minivan stops on the shoulder of the road and asks if I’m okay. I try to wave them on, tell them I’m fine, but they insist that I’m a long way from town and that I shouldn’t walk back in the dark. Another car might not see me, and I could easily be struck on these winding roads. I climb into their back seat beside a shy toddler strapped in a car seat. The parents make small talk but thankfully don’t ask me if I’m here searching for the phantom island. And when we reach the hotel, I try to give them ten dollars for the ride, but they refuse, waving me off cheerily as if we’re old friends.
Back in my room I phone Nana, but she doesn’t answer. It’s Sunday, the day she likes to walk a half mile down the bay to Mrs. McNeal’s house, where they play cards, drink old scotch, and argue about whether the last big storm to hit their shores was in ’95 or ’99.
I leave her a quick message, letting her know that I made it to the Faroes safely and I’ll call her again tomorrow. I don’t call James; I don’t want to hear his voice thick with concern, his questioning. I know he’llthink this is about him, that I’m running away from his offer of a long, happy life together. So I send a text:Visiting home, will call soon. I’m fine, don’t worry.Then toss my phone onto the bed.
