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You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don’t go back to sleep.
It comes to my mind now because I think he is asleep—Declan. The prince who’s not a prince. The man who, in some backward-bent world, might have been my brother, were that Mummy had been braver. Were that Charles and his son arrived the day before my seventh birthday, as, years later, I found they were scheduled to.
I watch him lying on his side now, having first eaten part of a bar and drank some water, and I wonder what he knows of me. What he remembers from his last trip here. What had his father told him as they traveled? Had they really planned to take us? How would they have spirited us away? Here on Tristan, if a married person wishes to leave the island, it requires spousal consent.
Here I am a king—and you would be my queen.
His voice cuts into my thoughts, saying a word I don’t understand at first: “Nike?”
“Come again?” I tuck the hammer to my chest and step a bit closer to him.
He doesn’t move from where he’s lying, but he says, “You heard of Nike?”
“Oh—the shoes. Of course.”
Just as I’m turning back toward the cave’s mouth, he says, “George W. Bush?”
A small smile curves my mouth. “If you’re tired, you should sleep.”
“Is that a no, Siren?”
“I know history and politics. In fact, I believe he’s number forty-three.”
“What’s a Macbook?” he asks from behind the hand rubbing his temples.
“Macintosh,” I murmur. Macbook. “Is it a computer?”
In the lantern light, I see his small smile. “Martha Stewart.”
“The cookbook?”
“Yeah.” His voice is low and quiet.
“Tired, Sailor?”
He shakes his head. “Shoulder needed a quick break.”
“You’re younger than me.
One would think you would be able to keep up.”
His brows crease as his shrewd eyes narrow, and my tummy backflips. “How do you know that, pray tell?”
I can’t help giggling. Because I’ve no sense of decorum. Because I’m plebian and inexperienced and tired. Because I’m oh so tired. He looks up at me, and I put on my poker face.
“Everyone here knows your age, Carnegie. The island was obsessed long before you arrived.”
“And now?” His mouth twists on one side.
