indiscernible, air and water merging in burnished union. No motion of waves disturbed the one, nor cloud the other: only the shimmering blue existed, fierce as a furnace, painful to observe and soul-destroyingly empty. The coruscating glory of the dawn was a brief memory, the interim between darkness and day burned off in an eye’s blink, like gossamer feather fallen in fire. What little cool the night had brought was gone as swiftly, replaced by the intensity of the ascending sun.
The man turned slitted eyes from his observation to study the rock on which he lay, optimism flaring and dying as swiftly as the dawn. It had not changed since he had last seen it, despite his hope that he was somehow, in some manner he could not comprehend, caught in a dream that would end with the night. That forlorn solace evaporated as he cast his eyes-what color were they? he wondered-over the oblong slab of unblemished white.
It was exactly as he recalled, and he knew that if he summoned the energy to rise and step out its confines, it would measure fifty paces by nineteen, slanting a little upward after the thirtieth pace, sloping about its perimeter into the ocean. That vast womb seemed to wait, patient, knowing that in time it would have him, just as it had welcomed the bleached bones he had cast upon its waters, as much to introduce some disturbance, some leavening of the awful monotony, as to rid the stone of the empty-eyed reminders that death stood close by his shoulder. They had provided a small measure of grim amusement as he tossed them out over the featureless water, watching the splashes, wondering what features had fleshed the skulls, what musculature once decorated the bones of arms and legs, the cages of the ribs. He doubted they had been fat, not in this place; but what expressions had they worn when death reached out to touch them, telling them the time had come? He grimaced at the melancholy thought, wondering what his own would be, wondering what he looked like now.
His body-those parts of it he was able to see-was tanned and hard, the belly flat, the muscles firm, laced with corded sinew. His fingers told him his mouth was wide and full-lipped, his nose broad; the hair that fell long about his face was straight and black; but the composition of his features, for all his attempts to catch his reflection in the sea, remained a mystery. As much a mystery as his name, or how he came to be here.
He eased stiffly to a sitting position, limbs grown adjusted to the hard contours of the stone cramping, his mouth dry, the tongue sticky, salted with the scent of the sea. To stand was an effort that spun his head, exploding brilliance behind his eyes, but he forced himself to it, flexing shoulders, turning a neck stiffened in fretful sleep to and fro until his body had resumed some degree of mobility. He performed a series of exercises he could not remember learning, their execution ingrained, habit.
Then with nothing better to do, he sat again, sighing.
He did not know how he had come here, nor how long he had been on this desolate slab, as unsure of those things as he was of … everything.
It was easier to enumerate those things he did not know than his knowledge of himself or his whereabouts. He did not know his name or the place of his birth; he did not know how this ocean that surrounded him was named; he had no idea how he came here, which in turn led to the thought that he did not know if he had enemies, or friends, a family, a wife, or children. He did not know what he looked like, or how many years he had lived, or how he had lived them.
He knew so little: and that was the most frightening thing of all.
It seemed he was born full-grown upon this rock, birthed by the ocean itself perhaps, that awesome mother waiting to take him back, watching implacable as the sun fried his brain and pitched him into madness.
What might he do then? Plunge into the depths and drown? Or die withered by thirst and heat, his skin tightening over his bones until it cracked and fell away, leaving, finally, only a skeleton, perhaps for some other such as he to find. He was aware that he did not fear death in the same way that he knew such exercises as loosened his cramped limbs, but not how or why, and that blankness, that absence of memory, of self-knowledge, was the most galling aspect of this strange limbo.
He grunted, rising again, seeking in movement refuge from such melancholy contemplation. He was not dead yet, and whilst blood still pulsed in his veins, he would not give up, not turn to find death but flee from that embrace. He shaded his eyes, staring over the remorseless blue toward the scattering of similar rocks that jutted above the water. They were empty of life, though he suspected they held their caches of bones, offering no escape. He had thought of swimming to the closest-until he had seen the dark fins that occasionally clove the surface of the sea, judging from their size that the bodies beneath were sufficiently large to possess maws capable of swallowing him. In time, perhaps that would seem the more preferable option; but not yet. No: he was not ready yet.
He walked to the farther extension of the rock and crouched on the rim, peering down. Yesterday-or was it before yesterday? Time blurred in the amnesiac miasma of his memory-he had caught two crabs here, where the stone slab descended in a sharper curve to form a shallow bowl before slanting at a steeper angle into the depths. There had been more, moving about the pool, but he had been able to snatch up only two before the rest scuttled to the safety of the ocean. Neither was large, though he had received a painful abrasion from the pincers of one before smashing its shell against the stone, and the extraction of the raw meat did more to tell him his teeth were sound than assuage his hunger. But they had offered some sustenance: now there were none, and the scraps of broken carapace he had set out in faint hope of catching fresh water should rain fall or dew form were empty, dry as his own arid mouth. He swept them aside, seeing them fly over the smooth surface of the ocean, watching the small splashes they made, and pushed wearily to his feet.
Back, fifty paces to where the rock swept gently into the water, the stone was already warm beneath his bare soles. Soon it would be too hot to tread, and he would huddle, drawing in upon himself, seeking to reduce the area of skin exposed to the sun, cupping his hands over his head as he felt the rays burn into his mind, removing them only when he felt the heat become too great to bear and it seemed his flesh must take flame and burn. Then he would fight the temptation to dive into the seductive water, knowing that he must either give himself up or emerge salt-caked, easier prey to his fiery enemy, those parts of him already burned screaming silently at the saline caress.
The darkness was little better, though it brought a slight lessening of the heat, for then it seemed the ocean woke, great bodies moving within its suspension, half-seen things rising and diving, black bulks etched by the same moonlight that silvered the water, filigree patterns formed by the ripples. He looked then on stars he could not name, though he knew instinctively-or felt he did-in which direction north lay, and east, south, west, though he could not say what lands boundaried the water. Indeed, he could not say that the sea ended, could not be sure it did not extend forever, circling back on itself, this unknown world in which he found himself ocean-girt and he the only living human creature on it. Save that he felt in his bones his homeland lay to the east; and that others had preceded him: there was skeletal evidence of that.
He clung to the belief that he had come here through human agency: thus might he hope to escape by the same means. Perhaps some vessel would pass and take him off. Or grant him the boon of a boat; water and some means of shelter, at least.
“Because they are men,” he answered, “and not all men can be so cruel.”
He paused before he shook his head and said, “No,” hearing soft laughter at the admission.
“You are not there,” he said, “I am talking to myself. Perhaps I am going mad.”
“No,” he said, and shivered despite the heat, and drew his hands down over his face, tasting the sweat that already beaded his palms. “Go away.”
He forced his watering eyes to focus, studying his hands, hearing Death’s soft chuckling-or the steady murmuring of the sea, he was not sure which-as he fought despair.
They looked strong, his hands, callused about the bases of fingers and thumbs, across the palms, as if accustomed to wielding some implement. Hair grew dark from the backs, divided by the pale traceries of old scars, that patterning continued along his forearms: the blazons of remembrance. He sensed his past there, knowledge of himself: what he was, and what he had been, elusive as a rainbow’s ending. He struggled to pursue the hints, to chase them down, like a man seeking to define a fading dream. It was as if he tried to clutch fog in his hands: hopeless. He blinked as heavy droplets of perspiration ran down his forehead and clung thick to his lashes,
