Five

Eric checks his watch, and is surprised to see it is noon.

He has slept for a long time. He walks out into the day and decides to go for a stroll. He passes people, tending their gardens, just walking, or doing nothing. They smile, and he nods back at them, a little shyly.

He finds himself climbing a lane through the trees that cluster to one side of his house, and then descending on the other side, the woodland gives way and there is the sea before him and another rocky stretch of coastline.

He is suddenly taken with a massive urge to swim. It’s a hot day, and the sea looks inviting. He explores for a while and before long finds a tiny hidden cove among the rocks. He looks around. He has neither towel nor trunks with him, but the place is deserted. He’s sure he can’t be seen from the path he came down by.

He undresses quickly and eases into the water from a warm rock. It feels good, stinging cold at first, but the freshness of the cold salty water is delicious.

He comes out, and this time, finds a higher rock to dive from.

He plunges in, through the safe water near the surface to a colder, darker, more dangerous world beneath. Darkness beneath the beauty.

As he surfaces, water runs down his face, across his eyes, trickles from his ears, and as it washes the clouds from his mind, he remembers.

“What the hell am I doing?” he actually says aloud, and clambering up the rocks, makes toward his clothes.

He stops, staring at them. He knows he dropped them in a pile where he undressed. Now, they’re laid out neatly, spread flat, to warm on the sunny rocks. He looks around, but can see no one. Nothing.

Shaking his head, he pulls his clothes on, though he is still dripping wet.

He tries to clear his head as he walks back to his house, remembering now why he came here, and that he’s supposed to be working.

He ignores friendly greetings as he heads back to The Claw, and makes his way to his room, where he grabs his device and a notepad, a pen, sitting down at the bedside table. He thinks he hears a noise. The gate clicks, and he lifts his head waiting to hear approaching footsteps. None come, and then, determined not to be distracted, he concentrates again.

“What was I thinking?” he says again, staring out of the window. He starts to work.

He goes through what he knows.

Blessed Island, an obscure self-governed community in the farthest north. Population unknown, but small. Economic production? The island was once home to a fishing fleet, now vanished. However they make their money now, Eric has already seen that it isn’t tourism. There’s nowhere for anyone to stay for a start, and when they do have someone to stay, they don’t charge.

So how do they make their money?

What do they do here? Without warning, his mind feels foggy again, and his memory is struggling, though he knows there is something else he was sent to investigate.

He gets up and walks around the room, trying to clear his head.

It comes to him that he had some notes that he had prepared before he came, and he thumbs the power on his device.

It boots, and he goes straight to Notes.

He reads.

Flowers.

Blessed Island is believed to be home to the only surviving population of a very rare orchid: the Blessed Dragon Orchid, Latin name Orchidae dracula beati. Also known as the Dracula Orchid.

Eric had smiled when he’d first read its creepy name, then realized that dracula had nothing to do with vampires, but merely means “little dragon.” But beati. He’d had to look that up, and found it was the Latin for “blessed.”

Little blessed dragon.

He’d found pictures of it, and despite the apparently innocent meaning of its name, it did look a bit weird, scary even. More like an animal than a flower, a spiky dragon-headed thing, with purple petals and a bloodred throat at its heart.

The rumors hold that the islanders have recently, or otherwise, discovered that the orchid has health-giving properties, that it promotes well-being and energy. That it regenerates damaged cell tissue. That it could even extend life. That the islanders have extracted an elixir of life from the flower, and are selling it untrialed, and therefore illegally, for exorbitant sums, to the super-rich of the western world.

That is why he has come here.

He’d spoken to someone on a visit to London who claimed he knew someone who was using the drug, but that was just the problem. It was all someone, who knew someone, who knew someone. Hearsay.

Now he’s at the source of the story, but he’s already learned from OneDegree that this place might be less connected to the outside world than most.

He flicks through the notes on his device, looking for a map he knows he stored. He finds it, and just as it flashes onto the screen, the battery gives out.

He shakes his head. He goes to his bag, and rummages around for his charger, but can’t find it.

Silly, he thinks.

He hunts through the bag again, in all its side pockets, and the little compartment at the front.

He still can’t find it. He knows he packed it because he used it on the plane.

He takes everything from his bag, slowly, trying to keep calm, telling himself it will tumble out of a sock any moment.

But it doesn’t.

He looks at everything he has brought with him, spread on the bed, and he comes to the conclusion that someone has taken his charger away in the night.

Something cold slices into his mind.

He is afraid.