Eleven

The days pass.

The island is so beautiful, Eric thinks, every day as he wakes up, and every night as he goes to sleep. He’s had Tor bring him some more of that tea in a tall glass jar, and he’s quite proud of the little ritual he has created for himself every evening.

*   *   *

The days pass.

The sun burns strongly; the summer is young and fresh, the leaves and the grass bright, and vivid.

Eric passes his time walking around the island. He nods at people he’s getting to know, and smiles. From time to time he stoops and sniffs at a flower in this garden or that.

Merle comes to see him sometimes, and he is just as happy to see anyone else as her. There was something about her, that’s all. That’s how the thought forms in his head. There was something about her. But it doesn’t matter. Not really. She seems a little distracted, frustrated at times, and Eric starts to wonder what the cause might be, but he decides that that doesn’t matter, either. She ought to be like everyone else on the island. Sometimes she seems to look at him almost accusingly, but he can’t fathom why, or what he might have done. He hasn’t got the energy, his mind is too slow, and he soon gives up worrying about it.

The people are smiling and beautiful, and Eric feels happy and beautiful, too.

*   *   *

His only other visitor during that time is not a person.

One morning he finds a rabbit sitting in the middle of the path to his door. He looks closely and realizes it’s not a rabbit but a hare, long and lean. It’s sitting next to him, but is clearly watching him. Waiting.

He moves forward, expecting it to startle and bolt, but it does not. Puzzled, he makes a jump at it. It still stays exactly where it is. He is about to go right up to it, but something about its stare is unnerving, and in the end it is Eric who gives way to the hare, circling around it to go for a walk.

When he comes home that afternoon, the hare has gone.

*   *   *

The days pass.

One day melts into the next, the endless sun smoothing the journey around the calendar into one long chorus of joy. Of beauty, of joy, and of forgetting. Always forgetting.

The days pass.