By the Sea of Sand Read online

  “No. I’m a stranger to them. I’m a stranger to myself.” His expression was bleak, but in that moment she saw what a handsome man he’d once been.

  She squeezed his fingers. “You are not a stranger to me.”

  “You remind me of my daughter. She had hair like yours. Long and dark. And she laughed a lot, like you do.” Venga’s smile was tentative. “You’ve been kind to me, Teila. Thank you.”

  His gratitude moved her and made her uncomfortable, too. She hadn’t opened her home to these people out of the kindness of her heart. She was paid to take care of them.

  “I know it’s your job,” he said before she could answer. “But you don’t have to do it with as much concern and caring. I’ll guess there are many who, in your place, would be less than kind.”

  “Is there something I can get for you, Venga? Do you need anything?”

  He shook his head again. “I think I might lie down in my room for a bit. All of these memories . . . they were gone for a long time, weren’t they?”

  “Yes,” she told him gently. “A long time.”

  “Some I wish I still forgot.”

  She didn’t ask him which they were; she could guess there were many painful reminders. She gave his hand one more squeeze and got up from the table, but caught a glance of what he’d been looking at on his handheld. It was a government news page. Many of the interactive features wouldn’t work with Venga’s old unit, but Teila had seen the page before.

  “Venga . . .” She had to ask him. Had to know. In all the time he’d been here, he’d never shown any interest in the gov pages, only viddy entertainments. “Why were you looking at this? Is it what helped you remember, or did you look at it after you started?”

  “The handheld was on my bedside table when I woke up today. Set to that page. Looking at it, I started to remember.”

  “But why did you look at it today?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know, Teila. Maybe it was just . . . time.”

  She nodded, still curious but willing to let it go. He said something else as she was leaving that stopped her. “What?”

  “I said,” Venga told her, “that I do know one thing that isn’t a memory. Not something I remember, just something I know now.”

  “What’s that?” She thought he would tell her about his grandchildren again, or perhaps more about his daughter.

  But Venga gave her a narrow-eyed look cold enough to send a frisson down her spine. “They’ve been lying to us for a long, long time.”

  Chilled, Teila didn’t know what to say. Outside, she found Vikus and Billis to help her with the cleanup outside. The storm had done some minor damage to the lighthouse outbuildings, but it had almost ruined the boathouse and left behind a lot of debris on the shore.

  “There might be something we can use,” she told the grumbling Vikus. “Remember the time we found all that scrap metal and sold it? That bought you a trip to Salvea, Vikus. I don’t remember you complaining about that.”

  “Only when he came home,” Billis told her.

  Vikus frowned. “I should’ve stayed in Salvea. More people there.”

  “We’d miss you here,” Teila said mildly. “But you know if you want to go, Vikus . . .”

  Billis grinned and punched his brother on the shoulder. “I’ll go with you. We can get jobs in the viddy shows, Vikus. You can dance and I’ll sing.”

  Considering neither of them had any talent in either area, Teila laughed behind her hand. “Remember me when you’re rich.”

  At this, Vikus put an arm around her shoulders. Seriously, he said, “We could never leave you here alone, Teila. You and Stephin need a man here.”

  Her brows rose at this—both at the idea that she couldn’t manage on her own without a cock and balls, but also at how sweetly serious he was. Vikus and Billis had known her all their lives, though the fact they were likely her brothers had never been discussed even when both their mothers passed on.

  “Why would you say that?” There hadn’t been a man in charge of the lighthouse for years before Kason’s cruiser wrecked, and there hadn’t been one in charge since he’d gone, either.

  Billis looked embarrassed. “Vikus is right. We can’t go away from here.”

  “You certainly can,” Teila told them both sternly. “I’ve always told you that you could make your own way in the world, if that’s what you wanted. Go to school, get training. Go off to Salvea or anywhere else. I never meant for either of you to be stuck here forever, like . . . well, like me.”

  “I thought you loved the lighthouse!” Vikus looked shocked.

  His brother, too. “So did I!”

  Teila tipped her head back to look up at the stone lighthouse, rising so high against the backdrop of the pale sky and three bright suns. She did love the lighthouse. She’d lived in it for her entire life. That had never meant that she didn’t wonder what it might’ve been like to live in a city. To pursue an education beyond what she could learn herself through correspondence courses. When she was younger, it had meant imagining finding love . . . but the lighthouse had brought her that.

  “Of course I do. But that doesn’t mean you both have to. The lighthouse won’t be the same without you. But it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t go, if you want.” She knuckled Vikus’ head, though he’d grown so much taller than her it was difficult to reach.

  He slowly pulled away from her. Billis had walked ahead just enough to reach the bleached bones of a whale jutting from the ground. They’d been there for several cycles, home to the nests of seabirds. Just beyond it the shore took a meandering curve farther out. Much of the debris tended to collect there after the storms.

  “You go on,” Teila told him. “See what you find. I’m going to start making a list of repairs we’ll need to handle.”

  Walking in the opposite direction, she put her face into the wind and let it whip her hair around her face. It felt good. Cooling under the suns’ relentless glare. In a few hours at sunsdown the wind would bite, but now it caressed her. So intent on looking over the damaged buildings, Teila didn’t pay attention to anything else until she rounded the base of the lighthouse and found Kason.

  Wearing only a pair of loose trousers low on his hips, he stood at the edge of the sea, facing out. He worked through a familiar set of motions, sweeping gestures with his arms and legs. How many times had she seen him do this, usually in the early mornings before the heat of the day? Every day that she’d known him.

  He was bigger than he’d been before, but too thin. The knobs of his spine jutted like the whale bones out of the ground. His hipbones looked sharp enough to cut. She watched the play of his muscles beneath his tawny skin and thought about what his father had said.

  Not rescued. Returned. The Wirthera gave up the ones who came back, but riddled them with nanotriggers before they did. It didn’t seem like the most effective method of infiltration to her, but what did she know? She wasn’t military.

  If he knew she watched him, he didn’t acknowledge her. She tapped notes into her handheld, taking stock of the worn paint and splintered bits of wood in places the wind had gouged on the lighthouse. The stone base would weather storms far worse than any she’d ever seen, but she checked them too for cracks or missing mortar. When she’d finished, she looked up to see him standing with his feet together, palms pressed against each other at chest level.

  This was the man she’d loved. Borne a child with, who he’d never had the fortune to know. She’d have done anything for him before and would do anything for him now to keep him safe. Sane.

  She thought of Venga, a man she’d have sworn would never return to his right mind, yet this morning he’d been clear as glass. And from what? An unexpected prompt. Had he opened the page on his handheld and forgotten it, only to see it in the morning and set his own recovery in motion?

  Or had someone left it there for him?

  The idea disturbed and intrigued her. Who would’ve done that, and had it been on purpose?