Hamza waited. Somehow, he knew it would happen, even before it did. It was a sharp movement. Instinctive. Like the sticking of a knife. The chain and the weight of the compass gave him leverage and Hamza watched as he threw it, over the railings and into the sea.

Hamza didn’t feel anything at all. Perhaps he was still too weak. Perhaps it was because he had seen so much of humanity’s cruelty that his disgust was deadened. He calmly got to his feet and approached the boy. Considered the frightening liveliness in his eyes, the triumph. He was breathing hard. Hamza tilted his head.

‘I feel sorry for you,’ he said quietly, ‘so sorry.’ The boy’s smile straightened slowly.

Hamza was walking away when the first blow hit him on the back of his skull. There was the sudden metallic taste of blood in his mouth. He fought back, but his body was heavy and the boy had struck first. He tried to hold him off by his neck, and did not hear the kick which shattered his ribs, for by then he was unconscious.

5

Squall ♦ ’asfa ♦ Tymestl

THE SEA WAS TROUBLED. Efa stood in the empty house and looked out across the harbour. The wind had mewled like an infant this morning as she walked along the sea wall. She could hear it now, rattling the windowpanes irritably. She checked that the old sash window was properly locked and closed the curtains.

She had ten houses in her care, each of which she visited once a week for their owners. Other than for a few weeks a year, the houses that looked over the harbour would remain empty, until summer brought them to mind again. In the meantime, Efa was paid to tend them, like graves. They were beautiful houses, too beautiful for any local wages to buy. When Efa was a child, she knew the names of everyone who lived here, played with their children. Would be in and out of people’s houses. Now they looked unfamiliar, dressed in coastal colours, even their old names erased or changed by owners who did not wish to learn them. She pulled her coat around her. Although well maintained, the houses were unheated at this time of year.

It was as if the village were sick. In summer, the owners came from cities, formed a village of their own. Cafés and hotels would swell with their numbers. Local men drinking from tankards at the end of bars would disappear amongst families and noise and dogs. The village would then feign life, its cheeks falsely rouged by laughter and abandon before September took them away, leaving café staff staring from windows and ice-cream kiosks closed. The village would turn inwards then, almost embarrassed by the gaiety it had fallen for.