I rub my eyes, rustle my hair to shake the past out. I blink around me, taking in the war memorial, covered in gulls. They crap all over it, and we take turns cleaning it off.

I say we. I’ve never done it.

When I get to the bit where the dirt road becomes what we call the “high street,” I look down, literally watching my step. The Lute “high street” could just be called “the street,” since it’s the only paved one on the island, and by “paved,” I refer to the centuries-old collection of cobbled rocks sunk deep into the dirt path, which risks more sprained ankles and popped tires than any of the wild areas of Lute.

The tourists just love the cobbled street, though, when we manage to get tourists. There were a ton before the war, families coming out on school breaks, retirees checking us off their bucket lists, hordes of historians, bird-watchers and other nature enthusiasts, the odd—and I mean odd—neo-pagan, but they’re all few and far between these days. What visitors there are arrive on the supply boat now that our helicopter’s been requisitioned by the military, and those who come that way are die-hard Lute lovers, familiar faces. The helipad’s completely overgrown already. We have to air out vacant houses to make sure animals aren’t moving in.

It feels quieter and quieter here, like the world has been forgetting us. Usually I don’t mind so much. It’s quiet, comforting. But today, it unsettles me.

Maybe we’re like those ancient gods. If you stop believing in Lute, it’ll stop existing. It’ll disintegrate into an imagined thing, and so will all of us.

As I pass Lucy and Martin Tinker’s cottage, I see movement in the window and cross the lane to the house. They’re youngish, only a little older than Jo, I’d guess, but traditional in a lot of ways, one of which is their heartfelt dedication to kitschy front window displays. In the past year, they’ve had felt bunnies around an Easter basket, ceramic hounds chasing a brightly painted fox, tiny wooden insects on a green-check picnic blanket, a gilded nativity, an Alpine ski scene, and the latest, a collection of silk songbirds on an artificial potted shrub.

They never mind me peeking in. It’s there for people to enjoy, in the same way that the flowering window boxes people keep are partly there for the wild goats to eat. But when I give Lucy a small wave through the glass, she doesn’t acknowledge me, and I realize as she turns that she’s not putting anything up at all, just wrapping the last silk bird in newspaper, stowing it away in a shoebox with the others. Something tells me to keep walking, but I freeze as if caught, wondering for the first time in years whether I’m intruding by looking in.