A struggle. He flails his limbs and it feels good to move. Feels right. His lungs hurt. He kicks out as hard as he can and his muscles spring into action.
He slides. There is brief pain but there is also air, and he lays gasping in it. The noise still. When he’s had his fill he tries to stand, finds he can, finds whatever is making that scream, and hits it until it stops.
Silence.
In the semi darkness he feels his way around. Is he blind? He climbs over something on the floor, a round lump. Then something sharp; his knees and feet prickle and stab, but he keeps going, hands outstretched.
Smooth, rough, metal, plastic, things he doesn’t have words for. He finds stairs and climbs them, fumbles with the door’s unfamiliar latch and then it is light, so bright he cannot see at first, but at least it means he isn’t blind.
More doors, more stairs, more things with no names, and then, all at once, he is outside, and he can smell it, salty, familiar, he is drawn to it like a magnetic north, and then it’s all around him, and it stings, and it fills his nose and eyes and lungs and it’s just like earlier when he couldn’t breathe only now there’s nothing to flail against, his legs and arms are useless, they do not do what he tells them to, but then there is a hand on his arm, two hands, grabbing and pulling and throwing him to the shore.
She looks strong.
“Oh,” she says. “You’re not him.”
All he can do is lay there and cough, staring up at her. The sun rises behind her, making her glow.
She kneels by him, helps him sit.
“Are you all right?” she asks.
When he can breathe again, he nods. Salt streams off his hair in rivers, it feels wonderful.
“You were expecting someone else?” he says. It is the first time he has spoken, and his voice surprises him with its depth, with the purr he feels within his chest as he releases it to the air.
“No,” she says, “I don’t know. You looked like someone else to me. It doesn’t matter.”
“I’m Jude,” he says, the name dredged up from somewhere inside him. How does he know?
“Isla,” she says. She stands, extends a hand to help him up. He grabs her and their palms fit together, so well.
She’s leading him down a path, and it takes him a moment to realize it’s the same way he came down to the water. He can see his bloody footprints, he follows them back like a map.
“I found this house a few days ago,” she tells him. “Until then I just lived on the beach. But it’s cold at night. It’s much nicer inside.” They reach the front door, and it’s broken.
“Someone’s been here!” she says.
“It was me,” he points out his footprints. He must have broken the handle as he fumbled out.
“You’re bleeding.” She leads him to a chair, puts his feet on her lap. The waves have washed the broken glass clean, but his blood stains her fingers as she probes. It hurts, but he likes that she is touching him. She wraps a towel around each foot.
“Does it hurt?” she asks. He shakes his head.
“When did you get here?” she asks him. “Where did you come from?”
“The basement,” he says. He slides on toweled feet back to the door, still open. There is a light switch at the top, and they turn it on together, descend the stairs side by side.
“Careful of the glass,” he whispers, although now he sees that she is wearing shoes, and clothes, and he wears nothing but towels. He feels his face heat, but she does not seem to notice.
“There’s someone down there,” she says, then louder, “Hello? Are you alright?”
There is someone lying on the ground, but he isn’t listening. This must be the thing he climbed over, round and soft. They roll him over and Isla gasps, a little sound like a wave.
“It’s him,” she whispers, but when she looks at Jude her forehead lines.
“It’s you,” she says. She touches the man’s cheek, then Jude’s. Her skin is elasticy and warm and he wants to push his whole face into her hand but she pulls away. “He looks just like you.”
They go upstairs and she shows him a mirror, and she’s right, he looks like the man in the basement, but somehow younger, newer.
“Is it your father?” she asks, but he doesn’t know.
They find a place to bury him, a nice flat field not too far from the house. There are other graves there, set up in pairs, their headstones nothing but numbers. There is a space next to number one, so they decide that must be where he belongs.
Digging is hard work, but they are both young and strong. Some of his cuts open up again while they work.
When they go inside she shows him how she has learned to turn on the shower, and to his surprise she joins him under the water, her body so different but yet the same. She helps him wash the scratches on his back, and when they get out they find gauze beneath the sink, and she wraps it around his wounds.
In the bedroom there are clothes which fit him loose around the waist. She has her own in a box on the floor. They lay next to each other on the bed and wonder together.
When he awakens he finds she has made tea, something bitter that he does not care for but drinks down because she has made it. On the table beside the bed is a photo, and the people in the frame look like him and Isla, though he knows they can’t be.
They clean up the basement together. It is much better with shoes. They wonder at the use of the machines and tubes and vials of liquids. There is whole fridge with small containers labeled with stick figures. Half have a triangle body, half a square.
He finds he wants to touch her, but she always moves away before he has a chance.
They are learning to cook. He has figured out how to light the stove. They make many experiments, some are good and some are not. They try everything, even the brown bottle that makes them dizzy.
The island is not very big, and they know every inch of it. They learn what they can eat and what they can’t. They catch animals, and sometimes fish, rarely birds. The small ones they catch they let go, and catch again later when they are grown.
