Chapter One
The Empty Sign
At breakfast, the island still had a name. By noon, Nemi could not remember what it was.
The trouble began with a sign outside the baker's stall. Nemi had walked past it all her life. One arrow pointed toward the ferry. Another pointed uphill to the bell tower. Between them, in the widest space, the island's name had always been painted in blue. Now there was a clean cream patch where the letters ought to be.
She stopped so suddenly that Kelu walked into her back. He had been carrying a basket of warm rolls in both hands, with the grave care he gave to anything he planned to eat.
"You made me almost drop them."
"Look," Nemi said.
Kelu looked at the rolls. "They are fine."
"The sign."
He tipped his head. "Someone painted over it."
"When?"
"Ask the baker."
That would have been sensible. Nemi did not move. She knew the missing letters as well as she knew the shape of the hill. She tried to picture them, one after another. The first would not come. Neither would the sound she made when she said the whole word aloud.
She opened the little notebook she kept in her pocket. On its first page she had drawn the market with the sign at its centre. Her lines were still there. The ink where she had written the name was gone. It had not been scraped away. The paper was as smooth as the rest of the page.
