MargenDrawing a whole island before the fog arrives is not work for the hands. It is work for the memory, and memory, I discovered, is paid for with your own.
On the second day I felt the price. I finished the market street, every stall with its owner and her usual complaint, and when I looked up I could not remember my mother's name. I had it on the tip of my tongue like a loose tooth. Teo looked at me in alarm. Her name was Mar, I said at last, hauling the memory up with both hands. Her name was Mar and she taught me this. Do not ever let me forget it again.
That is how the ink works. To hold the memory of a place on paper, you have to take it from somewhere, and that somewhere is you. My mother never warned me. Now I understood why towards the end she barely recognised me: she was not ill. She was full of islands that no longer existed for anyone but her, and each one had taken the place of a memory of her own. She emptied herself of herself so that others would not be lost. The word for that is not madness. It is the largest word I know.
The fog came at dawn on the third day. Not with fury; with patience, which is worse. The islanders gathered in the square without quite knowing why, already half unstitched, smiling that courteous smile of people who are forgetting even their fear. Teo went from house to house shouting names at me while I drew with both hands, my tongue between my teeth, feeling the drawers inside me emptying one by one.
I forgot my first word. I forgot a friend's face. I forgot, for one whole instant, why I was drawing. Teo took hold of my wrist. Nerea. Your name is Nerea. You are saving Candela. Keep going. And his voice was the anchor I was missing.
I drew the last house when the fog was already wetting my ankles. I lifted the paper. The whole island was beating inside the line, every window lit, every name in its place.
Only one house was missing. Teo's. And I had no memory left to hold it down without letting go of something else.