Nemo is sitting on the grass on the square in front of the governor’s house. It has been long enough that nobody feels the need to stare at him anymore. His face is familiar to the islanders now, at least those who are likely to see him. Many of the townsfolk think he is simple, because he spends so much time simply watching things, and because he does not often speak unless spoken to. On the island, most people are not inclined to speak to strangers.
Marya is on the opposite side of the wide yard playing in the grass with some of her friends, but she is not paying enough attention to the game and they have begun to whine at her to pay attention. She cannot stop looking at Nemo, the handsome blonde man who had treated her so gallantly, and who was so strange and exotic. The other girls jostle her and giggle and she sticks her tongue out at them.
“Marya is in love with the stranger,” Nicola teases.
“Why not,” says Kleo, “He’s very pretty with those blue eyes of his.”
“He’s too old,” Nicola answers.
“It’s different when the man is older,” Kleo says.
“Not when the girl is 11,” Nicola says, and laughs.
Marya says nothing. She just watches him. He is laying on his back now, and he is reading a book which he holds in one hand. She stands up and walks over to him, nervously. Her friends giggle and call her back quietly. She stands near him and says nothing. She is very aware now of the scabs on her bare knees. He has practically fallen into the book, and does not notice her. This makes her heart quicken, to see the intensity of his attention so totally focused. His eyes move back and forth across the page the same way birds move their heads. She swallowed.
“Hello Marya,” he says, not looking at her, and not moving his mouth.
She takes a sudden step back and stammers as she speaks.
“Hello Nemo,” she says awkwardly.
He smiles, and rolls on his side.
“You heard me,” he says quietly.
“Yes.”
“How marvelous. Nobody else has, but I keep expecting them to. Isn’t that strange?”
She nodded.
“I love you,” she thinks, looking at his face, and seeing that he was really seeing her, and not just looking at her.
He stands up and musses up her hair like her uncles do. She feels her stomach start to ache.
“You think you do,” he says without speaking. “Because there is no person here. This makes it very easy to paint the perfect man on my canvas. It is very common. You’re a smart young girl, and if you think on it, you’ll know I’m right.”
He began to walk towards the mansion, the book under his arm.
“Are you coming,” he says out loud.
She nods, thinking about what he said.
“Nemo,” she asks, “does it make you sad that you don’t remember who you are? it must be scary?”
“Your French is much improved,” he says. “have you been studying?”
“No,” she answers. “I don’t know why.”
“I do,” he says, smiling.
He offers her his hand and the walk around the base of the hill on which the mansion sits, and they walk to the water where the only sound is the waves, and the distant sounds of men at work mining salt.
“You didn’t answer me,” she says.
“You’re right,” Nemo says, “that’s a very rude thing adults do to children. I seem to recall hating it.”
“You’re still doing it,” she says, giggling.
“Am I?”
“Yes!” she bats him with a hand, “stop it.”
He smiles.
“No, my dear. it doesn’t make me sad.”
“Why on Earth not? Are you not very lonely? You must have a family…perhaps even a wife, or a little girl who miss you.”
He nods gravely.
“Perhaps I do. If you like, you can feel badly on their behalf. I can’t. I simply don’t remember them. This life is all I know.”
“It must be terrible to remember nothing.”
“It isn’t,” he says, “but I could never explain it to one so young as you.”
“That is another dirty trick grownups like to play,” she says, tossing a stone into the water.
“We have to, I promise. No word of a lie. There really are things you couldn’t understand. And that we wish you never had to.”
She shrugs.
“Why do you remember nothing?”
“Because I am not like other men, my dear. I can hear you in my head, and you in mine, and that by itself should show you we are more alike than not,” he says. “Is it not so?” he adds without speaking.
“Yes,” she says silently, “but I remember everything.”
“It will not always be so.”
She stares at him with wide eyes that start to brim tears.
“I don’t want to forget.”
“You will, and when you do, you will be glad of it.”
Their conversation had become entirely silent, and they were sitting together throwing rocks in the water, her eyes sad and shining.
“Why? How could I?”
“The older you get, the more things you will have done that you regret.”
“And also the more I will cherish,” she interrupts.
“Losing those will feel a small price to pay. I promise.”
She thinks about this and she reaches out and touches his arm fondly.
“What have I done to earn this show of affection?” he says aloud.
“You tell the truth, and I do love you. I don’t care what you think.”
She blushes, and turns her face away thinking about running away.
He takes her arm, and says without speaking.
“If you love me, you must love me exactly like am your uncle or your good friend. There can never be more between us. I am a thousand years old, my dear, and I think I would be more likely to fall in love with a boy.”
She rears back, her thoughts confused and wordless.
“Is that stranger than what we do right now?”
She blinks.
“No. You give me so much to think about, I think my head will pop.”
“You see. Already you wish to forget.”
She laughs in spite of herself.
“Never,” she says out loud.
“I can tell you that if you should find yourself at the bottom of the ocean for fifty years or so, you may be grateful for the ability to forget.”
“You’re teasing,” she says.
“Not a bit,” he says. “Look and see.”
She steps back uncertainly, and then looks inside his mind, and she feels the terrible dark pressing in so hard and so long that she feels she could scream, but she cannot breathe or draw in air to do it. She feels a gentle nudge in her thoughts and she falls to her behind gasping, and crying.
“That’s horrible,” she says, and he kneels down and brushes the tears from her cheeks.
“And someday I will not remember it at all except in the way you remember things when you were very small, and maybe not at all.”
“I understand,” she says.
“No,” he says, “you begin to, and that is sufficient.”
She suddenly hears the purple noise, and Nemo stiffens beside her, and his hand tightens on her shoulder painfully, and then he releases her.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “You should run home for now.”
“I don’t want to. I want to talk.”
He looked at her sternly.
“We have forever to talk. For now it isn’t safe. People will think I am unwholesome if I spend so much time with you, and besides, there is trouble in the mansion, and the governor is looking for me.
“Is that the purple noise,” she asks.
“No. That,” he pauses, “That is something else. I must run.”
He turns and walks toward the mansion, and Marya stays by the water, and she thinks about what she has been told, and she wonders if it is possible she used to be someone else, and if the dreams she has had are memories in hiding. Would her parents not now? The more she thinks, the more questions she has, and the purple noise begins to press and shiver.
For the first time ever, there is a purple word.
“Help.”