It sounds like... my mother.
I freeze, every ounce of resolve dissolving as the words ripple through me. I blink, eyes blurring with a sudden rush of memories. Her voice—soft, melodic, full of love I thought the sea had stolen from me forever. Her warmth. The thick accent from back home in the way she says my name.
It can’t be her. Itcan’tbe her. She’s miles away, a world away. But…
My heart pounds, and I barely register Gypsy’s tug on our tether. She’s saying something, her words muted as if through water. I can’t hear her. I’m back in the fields, sunlight spilling over tall grass, the scent of lavender in the air as my mother hums, her hand in mine. Her laughter, soft and clear, echoes over the rolling hills, and I see her again—her face, the one the sea’s salt and spray had taken from me. Every detail of it returnsas vivid as that day, her gaze warm, her smile catching the sunlight.
“Vini!” Miss Captain’s voice slices through the haze.
I jolt, blinking away the memory. Or was it really just a memory? For a while I felt like I was there, back home. I washappy.
“Find your way back to me…”
“I want to,” I whisper, barely hearing myself. “God, I want to so much. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry…”
I want to be happy. I want to see my mother’s face again. I want to take a deep breath and feel like the very air belongs to me. Like it’s not foreign, cold and unforgiving. I want to touch the grass, tall and soft underneath my fingers. There are no terrifying bugs or plants back home, only safety.
“Vinicola! Snap out of it! Just a little more, we’re almost there!”
I don’t know who said that just now. I don’t know anything anymore.
The world around me is slipping, blurring as if I’m drifting between two lives—the one I’m standing between the stars, bound to a hand, and the one back home, safe in fields that smell of sunlight and lavender.
Which one is the real one? Which one can I trust?
I take a shaky breath, spreading my fingers and falling. I’m falling and falling and falling. I’m spinning.
“Come on,” someone mutters, pulling on my wrist. “I don’t care what you think you’re hearing, Vini. You’re not going anywhere but back to the skiff, got it?”
I blink and the stars don’t only merge from the ground up to the shimmering ceiling, they also start coming toward me, sliding in the air until I feel like I can grip them.
Yet, even as I watch them move all around me, something inside me wants to reply to the unknown voice. The first one or the second one, I don’t know.
“Uh-uh,” I manage to say.
“Whatever you think you’re seeing, leave it behind,” one says.
“Leave it all behind…”purrs the other.
The two voices circle in my mind, twisting and weaving through each other until I can’t tell one from the other, can’t even tell which is real and which is not.
“Lift your legs higher. You’re gonna trip.”
“I miss you…”
“Fuck, the skiff is not here.”
“It’s been two long years…”
Something tightens around my wrist. The edges of reality flicker like a candle in the wind.
“I don’t know what to do, goddamn it!”
Whoever you are… don’t worry. I don’t know what to do either.
46
Gypsy
