Thursday: Gull Island
On the first island, I ate a storm and sent my sister a very rude message.
The storm was a pudding. It sat in a gray bowl beneath a sign that said LOUD FOR ONE HOUR. I had gone there because an old island tale claimed its first cook trapped thunder in a pot. Whatever the truth of that, the pudding did make people noisy.
I asked for a large helping.
“You won’t be louder longer,” the cook said. “You’ll just be fuller.”
Both seemed useful.
I had retired from calling boat races the previous spring. Twenty-eight years of shouting at distant people had left me with an excellent voice and a habit of using it. My sister Omi claimed she could still hear me in her kitchen with the windows closed.
Omi also won every cooking contest we held at family meals. She never called them contests. That made losing worse.
I wanted something she could not name, reproduce, or improve. There were three islands on my ticket and three marvelous foods promised by their stories. I had booked the return boat for Sunday, because she had asked me to come for dinner.
The pudding tasted of warm pears. Then I burped.
A man struck a drum beside the harbor. My burp drowned him out. He stopped playing.
“Again!” he said.
I supplied a second one. We became friends immediately.
My message to Omi said: At last, a pudding with some power behind it.
Her answer came while I was waiting for the ferry. Bring yourself home on Sunday. Don’t bring something to defeat my dinner.
She knew me very well, which had never stopped me.
On the ferry, a young man in a blue coat was rehearsing a speech at the window. He began it three times, quietly, with a different hand held up on each attempt.
“I used to stand before a crowd,” I told him.
Everybody turned.
He lowered his hand. “Yes. I can hear that.”
“My name’s Nessa.”
“Radu.”
He was going to an audition on Kettle Island, our third stop. I knew the hall from an old race festival and offered to show him the way. He thanked me, then began his speech again.
I told him to give the last line more force.
He shut his eyes.
“Could you let me finish once?”
Of course I could. I was not a monster. I went outside, where I called greetings to passing boats until the pudding’s hour ended. The ferryman told me the boats did not need commentary.
Friday: Needle Island
The noodle shop stood above the pier, under a roof that rattled in the wind. Its cook served whisper noodles in shallow white dishes. In the local tale, a bride had invented them so the moon would not hear her quarrel. I liked a food with a useful purpose.
“Until you eat ordinary bread,” the cook warned me. “Then your voice comes back.”
I understood perfectly. I had bread every day. It was hardly a difficult bargain.
The noodles smelled of toasted onions. Each mouthful seemed to go quiet before I swallowed. Afterward, I asked the cook where he bought his onions.
He bent toward me.
I asked again. He bent farther. He still could not hear me over his rattling roof.
Down on the pier, the ferry called for boarding. I hurried to the rail with my bags, then found Radu standing at the top of the wrong gangway. His ticket was in his teeth while he fastened a strap.
I called his name. Nothing useful came out.
I waved. He waved back and continued toward a boat headed to the fishing grounds.
The ferryman called a second time. I could not leave Radu sailing away from his audition after promising to show him the hall. I caught his sleeve and pointed at his ticket, then the boat’s painted destination.
He took the ticket from his teeth.
“Wrong one?”
I nodded so hard my hat fell off.
“What’s happened to your voice?”
I showed him the noodle shop’s little paper menu. Beneath its drawing of a silent mouth was a loaf.
He looked toward our waiting ferry. A woman nearby sold bread from a basket. He bought a roll, broke it in half, and gave me the larger piece.
I ate while we ran down the right gangway. At the bottom I said, very clearly, “Thank you.”
The ferryman heard that.
“Better,” he said. “Keep it to two words.”
I paid Radu for the roll when we found our seats. He began his speech. I watched the island recede and kept my advice to myself for almost the whole crossing.
Then he asked whether the hall had a high stage.
“Three steps,” I said. “Mind the last one. It’s deeper than it looks.”
That was information he actually wanted. I enjoyed giving it.
Saturday: Kettle Island
Thunder soup was served at a small counter beside a fishmonger. It did not look impressive. Clear broth, a little green oil, steam. I had expected sparks.
The cook was called Fen. He had flour on one ear and no wish to become my travel companion.
“I need a bottle to take home,” I said.
“The thunder lasts one hour after I serve it. Then it’s ordinary broth.”
“An insulated flask?”
“Won’t keep the thunder in. If you’re still on this island in an hour, the soup can only feed you.”
My boat left on Sunday morning. Omi’s dinner was Sunday evening. I could take her broth, but no loud surprise.
I considered several more ways of asking the same question. Fen began serving the person behind me.
The price on the board made me count my coins twice. I moved aside and bought one bowl.
“What will it do?” Radu asked.
“Replay the loudest sound you remember,” Fen said. “Once. It can’t fetch a sound you’ve never heard.”
I thought of Omi laughing when we were girls. She had a great, untidy laugh then. She still had it, though I had spent more time trying to beat her than trying to hear it.
Perhaps I could take that home inside me. Not in a bottle. I found the idea so promising that I ate quickly.
The broth was good. Warm pepper, a deep taste I could not name. I opened my mouth to tell Fen so.
“AND HERE COMES BELLA, ROUNDING THE LAST MARK!”
The fishmonger’s scales shook.
It was my own voice from the fiercest race I’d ever called. I remembered the day exactly: rain, a snapped sail, Bella’s little boat wobbling toward the finish while I stood under a tin roof with a loudspeaker.
Radu dropped his spoon.
“Only once,” Fen said, as if customers regularly looked betrayed by their own lungs.
I drank the rest carefully. Radu pushed his bowl away.
“You’ve got a good voice,” I told him. “You just need to—”
“I need ten quiet minutes.”
I stopped.
“You keep giving me a show. I’ve got one speech to learn.”
The audition began at two. It was already half past one. I could have bought another bowl and tried thinking of Omi before each spoonful. Fen had not promised that would work. My boat home was paid for, but another bowl would use most of the money for my final night’s room.
“Come on,” I said. “I’ll show you the hall.”
We walked past the fishmonger’s, up a narrow lane, and out into a square where I had once handed a trophy to a man still dripping seawater. The hall’s three steps remained exactly as I remembered.
“Want me to come in?”
“No.” Radu tightened the strap of his bag. Then he added, “Thank you for showing me.”
I went to the public garden and ate a plain cheese bun on a bench. It did nothing but taste of cheese. After three days, that was a considerable achievement.
Radu found me there an hour later.
He had not got the part. He sat at the far end of the bench, and for a while we watched a gardener try to persuade a wheeled hose around a tree.
“Did you miss a line?” I asked eventually.
“No. They wanted someone older.”
He took his blue coat off. His shirt was wet beneath the arms.
After races, people liked to explain to the losing crew what they should have done. I stayed on my end of the bench.
I offered him the water bottle. He took it.
Sunday: Home
On the return boat Radu slept. I wrote Omi a message saying which hour I would reach her house. No hint about an unbeatable dish.
She had made stew. I tasted it, tried to name the spice, and failed.
“Well?” she asked.
“I haven’t the least idea.”
“Have another spoonful.”
I did. Then I told her about the drummer who had mistaken my burp for a career opportunity.
She asked how the ferryman had tolerated me. I folded my hands, made my mouth very small, and gave her his patient, furious two-word voice.
“Not you.”
Omi laughed into her spoon. Stew splashed onto the table, and she blamed me while still laughing. I finished the story of the wrong gangway. She let her own dinner grow cold before she thought to eat again.
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