I find a market in this too-quiet town. Shacks--all seemingly bent towards the sea--line an open brick road descending towards the shore. The posted bar over the road tells me it's a market. Nothing else does.

Most of the shacks are empty. In the breeze, the wooden walls creak like gap-filled teeth. I walk slow, pretending I am checking each of the shacks for people. Even though there are only two, at the end of the winding road, blood so thick they might be asleep. A wandering stranger like myself wouldn't know that though.

I rub the bumps prickling my arms with the air coming off the sea. It could nearly be called chilly, this breeze trying to pierce the heat.

My boots crunch over dark pebbles, the jet bird circles high above and faint fish guts garnish the wind. I come to the end of the market, hands itching to plug my nose from the scent. They tie half knots in the backpack straps instead.

A pair of girls lounge behind the counter of the final shack, at the end of the winding, sloped road. Sheer yellow stone backs the street behind them, sheer cliff gives way to ocean behind me. The water-logged sign above them proclaims them seafood sellers. I sniff, but beneath the sea wind I catch nothing except stale perfume on their prone bodies. They are asleep. No seafood in sight, whether on the counter or the empty shelves.

I cough. Not-so-gently, I plant my fist on the counter. The whole shack trembles, and one girl jolts up, eye comically wide. I stare at the shaved patch of scalp above her left ear.

"Kalea," she hisses, shoves the girl beside her. The other girl twitches and slowly tips over. The first girl doesn't move to catch her, so I snap forward and grab her shirt. A stool clatters over inside the shack and Other-girl drops, the shirt in my fist rising over her face.

"Sorry," First-girl mutters, grabbing Other-girl's arm. I let go. First-girl nearly tips over, but grabs the counter. "Uh, what are you doing here?" her one bright eye, the other scarred shut, darts between me and Other-girl, who she attempts to prop against the counter.

"The sign said market."

"Yeah, uh, today's festival day?"

I blink. "I just came from down the coast. Because..." I shrug. "Festival for what?"

First-girl's fingers slip and her friend collapses out of sight. "Oops," she mutters. She blinks in my general direction. "So, uh, the midnight festival?" she points at the sky.

"What?"

She wrinkles her face up. "The midnight festival."

"Right," I say. "Can I just get some food? I just arrived in town from down the coast."

She yawns. "We didn't go fishing last night. Because of the festival. Neither did anyone else."

"I'm not really in the mood for fish. Can I buy bread anywhere near here?"

"I dunno."

"Well then," I slowly turn away. "Do you know where I can find a room to sleep?"

"Try Lakeia road."

I hesitate. "Which one is that?"

Her eyebrows scrunch together. "The most obvious...it's a right, then around the circle, and up the white road until you pass that store with the newly painted sign, then you turn left there and keep going until you find a dark street. Can't miss it."

My head scrambles to keep up, realizes she has finished, and belatedly sends a smile to my lips. "Thanks. Good luck with your shack."

"Yeah," she smiles back, bends over for Other-girl. "No problem."

I hike back through the empty market.

***

Dear dead, you and Tatter-cloak bundled up the tent in the village of white tupiit. The quiet village, early but bright with the summer sun. The gray army camp, just a short walk away, formed a wide smudge like a bank of smoke on the tundra, a warning in your awareness.

"I brought her bones out," you said, quietly.

Tatter-cloak glanced over his shoulder like an uncontrollable twitch. "You what?"

"I brought her bones out," you repeated. "I hid them between here and--" you pointed to the camp.

"You got away with that?"

"That part was easy."

"Where are we going to bury her?"

"Away from here."

"But where?"

You shrugged and resumed folding up the tent, Tatter-cloak frozen in motion until you said, "we should hurry. Most of the people still alive around here are likely after me."

His hands unfroze, hastening to fold the tent cloth. "I don't like this," he checked behind him again, whispering in the early silence as if you might get caught.

"Which is why we should hurry," you reached behind you for a cord to tie up the tent. "So we don't get caught."

***

I find Lakeia road, eventually. After wandering like a lost seabird in the ocean. At least there are no people around to stare at me walking circles through town squares and looping through alleys of buildings. First-girl's directions jumble up in my thoughts, a newly painted sign, turning left then right, something about a circle but probably not one I actually walked.

I find Lakeia road, by the dark stone street First-girl mentioned, by the sign over the squat building reading "rooms for rent, pay by the night."

An open archway beneath the creaky sign leads into a courtyard, all flinty stones and hardy grasses poking through the cracks. The jet bird's cloudy blood alights on the rooftop behind me, claws clacking. She pecks the tin eaves, apparently displeased.

I wander over the stones, study the doors set into the dark courtyard walls. Where do you pay? I unknot the backpack from my hips, unsling it from my shoulders, since I should look ready with the money. I dig around in the side pocket. My ears twitch at a creaking door, shuffling footsteps. But I pretend not to know this scratchy-blooded soul approaches me until the footsteps stop and they cough.

I twist around, smile prepared. "Hi," I say, try to say it brightly.

They yawn, folding their cloak around their figure, twice my size. "Looking for a place to room?" they say, voice as raspy as the texture of their blood. The scratchiness I compare to either a badly woven cloth, or the peeling bark of a bush, neither quite fitting.

"I'd like a place to sleep," I say, coming up with a bundle of papers from the side pocket. "For a few nights. Perhaps longer. Can I pay for three days now, and give you the rest of the money later?" I bite my lip and try to sort out the paper wads. Ones and twos and fours. How odd I still find it to pay with inked paper, pulped from trees.

They yawn again, narrow eyes disappearing into slits. "Seven abkens per night. You got twenty one?"

I pause. Seven per night? The last town had a nicer place than this, and that was five per night. "Seven?" I say.

They nod.

"Isn't that a lot?"

They shrug, smiling dimply. "Maybe so, but the alternative is sleeping out in the field. Would you like that?"

I shake my head. Even though that's what I've been doing the past two nights. Better to pretend at normal.

"Just be glad I don't nail the price at eight or higher," they chuckle, and chuckle, and I wordlessly count out twenty one, in paper wads of ones and twos and fours, and slowly their raspy breath gives out.

"Here," I say, hand them the papers by the corner. "Which room should I take?"

They steal the wad in a fist, skin brushing mine. I scrub it off on my side, masked by the motion of slinging the backpack over one shoulder. I follow them and their fluttering cloak towards a plain door at the corner of the courtyard.

***

The bleeding starts night number one, in a room with a mattress drunk on diseases. A window grimy with vertical brown bumps. A carpet scratchier than badly woven cloth. A bathroom pristine white.

I keep all my belongings in the bathroom. Craft a shallow bed of my cloak beside the door, backpack pillow in the corner. The jet bird claims the wide tub. I offer her seaweed bread, but she ignores it, pecking at the plunky tub instead. I would open the window above the bed to let her feed herself, but the brown bumps make me shiver.

The bleeding starts night number one, as I curl in the cloak on the cold tile. A warmth trickles down my knuckles, splitting open my eyes. I stare into the dark, and I sigh. I am so tired. So tired of treating exhausted fishers politely, handing thieving room owners extra paper wads nicely.

The blood trickles down my knuckles and spreads through the threads of the cloak. I am so tired of kids with collapsing curses; I used to know so many of them.

I flick a finger and suck the blood out of the cloak like an extension of my limbs. I sit up, in the pristine bathroom, blood in rivulets down my cheeks, my chin, my fingers. I shiver, at the ice cube of myself, tired of the years.

Dear dead, do you get nostalgic too?

I stretch out with my feet, my one free arm--my heel bangs solid ceramic, echoing in the night. I kneel, shuffle awkwardly forward until my forearms bump against cold sink. I let the blood go. I pry my fingers from my face and shuck off the drying blood.

"Happy birthday, Aukai," I whisper. Shut my eyes. The blood pools thickly on my chin. It drips. Pools again. I catch the next falling blood drop and bloom the liquid against the side of the sink. The flower melts.

"Happy twenty-seventh birthday, Aukai," I whisper, dried blood flaking over my tongue, metallic. "I suppose it was this morning, so I'm late in saying it. I just...held out hope something special would happen and I could really wish you happiness."

I whisper as if you were here, your skin the warmth radiating from my cheeks instead of my own blood like a badly done curse.

Aquamarine plips into the sink once pristine. The jet bird's blood beats slow as cotton clouds, her breathing even from the tub. I sniff, salt and ash, shiver despite myself.

Dear dead, I am so tired.

There is no window in the pristine bathroom. The barest light leaks around the edges of the door, through the papery sheet in its frame. I open my eyes wider, trying to find some reflection of my hand in the ceramic glaze, some hint of my hair hung about me. I whisper to the hollow dark, "ten years, Aukai, and you are still the last boy I fell in love with."

Dear dead, do you get nostalgic too?

Do you miss the house between the two white hills?

Do you miss the queen you knew for all of a summer?

Do you miss the child you pretended to be in that cave?

So many bones, gone and buried, I walk inside this skeleton like I remember belonging elsewhere.

The sink plips with droplets of aquamarine, encompassed by the grime of a filthy bedroom I paid seven a night for. I get nostalgic for a memory that pristine, never mind the grime, a memory like a moment grander than a sleepless night.

Dear dead, I pick over the bones of our sleepless nights and fill my mind with the grandeur of beautiful, splintered moments.

Aukai.

Queen.

Tatter-cloak still fights your battles.

I cry in the sink this sleepless night for the warmth of an old rock in an oven I haven't said thank you to in years.

Dead, dear, the weight of you burdens these wide shoulders I don't belong inside of--do you get that fuzzy nostalgic ache hollowing out the inside of your shoulder blades, just like I do?