Ike looked at the ink on his fingers and realized he didn’t know which finger was which. His mind was a leaking bucket. Every hour, a name or a face dripped out and hit the dirt. He didn’t just want to find the lost city: he had to. If he didn’t find the stone heart of the island by Friday, he wouldn’t even remember why he was breathing.
He kept a photo of a girl named Mabel in his shirt pocket. He knew she was his daughter. He knew he had loved her more than his own life. But when he looked at her smiling face, his chest felt like a hollow cave. The love was gone. Only the knowledge of the love remained, and that was fading too. It was the cruelest kind of theft.
“Keep your eyes on the treeline, Ike,” Knox said. Knox was a big man with a neck like a tree trunk and a voice that sounded like gravel in a blender. “The dirt here don’t like to stay put.”
They stood on the edge of the Shifting Isle. It was a place that shouldn’t exist. It was a land that breathed and stretched. Behind them, Della was checking her compass. The needle was spinning in circles, acting like a panicked bug.
“The maps are useless,” Della muttered. She was young and sharp, but her eyes were wide with a fear she couldn’t hide. “You said you could guide us, Ike. You said you remembered the way.”
Ike felt a sharp, cold sting in his gut. He didn’t remember. He had notes, scribbled in a frantic hand that looked like his own, but the words felt like they belonged to a stranger. He opened his journal. The pages were filled with warnings. *Don’t look at the birds. The river moves at noon. If you forget Mabel, you are dead already.*
“We go North,” Ike said. He hoped his voice didn’t shake. “The Anchor is in the center. It’s a stone that doesn’t move. If I touch it, the doctors said my brain will stop draining. It’ll lock everything in place.”
They started walking. The jungle was thick and smelled like wet copper and old breath. Every time Ike closed his eyes to blink, the path seemed to lean a different way. The trees had bark that looked like human skin, wrinkled and grey.
By noon, the first shift happened. It didn’t feel like an earthquake. It felt like the world was a rug and someone had given it a hard yank. Ike fell to his knees. His teeth clacked together, drawing blood from his tongue. When he looked up, the mountain that had been in front of them was gone. In its place was a deep, black swamp.
“Where is the mountain?” Knox shouted. He grabbed Ike by the collar and lifted him up. “You told us we were climbing!”
Ike looked at his journal. The ink was blurring. He looked at Knox and felt a surge of terror. Who was this man? He knew the name Knox, but he couldn’t remember why they were together. Was he a friend? An enemy?
“Ike!” Della screamed.
The ground under Knox’s boots began to pucker like a mouth. It didn’t crack open: it folded. Knox didn’t have time to run. The earth simply swallowed his legs. He thrashed, his massive arms beating against the mud, but the island was hungry.
“Get him!” Ike yelled, but his feet wouldn’t move. He was staring at Knox’s face, trying to commit it to memory, but the man’s features were already dissolving in his head. He was watching a stranger die.
“Help me!” Knox roared. Then there was a wet, sucking sound. The ground snapped shut. The jungle was silent again. The swamp was gone, replaced by a flat plain of grey tall grass.
Della was shaking. She was sobbing into her hands, her shoulders jumping up and down. Ike reached out to touch her, but he stopped.
“Who are you?” he whispered.
Della looked up, her face twisted in horror. “I’m your niece, Ike. I’m Della. We’ve been traveling for three weeks. Please. Please tell me you’re joking.”
Ike looked at the photo in his pocket. Mabel. Was Della the girl in the photo? No, the girl was smaller. He felt a soul-deep ache, a heavy weight in his lungs that made it hard to take a full breath. He was a ghost in his own body. He was a man made of smoke.
“We have to find the stone,” Ike said. His voice was flat. He didn’t feel sad for Knox. He couldn’t. Knox was just a word now. A word with no meaning.
They walked for hours as the sun began to sink. The sky turned the color of a fresh bruise. The island began to groan. It was the sound of giant bones rubbing together.
“Look,” Della whispered, pointing.
In the middle of a clearing sat a small, perfectly square block of white stone. It didn’t look like it belonged in the jungle. It looked solid. It looked like the only real thing in a world made of dreams.
“The Anchor,” Ike said. He ran toward it. His legs felt heavy, like he was running through chest-deep water.
He reached the stone and fell against it. It was cold. It was so cold it felt like it was burning his skin. He pressed his forehead against the white surface. He waited for the rush of memory. He waited for the faces of his mother, his friends, and his life to come flooding back. He waited for the love for Mabel to wake up in his heart.
Nothing happened.
The island shifted again. This time, it was a violent heave. The ground around the stone dropped away, leaving the Anchor sitting on a tiny pillar of dirt. Della screamed as the earth beneath her feet turned into a waterfall of sand.
“Ike! Reach for me!” she cried.
Ike looked at her. He saw a girl with red hair and blue eyes. She looked kind. She looked like she cared about him. But he didn’t know her. The name *Della* was gone. It had slipped out of the bucket five minutes ago.
He stayed pressed against the stone. He was greedy for his own soul. He didn’t reach out. He didn’t move. He watched as the sand took the girl, her fingers clawing at the air until she vanished into the dark.
The sun went down. The island went still.
Ike sat in the dark, hugging the white stone. He felt a strange stillness in his head. The leaking had stopped. The Anchor worked. Everything he had in his mind right now was frozen. It would never leave him.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out the photo. He looked at the girl. He waited for the spark. He waited for the warmth of a father’s love to hit him like a physical blow.
But the bucket had been empty when the Anchor locked it.
Ike knew his name was Ike. He knew he was on an island. He knew he was alone. But he couldn’t remember why the girl in the photo mattered. He couldn’t remember the sound of laughter. He couldn’t remember the smell of a home-cooked meal or the feeling of a hand holding his.
He had saved his mind, but he had lost his life. He was a man with a perfect memory of a total stranger.
He looked at the photo of Mabel. He saw a pretty girl in a yellow dress.
“Who are you?” he asked the paper.
The wind blew through the grey grass, but the island didn’t answer. It had nothing left to take. Ike sat in the silence, a king of a kingdom of nothing, holding a heavy stone that kept him from ever forgetting that he was completely and utterly alone.