Autor's note: Thanks to the Schutzstation Wattenmeer for bringing the acteon tornatilis to my attention.
The problem is that I lack a plan. How do you get better on purpose? For a few days, I get up with the intention of talking to someone. Not much. Maybe saying "Good morning" at the bakery or "thank you" at the little supermarket.
Of course that does not work.
Whenever I come close to talking to someone, an irrational panic spreads all through my body. I start sweating, feel a lump in my throat, my hands start shaking. In the end, I give up. I try to tell myself that going to the bakery is already a big achievement as it is. I am pointing at the things I want, which is some kind of communication, isn't it? That is already more than I was able to do back in London. Sometimes I give a friendly nod to people I regularly meet on the street or at the beach.
But it is not enough. I still spend way too much time staring at my mobile, wishing I could contact John.
I still can't.
When I am not busy failing to heal, I spend most of the time outside. I walk for hours and hours. First, I walk through every road in Wittdün. (There are not many, but still I want to rediscover them all.) Then I walk through every road in the next village, Stenodde. Then, I walk through every other road on Amrum. Then, I walk the trails through the forest and the dunes. Then, at night, I leave the trails. (Not allowed, for good reasons. But I need to do it. I need to make this island mine.) In the end, I take a long walk around the entire island.
Only a few days, and I know Amrum as well as I know London.
My deduction skills are slowly coming back to me. I can tell tourists from inhabitants and deduce who will be patient with my muteness and who won't. But there is still a lot to re-activate. So, after walking the entire island, I start spending more time watching people.
There is a walkway a few meters above the coast line, called Wandelweg. From there you can watch people walking towards the sea across the incredibly wide Kniepsand beach (1.5 kilometres at its widest point. Endless when I was a child). There are benches in the dunes from where you can watch people on the walkway. There are cafés and restaurants that are heavily frequented. There are beach chairs you can use to watch the people relaxing on the beach.
I manage to deduce a few (alarmingly simple) things but more often than not my mind starts wandering instead. More and more memories are swept up from the depths of my brain. They paint a more realistic picture of my childhood than the ones that came up during my journey here. But that is okay. I can handle them now. I remember more of Mycroft's annoying interferences with my life. A fight between my parents two weeks into our holidays when I was nine, so severe that I was scared they'd break up soon. A long list of stupid things I did the two years Mycroft did not join us on Amrum.
Strangely enough, those memories still feel comforting.
After a while, I give up deducing and start walking all across Amrum again. Only now I cannot help but wonder which places John would love and why. Would he like it here at all? Do I like it, or am I just caught in misty-eyed memories? (Does it matter? No, it doesn't. Because being here feels right, no matter why.)
I am sure he would like the small freshwater lake in the dunes because it is such a peculiar thing to have a lake right beside the ocean. He would dislike the lighthouse because it is such a cliché. He would love the trail through the dunes because of the smile on my face when I get lost in the strangely calming atmosphere. He would love the sound the wind makes in the dunes, when it gently blows through marram grass, carrying sand along that gets into every piece of your clothing.
I think it is time to accept the fact that John broke my heart.
Did I break his as well? Likely. To me it is clear by now that this has been Mary's plan B all along. She did everything to ensure that we both would be crippled beyond repair in case we would make it out of the cellar alive. (Don't want to believe that "beyond repair" is the correct term. I only wish I could see some hint of healing.)
I start visiting empty places, wander the Wadden Sea or hide in the forest.
One day I end up in front of one of the two cemeteries. Not the one for the inhabitants. This one is called "Cemetery of the Homeless". There are four tidy lines of graves. Thirty-two graves, to be exact. The first one from 1906, the last one from 1969. There are no names on the wooden crosses. The graves of unknown sailors who were swept up on the beach one day. Nobody knows who they are. They all left people behind who never knew where the bodies of their beloved ones were resting.
For some reason, that touches me deeper than it should.
But do those souls really need to remain unknown? Surely there must be documents of their ships that report someone missing. If one would compare the worldwide records of missing sailors with ocean lanes, the ocean current at that time and the weather ...
Before I really know what I am doing, my fingers fly across my mobile. Most of the documents I need are classified or simply not to be found online. Does sending Mr Super-Secret screen shots of the pages I need access to count as communicating? Surely not.
I have to wait a whole day before I receive an email from him. Access to online archives worldwide. Not all of them legal.
Before long, I am knee-deep into research. I buy myself a new laptop and a printer (thank God there are international mail-order companies that also deliver to small German islands). Then I go to the local stationery shop and buy all kinds of coloured pens as well as pins and wool and turn the kitchen wall into an evidence board. Then I will my mind to work the way it has to in order to solve these kinds of cases.
After two days I am sure that the sailor from 1934 is Arnulf Jögarson from the Norwegian ship "Irma". (He left behind a wife and four children, one of them handicapped from polio. Today, there are three great-granddaughters still alive.)
After another two days I have figured out that the dead from 1953 is the British passenger Tom Parson, of the German ocean-liner "New York". (Went to Hamburg to visit a friend and was on his way back to England. Left behind a fiancé and three siblings. Today, many of their off-springs are living near Edinburgh.)
The next two are easy, now that my mind has got used to working like that again. Knowing I won't be able to say much to support my results, I take the time (thirty-eight hours) to write it all down before handing it over to the local historian slash book shop owner.
He looks through my documents, utters the German equivalent of "amazing" occasionally and claps my shoulder in delight.
Three days later, there are names on four of the crosses.
I refuse to deal with the local press but continue working. After another week, three more names are added.
On my way back home from the cemetery, I take my time to walk along the walkway through the dunes instead of going straight home. A bad idea, for my mind insists on working. And with no new riddle to solve, it starts analysing my current state of mind.
On the plus side, I have to say that my mind has picked up speed again. Deducing might still be hard, but thinking as such is possible again. Finally.
On the minus side, I have to admit that by working on those cold cases I have managed to isolate myself further from other people. Not good, Inner John tells me. He has his back turned to me and is even more translucent than last time he showed up. I dismiss him angrily.
But he has a certain point. I can't even remember the last time I tried to speak.
A sudden wave of frustration hits me. I have been here for such a long time already and have not made any progress at all. How am I supposed to get better that way? John was right to leave.
(Is he feeling any better than me? Surely. He has to feel better. But wouldn't he have contacted me if he were better? But he cannot still suffer. That thought breaks my heart even more than the thought of a John who is better but does not want to call. So he has to feel better. But why hasn't he contacted me?)
My mind is trapped in a vicious circle, cannot break free on its own. I stop working on the graves, go back to walking the island and sitting on benches. Going backwards. Regressing.
Around me, the wind is getting cooler. Summer has turned into autumn. Gigantic flocks of birds arrive and leave. Tourists leave as well. The miniature world I have chosen to live in slows down. So do I.
I can't remember when I last ate something - just like I can't remember when I tore down everything from my make-shift evidence wall. But the diagrams are lying on the floor and I am not starved to death, so I must have done both at one time or another.
Again I spend more and more time sitting on benches or standing at the seaside, watching the waves playing around my (very convenient) wellingtons. Autumn is cold but mostly dry. Even when it is raining I prefer staring at the sea to staring at the torn down evidence wall.
One day when I am deeply lost in non-thought, I listen to the various people passing me by, deduce who it is by listening to their walk on the mudflat. I recognise the walk of the elderly woman with the terribly untrained pug. I recognise the walk of the teen who always sneaks away from home to meet his girlfriend instead of studying. I recognise …
Oh.
I recognise a walk that is as familiar as can be. Female, bare feet despite the cold. Energetic even when strolling. Looking for someone. (Me.) The steps slow down (she looks around), come to a halt (found me) and start again, quicker now (approaching me). She slows down when she is almost to me (unsure how to go on now) and finally stops next to me.
I don't have to look at her to see the hidden insecurity on her face. She probably thinks that Daddy should have found me. He is far better at handling a broken son.
We stand next to each other in (rather comfortable) silence for a while until nature seems to have pity on us. A small object catches my eyes. "Oh, look, Sherlock," Mummy exclaims, it's an acteon tornatilis. One of the most seldom nautili. When you were little we spent weeks searching for one, do you remember?"
Of course I remember. We never found it but spend almost the entire time together, just the two of us. It was brilliant.
Mummy goes on lecturing about the acteon tornatilis, telling me things I already know. At some point, her hand sneaks into mine. At another point, my head rests on her shoulder.
"We will stay for a while," she says suddenly and I nod (gratefully).
When we go home later, she is still holding my hand the way she did when I was ten.
Author's note: As I don't have access to the same data bases Sherlock has, I could only make up the dead sailors of course. Both ships, the Irma and the New York are likely to have sailed in the vicinity of Amrum at the right time, but I don't have the slightest idea if one of their crew was reported missing.
Big thanks to my three betas for high speed corrections. 3
