Chapter 1
The Adriatic was a liar.
It spread itself before Katarina like a bolt of blue silk, serene and endless, whispering promises of peace with every gentle wave that kissed the shore. It was a beautiful lie, she thought, and perhaps that was why she loved it. It asked for nothing and offered everything—a vast, shimmering indifference that was, at that moment in her life, precisely what she needed.
Cavtat was waking behind her. She could hear the distant clatter of a shutter being thrown open, the low hum of the first tourist boat’s engine as it prepared for its daily pilgrimage to Dubrovnik, the muffled thud of a crate of oranges being unloaded at the konoba just off the main square. But here, on the crescent of pebbled beach that curved away from the town’s ancient heart, she was alone. It was just her, the early morning light that gilded the tips of the pine trees on the headland, and the rhythmic sigh of the tide.
It was their third morning here. Three days since she and Marko had arrived at her aunt’s stone house, shuttered and cool, overlooking the harbor. Three days of this new, fragile rhythm. Marko was still sleeping, the thin white curtain billowing into their room like a ghost. He slept later now, exhaustion from the past year finally catching up with him. Katarina, however, found sleep an elusive guest. Her mind, once a calm lake, now seemed to be a sea perpetually churned by a storm it couldn’t name. So she walked.
Barefoot, the pebbles cool and smooth beneath her soles, she walked. She wore an old linen shirt of Marko’s, the sleeves rolled to her elbows, and a pair of her own cut-off shorts. Her hair, dark and thick and streaked with the first whispers of grey she’d noticed only that spring, was tied back in a messy knot. In her hand, she carried a wicker basket she’d found in the pantry, intending to fill it with nothing in particular—a smooth stone, a piece of sea glass, a shell too perfect to leave behind. A purpose, however small.
The beach was a mix of smooth, grey-white rocks and patches of finer gravel. The recent storms had churned the seabed, and the tide line was a chaos of interest: gnarly twigs of olive wood bleached by the sun, tangles of fishing net as green as algae, plastic bottles with Cyrillic labels, and the occasional, sad sole of a forgotten shoe. She picked her way through it, her eyes scanning the debris.
She thought of her life in Zagreb. The cramped apartment overlooking a noisy courtyard. The constant, low-grade thrum of city anxiety. The gallery where she worked, with its white walls and pretentious airs, and its owner, a man named Zoran, who seemed to take a particular, oily pleasure in dismissing her ideas. “Conceptually, it’s a little... safe, Katarina,” he would say, steepling his fingers, the scent of his expensive cologne thick in the air. The memory made her jaw tighten. She had needed this break. They both had. A chance to step off the hamster wheel, to remember why they’d fallen in love with each other and with the simple act of being alive.
A flash of green caught her eye. Not sea glass, which was usually muted, but a vibrant, bottle-green. It was half-buried under a drift of dried-out posidonia, the seagrass that smelled faintly of sulfur. She knelt, the pebbles pressing into her knees, and tugged at it.
It was a wine bottle. A heavy one, the kind that held a robust Dalmatian red. Its glass was thick and streaked with the dull film of its voyage. There was no cork. Instead, the top was sealed with a plug of what looked like black wax, worn smooth by the water but still intact. And inside, curled against the dark green glass like a pale, sleeping slug, was a roll of paper.
Katarina’s breath caught. It was such a cliché, a message in a bottle. Something from a children’s story, or a plot point in a romantic film she and Marko would mock. And yet, here it was. Real. Tangible. A secret the sea had decided to give up.
She held it up to the strengthening light. The wax seal was unbroken. The paper inside wasn’t yellowed or water-damaged; it looked dry, a creamy white. Carefully, she cradled the bottle in the crook of her arm and used her thumbnail to pick at the wax. It was brittle and gave way easily, crumbling into black flakes that stuck to her fingers. She tilted the bottle, and the paper tube slid out into her palm with a soft rustle.
It was heavy, high-quality stationery. Not the kind of thing you’d grab for a drunken joke. She unrolled it with trembling fingers. The ink was dark blue, a ballpoint pen, the handwriting sharp and angular, the letters pressed into the page with force. It was in English. Just one line.
They lied about what happened on this island.
Katarina stared at the words. The wind, which had been a soft breeze, suddenly felt colder, raising goosebumps on her bare arms. She read it again. They lied about what happened on this island. It was nonsensical. Which island? What happened? Who were ‘they’?
She looked past the words, to the bottom of the page. There, in the lower right-hand corner, was a date. It wasn’t a year-old date, or a decade-old date from some long-forgotten sailor’s fantasy. It was from three days ago.
Three days.
She turned the paper over, hoping for more, but the other side was blank. Three days. The storm that had lashed the coast, rattling the shutters of her aunt’s house and keeping them indoors with a deck of cards and a bottle of travarica, had been two nights ago. The sea had been a churning, grey monster then. This bottle, with its impossibly recent message, had been tossed into that fury.
A deep, resonant thrumming sound pulled her from her shock. She looked up. A large, white tourist boat was chugging slowly past the headland, its deck still empty of passengers, making its way toward the open sea. It was heading south. And beyond it, shimmering on the horizon like the back of a sleeping leviathan, was an island. A dark, hulking shape against the brightening sky. It was Supetar. Or rather, the largest of the Elafiti Islands, the one the tourist boats always pointed out on their way to Dubrovnik. The one with the abandoned monastery, the ruined fortifications, the stories whispered by old women in the Cavtat market about a darkness that lingered there, a place where even the goats refused to graze.
Her heart was a frantic drum against her ribs. She looked from the bottle in her hand to the island on the horizon, then back to the note.
They lied about what happened on this island.
Which island? It could be any of a hundred. But as she stared at that distant, dark mass, a certainty, cold and absolute, settled in her stomach. It was that one. It had to be.
She clutched the note, her fingers white. The peace of the morning was shattered, replaced by a jagged, electric curiosity. Who wrote this? Why? And if they had thrown it into the sea only three days ago, from a boat, from the shore of that island itself, what did it mean? And, the most chilling thought of all, the one that made her turn and look back at the quiet, slumbering town as if it were a stranger:
Who were ‘they’?
And were ‘they’ still there?
