In addition to his exercise routine, I took every opportunity that came my way to take him out for explorations around the island. We made it a habit to visit Sun Beach for at least half an hour in the mornings, and I showed him other parts of the island that he had not seen before. For some reason, he was particularly drawn to the lake, even more than Sun Beach. I didn’t offer to cook for him myself again after the omelets, but instead took him to my grandmother’s house for meals. She was delighted to meet Josh, and she was always happy to have guests for lunch.
I continued to take notes in my trusty polka-dot notebook, although the things that I picked up on were few and far between. He continued to be curious and ask questions about The Shade and the world around us, but I was able to learn very little more about him. Whenever I was around him, I found myself mostly answering questions, as well as broadening his knowledge on the supernatural dimension, until after the ninth day there really wasn’t much more I could tell him about the world that I hadn’t already. After all, my own knowledge of the outside world was fairly limited. I knew about it mostly from tales of my parents and other family members, because I had only recently joined the League and started going out on missions.
To my and Josh’s heavy disappointment, throughout these nine days, neither the witches nor the jinn had any luck with a cure. Though I couldn’t honestly say that this came as a surprise to me. I had been hoping against hope that if we just threw enough at him, we would reach a breakthrough. But it just wasn’t happening.
After Josh was in bed one evening, Shayla called me in for a joint meeting with the witches and the jinn, where they explained to me their failures.
“Nothing any of us have tried has worked, nor has shown even the slightest sign of working,” Shayla said, her round face glum.
“I think we just have to accept that the types of external cures we’ve been trying aren’t going to bring back his memory,” Safi said, looking hardly less disappointed than Shayla.
“It’s like his head is made of wood,” another Nasiri complained.
“So what?” I said, gazing around at each of their hopeless faces. “We’re going to admit defeat?”
Nobody responded except Shayla, who simply shrugged. “Unless one of us has a break through. But all of us have worked pretty much nonstop for the past nine days. Working for another nine days isn’t going to make a difference. We are no further than when we started.”
I blew out a sigh, slumping back in my chair. Safi’s words played over in my head. An external cure. Meaning a forced cure, induced by some sort of magic. It was endlessly frustrating. I knew that Josh held memories. More memories than he was revealing. He was not as far gone as I had initially thought—I’d seen for myself how some things were instinctive to him. Which meant that he remembered them. It was just a matter of figuring out how to bring them to the surface. I was sure of it.
In any case, everyone around me was clueless, and sitting here in this meeting any longer didn’t feel like it would bring us any closer to a solution. Since it was late anyway, I stood up and bade them good night. I went straight home and headed to my bedroom, where I pulled out my laptop. I stayed up for hours scouring the web for any mention of a missing Brit named Josh. My search proved fruitless. I found a man of the same name—a couple actually—but their pictures weren’t of our Josh.
I flopped into bed, but did not sleep. I lay awake, tossing and turning.
If only those two oracles were still alive…
Perhaps it was because I was younger and more na?ve, possessing not even a fraction of the knowledge that those witches and jinn had. But one of the many things that my father had instilled in me was determination. Doggedness. Even in the face of the seemingly impossible.
I wished that he was here now. I distracted myself momentarily by wondering what was going on with the League. Although they had been gone a long time now, I was not really worried. They had a big task to complete, after all—scouring the entirety of The Woodlands to rid it of hunters.
Thoughts of Josh once again filled my mind. Since I was clearly not going to fall asleep anytime soon, I switched on my bedside lamp and dove my hand into the backpack I had hung at the end of my bed. I withdrew my notebook, lay back again, and began paging through my notes.
After scanning all of my comments, it was clear that we only had two strong pieces of information. Firstly, his accent, and secondly, his inbuilt instinct for physical training. From the moment I’d first seen his build, I’d thought that he must’ve been some kind of athlete or fighter. Coupling this with the fact that he had been caught by the hunters… I paused in my train of thought.
What if he wasn't actually caught, per se?
The idea hit me like a sock in the gut.
What if he had been a hunter himself?
That would certainly explain a lot of things. His build, for one, and also the fact that they were able to catch him in the first place. If he’d been one of the hunters, he would’ve been an easy target. What if he was originally from one of the IBSI’s UK bases?
So many what-ifs crowded my brain that I struggled to contain them all. And the idea that Josh could have been a hunter chilled me. I’d developed an inbuilt hatred for all members of the IBSI. Then again, even if he had been one, for them to have handled him like this, he couldn’t have gotten along with the rest of them. He must have been opposed to them in some way or other to have been treated the way he had been. I couldn’t imagine what person in their right mind would have been willing to go through such torture. And now that he had woken up from his stupor, he had an inbuilt desire to avoid them at all costs. If he truly had volunteered himself for whatever procedure they were performing on him, why would he be so averse to being taken back by them? No. I couldn’t bring myself to believe that he had cooperated with them. He must have been taken by force.