The snuggery of The Squid and Teapot was hushed, save for the faint crackle of the hearth. The hour was late, the kind of late where even the fog seemed to have given up making any sort of effort. Upstairs, Caitlin and Oswald slept the untroubled sleep of children who had not yet learned to be afraid of the island. Drury sprawled bonily in the corner, one leg twitching now and then as if in a dream of spoonwalkers desperate to be pursued.

Philomena poured a little more hot water into the teapot and glanced at her companion. Pyralia Skant sat motionless, eyes fixed on the fire as though the flames were telling her something secret. She had been like that for a long time. Too long, Philomena thought, for anyone entirely ordinary.

“You never seem to get tired,” Philomena said softly, easing herself into the chair opposite.

Pyralia gave a small smile. “That is because I do not belong to time in quite the way you do.”

Philomena frowned. “That sounds pretty much like immortality to me.”

“Immortality is the wrong word,” Pyralia said, shaking her head. “Immortality is endless living. What I have is different. I am not preserved against decay like a relic, nor worn away by the passing years, as you are. Think of time as a river. I stand apart from the current, and step in and out as I choose.”

“So why did you choose to come to Hopeless?”

Pyralia’s gaze sharpened. “Who said that coming here was a matter of choice? If you’re asking me why I’m on the island, it’s because it was made wrong. It’s twisted and knotted up upon itself. The fog, the nightmare creatures, the shifting coastlines… none of it is natural. It is a wound that keeps refusing to close.”

At last, unable to keep her thoughts to herself, Philomena said quietly:

“And that’s what you meant by unmaking the island.”

Pyralia’s lips curved into a faint smile, not unkind, but heavy with knowledge. “Ah. So you have guessed.”

“You as good as told me the other night,” said Philomena. “This place, it eats away at people. I know that, and I don’t deny that it’s wrong. Yes, the island is as twisted as a corkscrew. But if you unmake Hopeless, what happens to those bound to it? The ghosts? The shades? The poor old restless souls? And Drury…” she lowered her voice, though the dog’s skull was cocked as if listening. “What happens to him?”

For the first time, Pyralia turned from the fire to look at her. In the lamplight she seemed both impossibly old and strangely young, as though age could not pin her down.

“You think me cruel,” she said softly. “But what I do is not destruction. It is unpicking. A gradual loosening of knots that should never have been tied. Hopeless was never meant to bear so much misery, so much sorrow. It is a scar upon the fabric of the world.”

“Don’t you see, that scar is a part of us?”  Philomena insisted. “You wouldn’t pull the stitches out of a healed wound, in case the blood started flowing again.”

Pyralia tilted her head, considering. “True enough. But Hopeless is like a splinter that has been left too long, and has festered. One day the whole body will sicken.”

Philomena’s hands tightened on her teacup. “And the ghosts? Where do they go, if you unmake the island that holds them?”

Pyralia’s expression softened. “Don’t fear for the ghosts. They are only here because the island has managed to tangle life and death together. Unpicked, they will not vanish in pain. They will be free to move on to where they were meant to go.”

Philomena glanced at Drury, who appeared to stir at the sound of his name not being mentioned. “And him?”

Pyralia’s smile deepened, sad but fond. “Ah, Drury. He is different. A creature of the island, yes, but also stubbornly his own. I cannot unmake loyalty, or the mischief that has worn itself into a kind of love. If the day comes, he will endure it, just as you will.”

Philomena said nothing for a while. She listened to the fire crackle, to Drury’s clattering bones as he rolled onto his back. She felt the cold press of the fog against the windowpanes.

At last she sighed. “You speak as though you have forever.”

“I do,” Pyralia replied, with a tone that was neither boast nor lament, but simple fact. “Or at least, enough of forever to wait, and watch, and loosen the stitches one by one.”

Philomena gave a little shiver. “And what am I in all this?”

“You,” said Pyralia, rising from her seat, “are proof that the island does not have the last word. You and your children. Even Drury.” She laid a hand briefly on Philomena’s shoulder. “Do not mistake unmaking for ending. It is not the same. The ghosts will have peace. The living will have light. And Hopeless will remember it was once whole.”

Roger the rooster crowed outside in his sleep, a muffled, oddly reassuring sound.

Philomena gazed into the flames, turning Pyralia’s words over in her mind. Were they a promise? A threat? Or simply the sort of riddle that comes from someone who stands outside of time?

Pyralia had returned her gaze to the hearth, face unreadable. The light flickered across her features, too ancient and too young all at once.

Philomena sipped her tea, though it had long since gone cold. She thought of the children upstairs, of Drury’s rattling loyalty, of the restless dead who still clung to the island’s shores. Would Pyralia’s “unmaking” free them, or undo them altogether?

The fire popped sharply, sending up a shower of sparks dancing up the chimney. For a heartbeat, Philomena had the unnerving impression that the island itself had pricked up its ears and was listening.

She drew her shawl tighter and whispered to herself, “and what if Hopeless refuses to be unmade?”

If Pyralia heard, she gave no sign. But somewhere out in the fog, something shifted and sighed, as though the island was quietly taking  note.