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In exchange for two large cod, the wise-woman extracts Minke’s first language and wraps it in a piece of sailcloth. Her milk-language, her mother-tongue. It’s only spoken here, on this chain of islands. Each of them a few acres wide, and each with their own particular accent and god.
The parcel shifts in Minke’s hands like a waterskin, cool and smelling of gutted fish. When she lifts it to her ear it calls back to her: gulls, the lilt of a bone-whistle, and under that, something crying.
The old people always say the language of Minke’s island is like water. Still, Minke expected something bloodied, the size of a heart or a tongue. Something ripped out. That is what the extraction felt like.
Everyone knows you cannot leave your island without seeking the blessing of its god. Giving it something in exchange for taking yourself away....