Competition Twenty-Eight Highly Commended: The Cartographer’s Last Shore by Timothy Collyer

The morning I stopped ageing, the sea began to speak—to me alone. I listened.

Margaret found me ankle-deep in tide pools off Kilmore Quay, sketching coastlines that shouldn’t exist. I’d mapped this stretch for decades—every dune shift, every storm bite.

Today, the sea whispered coordinates I’d never drawn—ghostly inlets, forgotten harbours.

“You’re late for the meeting,” she said, reflection fractured in foam.

I didn’t hear her. Tide peeled back rocks like a forgotten map, revealing the arc of an ancient jetty. I traced it, hands shaking.

The map glowed faintly, coastlines shifting even as I drew. No one else saw them. Not even Margaret.

“Margaret, what if I told you I can see every coastline that ever was?”

“You’ve been staring at maps too long.”

Visions kept coming—Bronze Age huts, Norse ships, a Roman lighthouse where the chippy stands. I sketched them all.

“Here.” I held out my notebook. “They’re blueprints.”

She didn’t look surprised. Just sad.

“How long have you known?”

“Since the diagnosis. Six months. They said I’d forget, but I remember. That storm in the boat shed. You drawing on a chip wrapper.”

That memory wasn’t hers. It was mine.

The tide rose. My notebook slipped. In water: seventy-one, not forty-three. Grey beard, blotched skin. Clarity.

“What diagnosis?”

“Alzheimer’s. You’ve been looking after me two years.”

I staggered. The sea had shown me pieces of us—life mapped onto this coast like erosion.

“We told people I was the one losing words.”

I turned to the cliffs. The proposal spot. Our cottage.

“Will you help me remember?”

“I have.”

She took my hand. My charts dissolved in tide.

Still, I saw sails—ghost ships drifting across drowned histories, searching for home.

Memory doesn’t vanish. It sinks. Waits. Resurfaces when the tide is right.

Tim Collyer is a flash fiction writer based in Chippenham. Recent awards include placing second in the DuMaurier Literature Award and first in Science Fiction for Andromeda magazine. By day, Tim works as a Chartered Financial Planner. When not writing, he enjoys brewing beer, growing chillies, and spending time with his five dogs.

Illustration courtesy of Caroline Thomson – cara-design.com – madebycara_design