Such is the air here that it carries sound exclusively in movement. At the sidewalk café, the people sit in conversation: I see their lips move, but only as I round the corner do I hear them. On Friday nights the bars are heavy with voices; when a new patron brings a draft from the door, there is a gust of noise that dissipates as the air again falls still. The voices of the city will lie like mist over the bay, sinking slowly into the water. Where they are then taken by the ocean currents no one here knows, but it is said that they have inspired fantastical tales and even religions in regions further south. These myths have not been easily dispelled.

Authorities claim that Stockholm’s voices are simply eaten by the schools of herring that sway along these islands; it is true that the fish here exhibit strange growths and are known to form the constellations of runes. Fishing is prohibited, but city dwellers do so all the same. And so ingest their voices once again, giving rise to vivid and terrifying dreams.

At the Stockholm Locks, the lake meets the sea to make a brackish water known, at certain concentrations, to cause immortality. Such concentrations occur only fleetingly, altered in a moment by the current. Sightings in the outer archipelago of cod the size of whales have led many to believe that fish sometimes swim through these patches; however, none have ever been caught.

The only verifiable proof of the phenomenon is this: In 1628, the HMS Vasa set off to join Gustavus Adolphus at Danzig. She foundered off Beck Island, a nautical mile from port, and in 1961 was raised out of the sludge. As the water-darkened ship broke the surface again, there could be seen, carved along a window high on the stern gallery, a woman, still brilliant in the gold and red favored by shipbuilders of the time. Experts theorize that on her way to the bottom, a sheet of perfectly saline water had brushed against her face like fingers.

Descartes once thought he had found the correct equation, but died when the fluid reached his lungs. It is generally believed that at the time of his disappearance, Leonard was attempting to replicate the Frenchman’s experiment.

But it is my particular theory that Leonard’s downfall was primarily phonetic.

Upon his arrival in Stockholm, the e of Leonard’s name was made high and long, in the Norse manner. Drawn into a smile just past the canines, what predators the citizens must have seemed to him. Unable to bear the stress the city placed on his initial syllable, Leonard leapt off the quay by the Locks.