Face placid, Pierce said, “I have loved. I have lost everything because death came early. I’ve seen it from your view. I’ve lived it from Matalina’s. She wants you to live. To love. To be happy. That’s what she wants. I can promise you that.”

“You …,”Jenks started vehemently, then hesitated. “You have,” he whispered.

Pierce set the figure of a mantis back on the mantel. “I loved a woman with all my soul. And I left her though I strove not to. She lived on, found love, married, had children who are old today, but I saw her face in their pictures, and I smiled.”

I sniffed, thinking my coming here was a travesty. I was trying to help Jenks live when Pierce had lived more than both of us put together. Not in years, but in experience.

Seeming to start to understand, Jenks collapsed back onto the hummock of moss. “When does it stop hurting?” he asked, hand around his middle.

I lifted a shoulder and let it fall. All of us were damaged, but it made us stronger, maybe. Maybe it just made us more fragile.

“The mind numbs,” Pierce said. “The memories blur. Others take their place. A long time. Maybe never.”

“I will never forget Matalina,” Jenks vowed. “No matter how long I live.”

“But you will live.” Pierce faced us squarely. “Others need you. You know it. Otherwise, why tell Jax to take the land? That’s not pixy tradition. It’s against everything you know. Why do that if you don’t feel a responsibility for something else?”

Jenks blinked fast as he thought about that, and Pierce stood beside me. “You’ve reached past your limits, pixy,” he said. “Now you have to live up to your ideas. You have to live up to them.”

A light silver dust was sifting from Jenks as he silently cried. “I’ll never hear her again,” he said softly. “I’ll never know her thoughts on a sunset or her opinion of a seed. How will I know if it will grow? She was always right. Always.” Misery in his face, he looked up. Relief spilled into me. He wanted to live. He just didn’t know how.

Pierce handed him his glass of honey. “You’ll know. Come with me on the first full moon of spring. We will tour the cemeteries. I need to find my sweetheart. I need to put flowers on her grave and thank her for going on without me.”

My chest seemed heavy, and my throat was tight. I couldn’t help but wonder, though, if Pierce had been measuring me against his eighteenth-century love. That was something I could never be. I didn’t know if I even wanted to be with a man who wanted a woman like that.

“I will,” Jenks said seriously, not drinking the honey. “And you will sing with me about Matalina.”