Sax grabbed the handlebars. He stopped the bike and stared frowning at Boone. Boone walked awkwardly over to him, arms extended, and staggered right into his bike. “Something wrong?” Sax inquired.

“I’m trying to walk without using my cerebellum!”

“Good idea,” Sax said.

“I’ll go get more ice cream,” Ann offered, and left Tati this time, and trundled back up the sand to the grass path. It felt good to walk into the wind.

• • •

As she was returning with a second bag of ice-cream bars, the air suddenly turned cold. Then she felt a kind of lurch inside her, and a faintness. The sea surface had a glittery hard purple sheen, well above the actual surface of the water. And she was very cold. Oh shit, she thought. Here it comes. Quick decline: she had read about the various symptoms, reported by people who had been somehow resuscitated. Her heart pounded madly in her chest, like a child trying to get out of a black closet. Body insubstantial, as if something had leached her of substance and left her porous; she would collapse into dust at the tap of a finger. Tap! She grunted with surprise and pain, held on to herself. Pain in her chest. She took a step toward a bench beside the path, then stopped and hunched over at a new pain. Tap tap tap! “No!” she exclaimed, and clutched the bag of ice creams. Heart arrhythmic, yes it was bounding about, bang bang, bang bang bang bang, bang, bang, No, she said without speaking. Not yet. The new Ann no doubt, but there was no time for that, Ann herself squeaked “No,” and then she was thoroughly absorbed in the effort to hold herself together. Heart you must beat! She held it so tightly she staggered. No. Not yet. The wind was a subzero frigidity, blowing right through her, her body ghostly; she held it together by will alone. Sun so bright, the harsh rays slanting right through her rib cage— the transparency of the world. Then everything was beating like a heart, the wind breathing right through her. She held herself together with every cramping muscle. Time stopped, everything stopped.

She took a short breath. The fit passed. The wind slowly warmed back up. The sea’s aura went away, leaving plain blue water. Her heart thumped with its old bump bump bump. Substance returned, pain subsided. The air was salty and damp, not cold at all. One could sweat in it.

She walked on. How forcibly the body reminded one of things. Still, she had held. She was going to live. For a while longer, at least. If it be not now . . . but not now. So here she was. Tentatively she walked on, one step after another. Everything seemed to work. She had gotten away. Brushed only.