MY NAME IS ALULA. I am the one who remembers. Your name is Koahu. You are the one who forgets. You were my beloved once, all those lifetimes ago. I loved you the way the seashell loves the sea: when people put their ears to my mouth it was your song they heard. I loved you the way the sand loves the water: always receiving you with hushed pleasure. I loved you the way thunder rolls through the night, the way butterflies attend to the flower, the way the moon follows the sun. Since childhood, we had longed for nothing—you, Koahu, and I, Alula—other than to be united, although we belonged to rival bloodlines that would not be conjoined by the Law. I was older than you, a fully initiated woman, a master of the crossing. You were barely a man, still a student of the crossing, but you were more interested in other pleasures: laughing, singing, dancing. Each animal on our island had its own dance, and you knew them all. I was a scholar, and you were a dancer.

You were the first to see it. Do you remember? You must have dreamed about it a thousand times since. We were lying together on the grass, in the shade of a hibiscus tree on the hill between the village and the sea. It was where we went whenever we wished to be alone together. The morning sea was calm, the sky was still, and a dappled sun played on your skin. I was looking so closely into your eyes, I could see my reflection in them. Then something caught your attention, and you looked away. You cast your gaze behind me and out onto the sea. In one motion, you narrowed your eyes, creased your eyebrows, and the smile on your lips vanished. Oh, that moment when everything changed. Do you dream about it still? It lasted no more than a second, but it marked the end of our happiness.