Your eyes were still open, but when they met mine there was nothing of you in them. Where your stomach had been, that stomach upon which I’d so often rested my head—where that stomach had been was now a spill of blood streaming over your honeyed skin and dripping into the sand. The mouth I had kissed so often was gasping with shallow, desperate breaths, racked with pain. Worst of all, there was no recognition in your eyes. The body I held was your body, but it wasn’t you. I know it now just as I knew it then. There’d been a crossing—of that I was certain. You were in the surgeon’s body, which was now surrounded by the newcomers. Had I not been so certain of it I would have gladly crossed with you then and there, so that I might suffer instead of you.

More strangers left the feast and rushed to the scene. They were shouting and brandishing their muskets. They began to drag Roblet’s body away, in the direction of the beach. As they moved, they aimed their muskets at the people, so that all kept their distance and waited for the strangers to retreat.

I’ve played that moment over and again in my mind ever since, trying to remember it in every possible detail. It’s an exercise in futility: the more I try to pin down the truth, the more evasive it becomes. Did you mean to cross? Did you want it? Did you desire it? I didn’t even think you capable of it, not with a stranger. Your initiation was still incomplete, your technique imperfect. But a crossing occurred, of that I am certain, fueled by the surgeon’s curiosity and your own wanderlust. The alternative would be too terrible to contemplate—the alternative would be that you actually did die that night, after all, and that everything that has happened since has been in vain.