The closer I drew to where my mother tended, the higher pitched grew the wind, until, just before I turned the bend to step into the clearing where sat the blacksmith’s shop, the sound of the wind rose to a shriek, high and sharp as the cry of a gull, but with the undernote of a moan. I clutched at the mantle around my head, endeavoring to muffle my ears in wool. But I could not keep myself from walking farther toward the sound.

The shack sits against a giant granite boulder, like a jewel inset in a barbarous crown. In the summer, Spanish moss hangs down, winding its way through the gaps in the abandoned roof, affecting the appearance of hair brushed back on either side of the roofs pitch, falling lightly away. The moss now wore the aspect of torn veils around an elderly lady. I stepped past the well-known sight to glimpse where my mother had taken herself. My hand traced the corner of the shack, fingering its old boards and lightly holding on to it for balance, my eyes again cast down to concentrate on my footing.

So I was not prepared for what I saw there behind the shop, in the stone theater made by the bowl of quarried rock.

There sat our mother, a white form punctuated by the gray of her mantle and her gloves.

Around her, in various postures, sat also—

Sat also white forms around her on the snow gray rocks, their white faces several round moons, skin a milky blue—as though I gazed at them through the surface of a pond. The figures indeed looked the watery reflections of themselves. Mother did not sense my presence, so I heard her broken words as she carried on what seemed a one-sided conversation. I could not make out any answer from the forms, but I noted some of them bent and nodded in liquid acquiescence.

Then she turned to me.

“Can you see them?”

“Yes,” I whispered, and stole closer. “Who are they?”

“Visitors.” She smiled. “From the other side.”

One of them rose as if to give me his seat. A great tearing pain caused the earth to crack open at my feet, and Mother loomed high above me. I dimly perceived her hand reaching down before I fainted dead away.

When I revived, it was with the faint sensibility of swimming upward toward a bright hole at the top of the water’s surface. I opened my eyes, gasping. Susannah stood quietly by. She leaned over me and tenderly adjusted the coverings at my neck.

“Can you sit up?”