It was then a low moaning began, coming to me from very far away, from a far-down place, and I bent my head to listen to him calling me, calling to me from where he lay, and I stood up in that little boat and stretched my arms out so he could see how open was my heart then, how wide was the world I meant to offer him, myself a new-made creature, opened for his touch.

There before me, it seemed a dark body was carried swiftly upon that moon-laden sea, the tide turning it gently first this way, then that. I stepped one foot upon the seat to reach it as it passed—but it was nothing but a shadow. I looked down into those whitened waters and felt I could see down, away down through the surface to the bed upon which he lay. For an instant, I looked and saw my heart, and then the waters closed again, replacing his form with the silver face of she who shone above. Now I stood up straighter, the low moaning still ringing in my ears, and made to step up the other foot, when I heard from that liquid glass a voice call out, “CHILD!” I looked down into the clear face of that white reflected moon and whispered to her, “I am coming.”

“Stop!” Cook’s urgent cry cut through. “Step back from there, child!”

And then a cloud dropped down across the moon, and in that instant I was plunged into a halfish nighttime, and the boat grew suddenly unsteady beneath my feet. I dropped down onto the seat and put a hand up to my throat, which was raw, as though some dreadful word had been pulled from it. And indeed it seemed that I returned to myself, for in the silence I heard the echo of my own voice coming to me cross the waves.

Cook had come athwart and we bobbed gunwale-to-gunwale. “You must go,” she urged.

I shook my head.

“You must. I will find him. I will bring him home.”

Distinctly, I could hear several voices at the pier, then saw a line of lanterns suddenly flare up.

“Go!” she whispered, and gave a shove to my bow.

With a sob, I took up the oars and pushed them silently through their locks, making ready to row back.

“Love,” I whispered to him who lay below me, but the word was too heavy in my throat for speaking. So I left him. I left him, not calling aloud his name into that dreadful night. The great song of him I had begun to sing, laid silent, final beneath the rocking of the blackened, implacable sea.