I open my mouth, to say what, I don’t know, when the wind gusts again, no preamble, just a shove, then up and away.

I hear the faint screech of metal against shingle above me and peer up in wonder as that running horse on top of the tearoom bucks and rears and breaks loose in the wind.

The pony bounces once, hard, against Jo’s gutter, then finds its intended course.

To me. To an ending.

BETWEEN

I’m here. I’m never not here, except that everything belonging to now slips, fades. Matthew looks like a ghost for a moment, translucent, and then he’s gone. The cottages, the road, blurred and vanishing.

Only the horse remains. It carves a shining line through the air on its way to meet me. It moves so slowly now, glowing white, its mane blowing wild.

I know what I’m going to see when I look around. I remember them now. Every dream that wasn’t a dream.

I’m on Lute. Not Joseph’s Rock, but this island, I think, is where they’re buried, these Shining Ones. Deep under the grove.

They rise from the ground like white slicks of oil and slide into the shape of two people, as if for my sake, to help bridge the cognitive difference between me and them.

They wait. I have a choice to make, which is no choice at all. There are no exits from here. There’s no hiding, no more running. All those decisions I made, even in America, I was only ever clinging to the illusion of control over my life. I see that now. It didn’t matter what I did. I was always going to wind up here.

The only thing that surprises me is how glad I am for it. The world is shining, not just with their searing light but Lute itself, impossibly, vividly green, blue skies that sting, golden shining gorse flowers. Even the wind has color. It curls violet around my shoulders, an embrace.

They wait. I walk to them, saying, Yes, with every step.

Yes, until the grove grows up around me from saplings to ancient oaks and I find myself at the stone.

I kneel. The tithe stone is cool against my forehead.

Charlie, I think, dimly. Emma. I’m a mother.

I do this for them.

The gods stand beside me, two bright columns, and I weep for joy, even as they raise the rock over me, even as it smashes down and down and down into my skull, and I feel fierce pain, nothing but light bleeding from me, such beautiful obliteration.

5:00 P.M.

The impact, when it comes, is not as expected. The blow isn’t to the front of my head, the direction of the great galloping metal horse, but the back, so sharp that I see light burst against my eyelids, blue to white to red.