Bad dream, she told herself. It was just a bad dream. Whatever dread or guilt she felt wasn’t related to anything she’d done, it was the by-product of this new place, and her terrible dream, the details of which were already fading. There’d been a dark forest, the moon obscured by clouds, and she’d been running, chasing something, her feet bare and her heart pounding and her belly achingly empty, desperately hungry. She remembered Will Presser, her agent, had been part of the dream. He’d shown up in the forest, naked. Sarah cringed, thinking that this had to be some kind of violation to imagine your literary representative without clothes on, even if you did it accidentally. Will’s body had been very pale, almost gleaming in the moonlight as he’d crouched over something dream-Sarah hadn’t wanted to see, and he’d said what he’d said that night at dinner. Art demands sacrifice. Then he’d raised his dripping hands.…

What have I done?

It made no sense, thought Sarah, and swung her legs out of the bed. Her days on Elder Island had been blameless: Up at six for eggs and bacon. A brisk walk along the water, then back to the kitchen table for her first stint at the laptop. Write until one o’clock. Break for lunch, which, lately, was hot dogs, cut into chunks and cooked in a pot with a can of baked beans, or tuna, straight from the can. Another walk, almost a forced march around the property, and sometimes a phone call with Will, who called every few days to check in. Back to the computer for another four hours. Something easy—a burger or a steak, cooked in the cast-iron skillet, with a salad on the side—for dinner. Then, sometimes, more writing, before she fell into bed, exhausted, and woke up the next morning, ravenous. She’d planned on doing some exploring, going into town to see if any of the shops were open, checking out the library, even trying to find Will’s house, but the story had her so tightly in its grip that even bathroom breaks felt like wasted time. But art demands sacrifice, she thought, and reminded herself that her writing had never, ever flowed so easily.

In New York City, the words had come at a maddening, constipated trickle, and during the two actual writers’ retreats she’d attended, they hadn’t come at all. But here, on Elder Island, the story was gushing out of her, sometimes so fast that her fingers couldn’t keep up with her thoughts. And it was good work, too, the story of a marriage, where the reader would start off sympathizing with the poor, cheated-on wife and her sickly, asthmatic daughter, only to discover that the wife was not really a victim, that the daughter wasn’t actually sick, and that nothing was as it had seemed. This book’s details and description were as rich and vivid as anything she’d ever written, and the story was not, by any stretch, quiet or small. Sarah felt, even more than she normally did, that she was both writer and reader, the person telling the story and the one who couldn’t wait to find out what happened next. It felt like the story was something that existed independently from her; like it had its own voice, which would mutter or whisper in her ear, telling her what came next. Like a baby, she thought, growing in the womb, drawing sustenance from its mother while being its own thing entirely. Like the west wind, whispering its tales, and she’d finally figured out how to listen.