She doesn’t move but merely stares down at me. “Have you ever been touched by a ghost?” she asks.

“I don’t think so,” I reply. “Come on, jump! I’ll catch you.”

She turns to face the sea again. “My mother touched me,” she says, “when she died. Shortly after her death, she reached for me. Her ghost did. Here.” The girl points to her cheek. “I felt her dissolve, turn to air, wind, and sea. She was transformed into the pages of the books I read and the music to which I danced. That’s what happens when you die: you become the things you love.”

“You’re not dying,” I helplessly reply. “Come on! We’ll find the way.”

Now she smiles, and even her smile is lonely and sad. “What do you love?” she asks.

I was never very good at loving, but now I love life so dearly. How I miss it!

“The dead don’t know whether they’re living among the living or among the dead, and ultimately there’s no difference. Being dead is like dreaming without realizing you’re dreaming,” she whispers.

“Come,” I beseech her once more, stretching out my arms. “Come with me, please. You don’t have to die.”

She gazes at me with her beautiful, bright eyes and in a quivering voice calls, “I do want to, but it’s so hard. Did you know that it’s hard? I’m not capable of it. I don’t know how.”

And now she claps her hands to her lovely, small face and weeps. Sobs shake her delicate frame. I can’t even touch her feet to comfort her, and the whale rock is high and slippery. I can do nothing but stand there in my tiny, swaying boat below the weeping child who wants to die.

She sobs through her fingers, “I was a dancer all my life. I danced Marie in the Nutcracker Suite.” Another fit of sobbing convulses her body. “And once when my father didn’t take the motorway but drove along country roads, I broke my ankle by stumbling into a ditch after a picnic and I couldn’t dance Marie. That was such a wonderful summer because my father carried me all the time, everywhere. In a different life, I lived to be old, very old, and I had children and a husband called Sam. Samuel.”

Samuel!

My heart shatters into a thousand pieces.

The girl slowly withdraws her hands from her face. It is clear now, washed clean by her tears. “Sam asked me to tell you that he knows you were on your way and that he’s waiting for you. He can see you. He can see me too.”