“I’m not turning my back to it. I can see it reflected in your eyes,” I said.

Then he kissed me. He kissed me so firmly and sensuously that it seemed as if that kiss opened up entirely new vistas. Our bodies put into practice the deal our hands had sealed and answered the questions our fingers had posed.

NOW I PRESS his unresponsive hands to my cheek and forehead. His uninhabited eyes look like empty windows.

I won’t cry. I don’t cry.

Darkness is closing in, and every bed in this warehouse of wandering souls stands in its own pool of light. Around us I can feel the souls trying slowly to free themselves from their bodies, like tiny sparks detaching themselves and floating into the air.

I gaze at Henri and quietly tell him what it was like when we met. I recount everything, every day we spent together, and I continue by telling him about the times when my father would sing to me and other times when we would run out onto the lawn where the grass reached his chest and was taller than I was. When it was raining he would sing and I would dance, and he said, “You’re unbreakable, my girl. No soul is ever erased.” I could feel what he meant, even if I didn’t understand his words. “Every day is a step, Edwina. Every day is another step toward a distant goal.”

I imagine that I’m a lighthouse, emitting a beam of words, memories, and songs that will guide Henri out of the darkness between the worlds.

DAY FORTY-THREE

Henri

I cling with waning strength to the glass barrier, and below me loom the watery depths from which I propelled myself upward. Death lurks in the surging, roaring, gurgling blackness, but it’s farther away than I feared.

I can feel my heart thumping, as if something just caused my heart to race. Something is amiss. It feels as if all my nerve ends are spreading out like jellyfish tentacles, and I use them to explore the other side of the glass. Something is different from normal. From normal? From yesterday? From a year ago?

There are no more blinking emerald lights, none of the annoying beeping or the electrical odors of the monitoring devices. There are no longer any shadowy figures whose thoughts about dinner and dieting lap against the shores of my lonely island, no voices counting drops or murmuring medical terms. There’s something else, though, shimmering like the air above a fire.

Thoughts! But they make no sense, they belong to . . . the wandering souls. Who pronounced those words?