She’s lying in the embrace of the final shadow, the beautiful woman who’d like to make the end of our lives easy. She would gladly carry us to the island, free of pain and fear. But she too has her task and her element, and she cannot do everything; she can only be there when the time comes. She looks at me without surprise.

I pull Madelyn toward me by her blond seaweed hair and grab one thin, slippery upper arm. As I tug her toward me, I swallow a mouthful of icy, salty water. Gulp by gulp, it cools me down and takes hold of my entrails and lungs. Eventually it will encircle my heart.

The sea takes me fully into its embrace, as if it were happy to see me after all these decades, so happy indeed that it refuses to release me. There’ll be no need.

The delicate, strangely familiar face floats toward me. Maddie stares at me with a mixture of endless questions, trust, and hope. I cling to the child more tightly so that both the shadow and I are now embracing her.

When I reach into the shadow, it feels as if I’m grasping seaweed, as if I were running my fingers over a wet flowery lawn, wild and tall and . . .

Eddie

“Look, little Eddie, I haven’t mown the lawn. I’ve left it to grow. Is this how you want it?”

“Yes, Dad,” I say.

“Will the unicorn like it?”

“It’ll love it.”

My father smiles and walks to the center of the lawn. The poppies sway for a moment, and then my father is gone. My heart sinks to see him leave. There’s never enough time. But the dream continues, and I know I’m dreaming. A blue moon is riding in the sky. I’m walking through the tall grass behind our house. The stems almost reach my chin, and I can only just see over the tips of the ticking grasses. Dawn is breaking, and out of the glittering thicket, through the dewy stems and the blue half-light, the unicorn steps out of the dark. I hardly dare to greet it.

It’s magnificent, a great, strong, beautiful beast, but I can tell from its gait that it’s injured. It’s injured in the only spot where unicorns can be wounded—in the heart.

It sends me a thought: I know I’ll be safe with you. Then it wends its way deeper into the grass and very slowly, with a pain-filled expression in its otherwise shining, lively eyes, it lies down.