His despair, in some way, had been mine all along! When I accepted that almost impossible psychological weight, he was free.

Jealously I watched him: the young man’s perfect form, set off now by a newly released psyche. Who was he? Now I resented him, lolling there on the bank as if he hadn’t a care in the world. My own despair was still paramount, only now I was aware of it as it, and not quite as lost in its power as I’d been before.

Will turned, stood up, bare feet tentatively testing the path, the twigs and stones impinging on the soles of his bare feet; stinging, bringing tears to his eyes—and a triumphant defiance to his heart. “I almost jumped. Almost.” (I caught his thoughts and listened in. He went on:) “I was saved. Something stopped me at the last moment. Something or somebody cared. I wouldn’t be feeling these stones under my feet if I’d jumped. I wouldn’t be thinking. I wouldn’t be …” He continued with a chanted list of the things he wouldn’t be feeling if he’d jumped; and I found his elation embarrassing.

Then, approaching the path from which he’d come to the cliffs, he paused. Or rather, he was … stopped. I felt his surprise. And, as if he were being magically pulled, he returned to where I was invisibly standing, eyeing the spot as if it intrigued him, though he couldn’t see me; of that I was sure. Once more he turned toward me and once more he stopped and returned, as if compelled to remain within some mysterious and invisible radius. Almost forgetting my own plight, I watched him perform in the same way several times; ending with his standing irresolutely before me.

Why didn’t he leave? My own sense of desolation swaddled me in a mental cloud, almost suffocating all thoughts not pertaining to it. Yet somehow I was as intrigued by Will’s actions as he seemed to be, with the spot of ground on which I was invisibly standing. Now he stood staring at it, obviously perplexed. He appeared certain that something or someone was there, and though he didn’t see me, he certainly was growing more aware of my presence in some other way.

Again, I thought: “Why didn’t he go home? Back to the commune?”

And I thought, “Because he has no future alone.”

The realization, I think, came to both of us at once.

His boyhood’s life could only be fulfilled in my manhood.

In my life!

Was he real?

More real than real?

More real than I had been in years?

If I didn’t accept Will as a part of myself, he had no place to go. I looked around. Was the ground I was standing on real? Did the paths go anywhere? Or was there only one that led back to Will’s commune?