“Look at old Lucretia Swindelle, they’d say, the lady farmer who did her husband in. They never found his body. I did not hide it. It wasn’t me who took it.

“It was terrible sad when Rose went missing. I remember that morning. It was so hot and still. There was a horrible scream. Daddy said it was a peacock in the trees, one that came over from Petal’s End from the idiot who had them as pets a long time ago.

“Let’s go for a walk now, down to the water. You keep looking at the forest so I’ll take you there. It’s this time of day I like a walk, down by the stream, to the beach. The stream runs fast in the autumn, freezes in the winter, and then dries up in the early summer. But it’s late August now so it will be flowing once more.” The dog didn’t move as they stood up and Ondine couldn’t tell if it was dead or alive.

They were walking along the path now, along the stream. Huge ferns grew on either side of the water, and the tree canopy made for such thick shade it felt like night never left the forest. The path was steep as it headed down through the woods to the beach and Ondine had to pay attention to every rock, every step. She was dizzy from the heat, from the exertion it was taking now to go down through the forest. There were occasional water pools, small waterfalls, and bits of red and brown seaweed scattered beside them.

The old woman’s voice was high as she spoke quickly now, as though she was expecting something to happen and she might run out of time. “I can tell you to the best of my recollection, you understand, what happened to Rose. It’s been some time and time is like the evening light. It softens and bends things as the eye falls upon them. Do you hear the crickets? Last week they come on in the early afternoon. Sometimes I feel like a cricket, something small and little, that no one can see, but still makes a noise. This is my summer song. I sing it while I can now. There was a time I sang a song in every season . . . a song for autumn when the leaves went changing colours and the sky went deep blue. The air cold and crisp, smelling like rot . . . the smell of coming death. Then my winter song, the words I’d sing as I carried the wood in for my fire. The time of year when the blue would drain right out of the sky like something was sucking the colour out, a pale blue I would later see on my little girl’s mouth when they pulled her from the river and her face was the colour of the winter clouds, and her lips was like petals dead upon the snow.

“When I look up at those black December skies with the big old moon rising up through the bare branches of the oak tree, I can hear Rose then, calling to the moon as she always did: Over the mountain, over the sea, where my heart is longing to be, please let the light that shines on me, shine on the one I love. But that was her December song and it stopped with her.