Passion

the coconuts. After a few slashes, he split off the top and handed the rest of it to Lulu. She drank deeply, milk dripping from the corners of her mouth. Daniel kissed them clean.

“There’s no tattooing, they’re just—” Luce broke off when her past self disappeared into the hut. Lulu reappeared a moment later carrying a small parcel bound in palm leaves. She unwrapped a tool that looked like a wooden comb. The bristles gleamed in the sun, as if they were needle-sharp. Daniel lay back on the mat, watching as Lulu dipped the comb into a large shallow seashell filled with a black powder.

Lulu gave him a quick kiss and then began.

Starting at his breastbone, she pressed the comb into his skin. She worked quickly, pressing hard and fast, and each time she moved the comb she left a smear of black pigment tattooed on his skin. Luce could begin to make out a design: a small checkerboard-patterned breastplate. It was going to span his entire chest. Luce’s only trip to a tattoo parlor had been once in New Hampshire with Callie, who wanted a tiny pink heart on her hip. It had taken less than a minute and Callie had bellowed the whole time. Here, though, Daniel lay silently, never making a sound, never moving his eyes off Lulu. It took a long while, and Luce felt sweat trickle down the small of her back as she watched.

“Eh? How ’bout that?” Bill nudged her. “Did I promise to show you love or did I promise to show you love?”

“Sure, they seem like they’re in love.” Luce shrugged. “But—”

“But what? Do you have any idea how painful that is? Look at that guy. He makes getting inked look like being caressed by a soft breeze.”

Luce squirmed on the branch. “Is that the lesson here? Pain equals love?”

“You tell me,” Bill said. “It may surprise you to hear this, but the ladies aren’t exactly banging down Bill’s door.”

“I mean, if I tattooed Daniel’s name on my body would that mean I loved him more than I already do?”

“It’s a symbol, Luce.” Bill let out a raspy sigh. “You’re being too literal. Think about it this way: Daniel is the first good-looking boy Lulu has ever seen. Until he washed ashore a few months ago, this girl’s whole world was her father and a few fat natives.”

“She’s Miranda,” Luce said, remembering the love story from The Tempest, which she’d read in her tenth-grade Shakespeare seminar.

“How very civilized of you!” Bill pursed his lips with approval. “They are like Ferdinand and Miranda: The handsome foreigner shipwrecks on her shores—”

“So, of course it was love at first sight for Lulu,” Luce murmured. This was what she was afraid of: the same thoughtless, automatic love that had bothered her in Helston.

“Right,” Bill said. “She didn’t have a choice but to fall for him. But what’s interesting here is Daniel. You see, he didn’t have to teach her to craft a woven sail, or gain her father’s trust by producing a season’s worth of fish to cure, or exhibit C”—Bill pointed at the lovers on the beach—“agree to tattoo his whole body according to her local custom. It would have been enough if Daniel had just shown up. Lulu would have loved him anyway.”

“He’s doing it because—” Luce thought aloud. “Because he wants to earn her love. Because otherwise, he would just be taking advantage of their curse. Because no matter what kind of cycle they’re bound to, his love for her is … true.”

So then why wasn’t Luce entirely convinced?

On the beach, Daniel sat up. He took hold of Lulu by the shoulders and began kissing her tenderly. His chest bled from the tattooing, but neither of them seemed to notice. Their lips barely parted, their eyes never left each other.

“I want to leave now,” Luce said suddenly to Bill.

“Really?” Bill blinked, standing up on the tree branch as if she’d startled him.

“Yes, really. I’ve gotten what I came here for and I’m ready to move on. Right now.” She tried to stand, too, but the branch swayed under her weight.

“Um, okay.” Bill took her arm to steady her. “Where to?”

“I don’t know, but let’s hurry.” The sun was sinking in the sky behind them, lengthening the lovers’ shadows on the sand. “Please. I want to hold on to one good memory. I don’t want to see her die.”

Bill’s face was pinched up and confused, but he didn’t say anything.

Luce couldn’t wait any longer. She closed her eyes and let her desire call to an Announcer. When she opened her eyes again, she could see a quiver in the shadow of a nearby passion fruit tree. She concentrated, summoning it with all her might until the Announcer began to tremble.

“Come on,” she said, gritting her teeth.

At last, the Announcer freed itself, zipping off the tree and through the air, floating directly in front of her.

“Easy now,” Bill said, hovering above the branch. “Desperation and Announcer-travel do not mix well. Like pickles and chocolate.”

Luce stared at him.

“I mean: Don’t get so desperate that you lose sight of what you want.”

“I want to get out of here,” Luce said, but she couldn’t coax the shadow into a stable shape, no matter how hard she tried. She wasn’t looking at the lovers on the beach, but nonetheless she could feel the darkness gathering in the sky over the beach. It wasn’t rain clouds. “Help me, Bill?”

He sighed, reaching for the dark mass in the air, and drew it toward him. “This is your shadow, you realize. I’m manipulating it, but it’s your Announcer and your past.”

Luce nodded.

“Which means you have no idea where it’s taking you, and I have no liability.”

She nodded again.

“Okay, then.” He rubbed at a part of the Announcer until it went darker; then he caught the dark spot with a claw and yanked on it. It worked like a sort of doorknob. The stink of mildew flooded out, making Luce cough.

“Yeah, I smell it, too,” Bill said. “This is an old one.” He gestured her forward. “Ladies first.”

PRUSSIA • JANUARY 7, 1758

A snowflake kissed Luce’s nose.

Then another, and another, and more, until a storm of flurries filled the air and the whole world turned white and cold. She exhaled a long cloud of breath into the frost.

Somehow, she’d known they would end up here, even though she wasn’t exactly sure where here was. All she knew was that the afternoon skies were dark with a furious storm, and wet snow was seeping through her black leather boots, biting at her toes and chilling her to the bone.

She was walking into her own funeral.

She’d felt it in the instant passing through this last Announcer. An oncoming coldness, unforgiving as a sheet of ice. She found herself at the gates of a cemetery, everything blanketed by snow. Behind her was a tree-lined road, the bare branches clawing at the pewter sky. Before her was a low rise of snow-shrouded earth, tombstones and crosses jutting out of the white like jagged, dirty teeth.

A few feet behind her, someone whistled. “You sure you’re ready for this?” Bill. He sounded out of breath, like he’d just caught up with her.

“Yes.” Her lips were chattering. She didn’t turn around until Bill swooped down near her shoulders.

“Here,” he said, holding out a dark mink coat. “Thought you might be cold.”

“Where did you—”

“I yoinked it off a broad coming home from the market back there. Don’t worry, she had enough natural padding already.”

“Bill!”

“Hey, you needed it!” He shrugged. “Wear it in good health.”

He draped the thick coat over Luce’s shoulders, and she pulled it closer. It was unbelievably soft and warm. A wave of gratitude rushed over her; she reached up and took his claw, not even caring that it was sticky and cold.

“Okay,” Bill said, squeezing her hand. For a moment, Luce felt an odd warmth in her fingertips. But then it was gone, and Bill’s stone fingers were stone cold. He took a deep, nervous breath. “Um. Uh. Prussia, mid-