red-brown shapes frolicking in the sun beyond the birch glade.
Not like them. They’ll fade and go away, back into the before, but we’ll remain because we’re real.
Even if we can’t dream.
“Isabelle’s going back to the city, you know,” she told Rosalind. “She’s going to paint like she did before.”
She never looked away from the dancing shapes. Many were fainter now, their outlines vague, certain limbs almost completely washed away. They were becoming patterns of red-brown mist, rather than holding to true shapes as the sun and the dreams of this world burned them away.
“I know,” Rosalind said.
“I’m going to follow her.” Cosette finally looked away, turning her attention back to her companion.
“This time I’m going to learn how she reaches into the before and brings us back.”
“We’ve always known how she does it,” Rosalind said. “She paints.”
“I can paint.”
“Yes, but she dreams, so it’s not the same.”
Cosette sighed at the truth of it. It wasn’t the same at all.
“I’m still going to follow her,” she said.
“And then?” Rosalind asked.
“I’m going to reach into the before myself and bring back a red crow for each of us.”
“If only you could,” Rosalind murmured, the trace of a poignant smile touching the corners of her mouth. “It would be like in the story—one for memory and one for dream.”
“But none for the man who has no soul.”
Rosalind nodded again.
“Never for him,” she agreed.
The man who had no soul was only a dark figure in Cosette’s mind, an image of menace, lacking any detail. Thinking of him now stole all the warmth from the sunlight. Cosette shivered and drew closer to her companion. She hadn’t actually ever met him, only observed him from a distance, but she would never forget the emptiness that lay behind his eyes, the dark hollow of who he truly was that he could cloak so efficiently with his false charm and gaiety.
“You mustn’t tell the others,” she said. “That I’m going, I mean.”
“Paddyjack won’t need to be told.”
Cosette nodded. “But he won’t follow me if someone doesn’t think of it for him. If we have to take a chance, let it only be one of us that takes the risk.”
“But—”
“Promise me,” Cosette said.
“I promise.” Rosalind’s grip tightened on Cosette’s fingers. “But only ifyou promise that you’ll be careful. Promise me you won’t let that dark man find you.”
Cosette promised, but it wasn’t a pledge she was sure she could keep. She could only try.
She looked away again, out between the birches to the field beyond. The figures were all gone now.
There were only the autumn fields, red and gold and brown, and the lake farther off, a blue that was almost grey. The red-brown shapes had been washed away as easily as Isabelle might lift transparent pigment from wet paper.
That could happen to me, she thought. That could happen to all of us. But she took the fear and held it inside herself, leaving it unspoken.
“I like this Alan,” she said instead. “Maybe if Isabelle doesn’t want him, I’ll take him.”
“He’s far too old for you,” Rosalind said with a laugh.
Cosette’s lips formed a sulky moue that wasn’t at all serious.
“I only
“That’s true,” Rosalind said, still smiling. “And you never play the fool. You’re far too mature for that.”
Cosette poked her in the ribs with her elbow.
“Hush you,” she said.
Rosalind let go of Cosette’s hand and put her arm around the younger woman’s shoulders. They spoke no more of departures or danger. Instead, they watched the day pass beyond their glade, the light change on the fields as the afternoon crept toward dusk, and pretended, if just for these few hours, that they wouldn’t miss each other. That nothing was changed. That the red crow flew inside their bodies and when they slept, they could dream.
Driving back to the city, Alan was glad that he’d taken Marisa’s advice and not tried to apologize for or make sense of his and Isabelle’s estrangement all those years ago. His stay at Wren Island had contained enough odd and strained moments all on their own without his needing to bring up any old baggage. It was funny, though. He didn’t remember Isabelle as being so moody in the old days. She’d been somewhat serious, and certainly quieter than Kathy, but then everyone had been quieter than Kathy.
Thinking of Kathy woke a deep pang of loss. It was a familiar sorrow, but no less difficult to bear for that familiarity. He wondered if it was memories of Kathy that had brought on Isabelle’s extreme shifts of mood. Lord knew the memories seemed so fresh to him at the moment that they were leaving him more than a little off- balance. It wasn’t just the senselessness of her death that ate at him, but that he missed her so terribly. While time was supposed to heal all, it had yet to heal him. He thought it never might.
There were times when he was able to go a week or more without thinking of her, but something always came up to remind him and then that deep sorrow would return, lodged so firmly inside that there was no escaping it. The court battles with her family and working on the omnibus didn’t help either.
Sometimes he thought that if he could just get the book out, he’d be able to close the door on the past and get on with his life, but most of the time he felt that would never happen. He wasn’t even sure he wanted it to. Forgetting seemed too much like a betrayal.
Traffic was light going into the city and he made good time on the highway. The recent cassette of a New Jersey songwriter named Kate Jacobs was on the car stereo. She came across as folky and wise, with just a touch of sly humor, and he found himself relaxing to the sound of her voice, though he couldn’t help but wonder, After what?, as he listened to the title cut, “The Calm Comes After.” A miracle, he supposed. He reached the downtown core before the lunch crowds began to congest the streets and had no trouble driving into Lower Crowsea, which was somewhat of a miracle in itself. By the time he pulled into his garage, it was just under two and a half hours from when Isabelle had left him off at her landing on the mainland.
The first thing he planned to do was change; then he’d get on the phone to the New York paperback house that was interested in the omnibus to pass along the good news that Isabelle had come on board.
They could use one of the paintings hanging in the Newford Children’s Foundation to start the publicity machine rolling and he’d send out galleys of the unpublished stories to get some new quotes. Since Kathy’s work had been out of the limelight for five years now, it was important to choreograph her return so that it was just right.
With his head full of business details, he went up the stairs to his apartment, then stopped dead at the sound of music that was coming from the other side of the apartment’s front door. He was certain he hadn’t left the stereo on. With his key in hand, he moved forward again, an uneasy feeling prickling across his shoulder blades, but before he could put the key in the lock, the door swung open and Marisa was standing there.
“Hi,” she said.
Her familiar half-smile had a touch of nervousness about it and Alan could see why. She’d obviously made herself at home in his absence. She was barefoot, wearing one of his long-sleeved shirts over a pair of her own jeans. Her hair was a disheveled blonde tangle and her eyes were puffy and red, as though she’d been crying.
“I saw you pull up into the garage,” she went on, “but I didn’t have time to change.” She gave the shirt she was wearing a fidgety pluck with her fingers. “Sorry.”
“That’s okay,” Alan said.
“I left so fast, I never even thought to pack anything. George, I mean.” She backed up a little so that Alan
