Night Songs

ONE

The seashell hummed low over the beach. Indistinguishable from its shadow it blurred through the amber-cast air before lifting abruptly into a graceful sweeping arc. Like a glittering pearl shield it seemed to pause over the jumbled ramparts of a sprawling sand castle, then flipped, fell, and landed on its back. Spinning. Slowing only when nudged by a fan of winking foam.

"Wow!" said Matt Fletcher softly, his large eyes blinking rapidly in disbelief. "Wow, how'd you do that, Mr. Ross?"

Colin held up his right hand, turned it over, turned it back. The hell with physics, he thought; that throw was pure magic.

"C'mon, Mr. Ross, how'd you do it? It's a trick, right? Can you show me? Can you show me how to do it?"

Colin glanced at the young boy beside him, at the elaborate castle, at the shell now corralled by an incoming wave. He raised a thin eyebrow in a parody of nonchalance. "Well, it's all in the wrist, actually. And in eyeballing the fine line of the intended trajectory, testing the prevailing winds, watching your-"

Matt giggled into a palm.

"Mr. Fletcher, I detect doubt in your attitude."

"You were lucky," the boy accused. Colin shrugged again. "So there's a law against lucky?"

"My mother says luck ain't nothing but dumb skill."

"Even assuming you knew what she meant, don't say ain't."

Matt sighed loudly in melodramatic exasperation and shoved a hand slowly through his tangled black hair. "There's no school today," he muttered. "Besides, you teach art, not English."

Colin grunted a quick laugh and jammed his hands into the pockets of his hooded blue windbreaker. The inescapable and definitely refutable logic of a kid out of school, he thought, and no safe way out except to ignore it.

"Luck," the boy repeated as he sidled away. "It was luck, that's all." He grinned mischievously, ready to run.

The laugh broke this time, and Colin shook his head in confession. "I could never do that again in a zillion years."

They stood a dozen yards from the castle, the only interruption along the dark wet apron of the two-mile beach. In swimtrunks and sneakers, light jackets and dried sand, they listened as the tide prepared to turn over. The breeze off the diamond-backed water was cool, but they gave it no credence. It was Indian summer and the sky was nearly cobalt, the beach close to bronze, the few gulls overhead like lazy kites above a park. Soft air, softer light, while at the tips of the dark, slick jetties that flanked the public beach-and quartered it as well-the seaspray fanned wider, lasted longer, flared through with gold as the ocean found its thunder.

It was time to leave, but Colin shifted only slightly, his green eyes squinting comfortably, broad shoulders at ease. His thinning brown hair, still streaked by summer's sun, was just long enough to curl inward at the edges, and stirred as the breeze moved to brush across his cheek. His forehead was high, his nose a measure too large, and his chin not quite squared at the end of a lean jaw. He pulled thoughtfully for a moment at the side of his neck, turned his wrist just far enough to see the face of his watch.

Damn; it had already been a long day, and it would probably get longer. He wished with passing guilt he could stay until tomorrow.

He'd come to the beach shortly after lunch, hoping for solitude and finding instead a half dozen boys working on the castle. As soon as he'd stepped from the woodland separating shore from town he was spotted, and the ensuing invitation to join them was boisterous and laughing. It felt wonderful. Their teacher in school, yet no ogre to be avoided after the last bell had rung. And the two hours had fled in less than an eye blink before the others had wandered off in search of adventure, leaving him behind to share the castle's finishing touches with Matt, and test all the snacks Peg Fletcher had prepared for the occasion.

He glanced at the small wicker hamper, and his stomach instantly contracted. A beautiful woman Matt's mother was, but cooking was something she should leave to the elves. And if he wasn't going to embarrass himself at the funeral tonight, he'd best stop at the Inn for a giant sandwich or two.

"We gonna leave it?" Matt asked. He was tow-headed and thin, with skin a natural shade darker than most of the others on the island. With a shirt on he looked frail, but without it one could see the young muscles filling into cords. "Maybe I'll build a wall in front. You know, to keep the waves off?" He hugged himself and zipped his jacket halfway closed.

"Better yet," Colin said, "you ought to head on home. Your mother'll have a cat fit if you miss supper tonight."

Matt kicked at the sand. "Oh, she won't care." He looked up defiantly. "I'll be ten at Christmas, y'know. I can take care of myself."

Colin coughed and looked to the sky. "I'm sure you can, pal, but you know mothers."

"I said she wouldn't care."

"Really? Are we talking about the same woman here?"

"Sure we are."

"You mean the woman who runs that tacky little drug store on Neptune Avenue? The woman who says I draw like John Nagy? The-"

"Who's John Nagy?"

"Never mind. You're too young." He turned the boy back toward the hamper with a slap to his buttocks. "And the very same woman who single-handedly, as it were, arm wrestled Ed Raines at the Inn and beat him three falls out of four? That woman?" His voice rose as he walked. "Are we talking about the lady who condescends to feed starving teachers now and then? The woman who-"

"What does condescend mean?"

Colin put his hands on his hips. "Matthew, will you please stop changing the subject?"

"Well, jeez, I just wanted to know. Mom's always telling me to ask if I want to know something. So I'm asking." He scowled and shoved his fingers under his waistband. "Gee. Nuts. Goddamn."

"Matthew," he cautioned, "watch your mouth. I've seen your mother turn into a raving, bananas monster when she hears you talk like that."

Matt looked up at him, wide-eyed and innocent. "Mr. Ross, are we talking about the same woman here?"

At irregular intervals through the woods, narrow, gray-planked boardwalks had been laid to guide swimmers to the beach. After snatching up the hamper, Matt jumped to the nearest pathway and began walking briskly, almost marching, whistling at the birds hidden high in the thick autumn foliage. Colin trailed more slowly, taking an extra-deep breath every few paces to see if he could capture a scent of the pastel air-the lazy slants of sunlight touched through with bronze and gold, the shadows more crimson than black, the underbrush still clinging to blotches of stubborn green. For the few minutes the walk would last he could easily still be back in New England, yet the muted grumbling of the surf behind him never let him forget he was riding the ocean on the back of a rock.

A flash of red on the ground.

He swerved toward it, stepping off the boardwalk to the base of a stunted pine. He took a deep breath, then expelled it with a soft grunt as he kicked loose dirt and leaves over what he had seen. When he returned to the boardwalk, Matt was staring with a frown. "A beer can," he said, waving the boy on.

Matt was clearly doubtful, but he made no move to argue. Colin shoved his hands into his pockets to ward off a chill.

He had found a gull, wings and legs torn from their sockets, feathers matted with grime and dried blood, its head eyeless and crawling with busy ants and silent flies. He had found two others like it over the past week, all in the woodland facing the ocean. Still more, a dozen in all, had been discovered on other parts of the island. Street-corner conversation lay the blame on dogs; night whispers said it had to be Gran D'Grou.

Colin had no answers of his own. If it had been dogs, the mutilations were all the more vicious because none of the birds had been even partially eaten. And he didn't believe a dead man would return to stalk the island just to wring the necks of a few raucous birds.

"You going to the funeral?" Matt asked without looking back.

He shuddered once to banish the gull's image. "Yup."

"We're not," Matt said as if he regretted it and at the same time wasn't sure it was safe to be relieved. "I know."

Matt shrugged, and tilted his head. "Mrs. Wooster is with her sister in Philadelphia. She's sick or something. She won't be back until Tuesday. She's not really my babysitter, y'know. She's the housekeeper. I'm too big for a babysitter."

"Right," Colin said quickly, laughing silently without showing a smile.

"Mrs. Wooster," the boy said a shade louder, "she thinks it's silly anyway. She says people oughta be buried in the ground, not in the water."

"She isn't island, Matt. She thinks we're strange."

"She eats pits. Peach pits and plum pits and orange pits." He giggled. "That's weirder than burying people in the water."

Colin admitted the boy might be right, though it was easy to understand the housekeeper's attitude. There were no provisions for the dead on Haven's End. The nearest town was ten miles inland and had the only cemetery within easy driving distance. None of the island locals bothered to use it. They had lived here for too long, for too many generations, and those who'd first settled here during the Revolution had chosen the Atlantic to be their graveyard. It was illegal, but even those who'd left for the rumored excitement of the mainland were able to find a certain indefinable comfort in the slow trail of boats that would slip through the twilight, form a tight ring from bow to stern, raise high the torches, and break into a deep-throated jubilant hymn as the enshrouded corpse was eased into the current. There were rumors, of course, among the busybodies who sat in the park in Flocks: that the island's inhabitants were obviously immortal since none of them seemed to take sick and die; that rites of foul cannabalism and satanism were performed during the hours of the darkest full moon; that vampirism flourished; that they were nothing more than a colony of ghouls.

Haven's End didn't care. The balm for its grief was stronger than gossip.

Matt paused to shift the hamper from right hand to left, and hitched mightily at his trunks to keep them high on his hips. Then he looked up into the trees, off to one side, a quick check to be sure Colin was still there.

"Pits. Ugh."

Colin smiled.

"Did… did you know Gran D'Grou?"

"Sure did. He was one of the first people I met when I came here." A short laugh for the memory. "He said I didn't draw so hot but I had good hands."

"Did you like him?"

He frowned and pulled thoughtfully at a vagrant curl tucked around the back of his left ear. Gran was a black pipe cleaner twisted into the vague shape of a man, with an afterthought lump of black clay for a head-eyes gouged, mouth gouged, cheeks thumbed in, and a surprisingly aquiline nose. Only the old man's hands seemed carefully planned, long-fingered and dexterous, more expressive than his eyes. When he spoke, he whispered as if from the back of a sea cave, and when he wasn't working at the family luncheonette, when he wasn't doing his carving on the bench out front and laughing with the children, he was walking the cliffs and the woods with dark rum snug around him.

But had Colin liked him?

Gran, as more than one person had been eager to tell him, had arrived penniless and frightened from the West Indies with his infant daughter, saying little except to let them all know he was determined to take advantage of what he called America's vast pot of gold. He wasted no time establishing the luncheonette. He charmed the ladies with his French-Caribbean accent, and fascinated the men with stories of the islands he had visited as a young man. In time, his daughter found a husband who had no objection to taking Gran's name; in time, there was a granddaughter who worshipped the old man and became his constant shadow.

And in time Gran knew he would never be rich.

Why he had believed money would fall into his hands no one knew; why he refused to visit the mainland was a mystery as well. But he did, and he did, and eventually he turned to drinking, to the children, and to his carving.

In time his younger self was totally forgotten.

It was tought that Warren Harcourt had tried to get Gran to bring back his dead wife, that it was Gran who had murdered a beachcomber eight years ago as a sacrifice to his gods. A lot of things were thought about the shriveled old man, but in the full light of the sun Colin knew most people felt foolish about these ideas.

"Well?" Matt said.

He blinked and scratched at his chest. "I guess so. He was a hard man to know."

"Well, I think he was spooky." Matt sniffed and wiped a hasty sleeve under his nose. "Y'know, just before he got sick like that he used to stand outside the school and watch the kids come out."

Colin frowned. "He did?"

"Sure! I thought sometimes he wanted to take me to his shack on the beach and cook me or something." He shuddered and scratched his head. "Y'know, he told me last summer I was his favorite because I never laughed at him." A pause for confession. "I never laughed at him because I thought he was spooky and would cook me or something. I mean, he was okay and we had a good time, but he got spooky, y'know? Like those statues he made."

Nearly every family on the island had at least one of Gran's carvings, the school a large collection, and Colin a half dozen. They were fashioned from driftwood and fallen boughs, graceful and disturbing renditions of what Gran called his island dreams. From the Caribbean, not Haven's End. But that's all he would ever say. Several times over the years, Colin had attempted to discover if the carvings represented gods or real people, and the old man told him they were only notions, nothing more.

One day he had shown up at the studio behind Colin's cottage, boldly walking in as if on standing invitation, placing something he called The Screaming Woman on the workbench. Colin had been finishing an oil of the fishing fleet as it struggled back to the marina-a difficult piece because the only heroism or romance he wanted was in the faces of the men working the nets. He'd not relished the intrusion, but Gran had never cared; when he was sober he moved about the small island as if it belonged to him, and the people-year-round or seasonal-his loyal, loving subjects. Most called him good-natured because of his time spent with the children, and blithely excused the sometimes haughty attitude he displayed. But Colin and a few others detected behind the crooked, yellow-toothed smile a rippling of disdain whenever he laughed with anyone other than the kids. A suspicion never proved, however, and for that all the more disturbing.

He had examined the offering impatiently (feeling guilty for the impatience), and when he complained that he didn't really much care for wood sculptures of obscure monsters, the old man's hands had almost curved into fists, straightened as he took a deep breath and touched the smooth wood with the tip of one finger.

"See?" Gran had said, eyes squinting, head bobbing. "This not be snake here, it is tail. She is sea woman. Eye cut out? No, no, Colin, it is shadow. You put a light here, the eye come back. You want a big monster, you stick it in the closet; you want a beautiful woman, put it on the television." A laugh like a crackle. "Jesus damn, Colin, you got no imagination."

Colin had apologized, Gran had accepted with a shaking of hands, and left as he always did-without bothering to look at or comment on Colin's latest work.

"Mr. Ross?"

He waited.

"When Gran's gone, do you think Lilla will stop her singing?"

"I don't know," he said. "I would imagine so."

"She didn't used to be that way, y'know. She was really neat. She used to give me extra scoops on my cones and stuff. She called me Little Matt, but that was okay because she was fun. But she really got spooky, y'know? Just like Gran."

Colin felt he should say something in Lilla's defense, but the boy was right. When her grandfather fell ill at summer's end, Lilla had begun a withdrawal so gradual no one had noticed until it was too late to reach her. Her eyes dulled, her tongue fell silent, she moved very much as if she were walking in her sleep. Yet there were occasional days when the old Lilla was back without warning-laughing, smiling, walking down the street with the verve of an eighteen-year-old out to conquer the world.

The old Lilla, as she crept into adolescence, took Peg as a friend, since her own mother was reluctant to talk of things beyond the store. Peg loved her as a daughter, tried to show her what she could, and teach her the difference between listening to an adult and experiencing things herself.

And when she was sixteen she latched onto Colin. He knew it was a crush because Peg laughingly told him so, knew he had to be careful because Lilla wanted to know the man's side of men. She would find him walking on the beach, join him, ask him how to deal with the boys she thought were flirting. When he told her to ask Peg, she only laughed and grabbed his hand, dropped it with a giggle and made him feel like blushing.

Despite the potential problem, however, he was taken by her energy, her wit, by the way she took each day as if it were created just for her. So he walked with her, and talked, and when Gran began souring, Colin comforted her whenever Peg could not.

Like the day on the beach when she wept because Gran had started ranting about the whites, how they conspired to steal his work and cheat him of his money. He was old, Colin told her, and the dreams he'd brought with him simply hadn't happened, and when she wept ever harder he slipped an arm around her shoulder and held her. For ten minutes they stood there, until Peg stepped out from among the trees and saw them, and left.

Lilla, lovely, and bright, and little different from any other child who faced growing up.

But then she was… gone.

And now the nights were filled with the sound of her singing; words no one could catch, words almost like chanting, all over the island as she followed the shoreline. Each night. Every night. As though erecting a barrier against death with her singing.

Grieving before the dying was the excuse people gave her, and the excuse they gave themselves for wishing Gran quickly buried. With him at last under the water, Lilla once again would be the young woman they loved.

Suddenly, Matt dropped the hamper and began rummaging through it furiously. "Nuts, the shovel! Aw, Mom's gonna kill me if I forget it again."

The plea was almost comical in the puppylike look the boy gave him, and Colin granted him a knowing lift of his eyebrow. "AH right, you wait right here. I'll be back in a minute."

"You sure it's okay?"

"I'm sure," he said, with a surge of affection that startled him to blinking. "Yeah, it's okay. I won't be long."

He trotted along the boardwalk until he reached the beach, muttering an abrupt oath under his breath when he saw a man by the castle, hands clasped before him as if he were praying. He was tall and heavy set, most of his weight settled in a paunch; he was clean-shaven, with a classic lantern jaw and leonine sweep of white hair, and his eyes were so bloodshot they seemed almost red. He wore a charcoal-gray suit, matching light topcoat and felt hat, and in one hand he held a pair of gleaming black shoes.

"A magnificent edifice here, Colin," he said in a slightly quavering voice.

Colin circled the castle and its moat, frowning until he remembered Matt's threat to bury the shovel in the walls. He knelt with a weary sigh, averting his face when he smelled the lawyer's stale, liquored breath.

"A palace, yes?" said Warren Harcourt.

"A castle, as a matter of fact." His hands plunged.

"Ah. Yes, A castle."

Damn, he thought; where the hell is it? "Some of my students did it. Half day today. I sort of helped out. You know how it is."

"Indeed." Harcourt swiveled ponderously to face south, toward the faint line of the last jetty and the private beach that lay beyond, stretching to the cliffs. "I imagine you'll be at the funeral this evening." A languid, dismissing wave; no need to reply. "I have not been invited. I was not Gran's attorney of record, of course, but I did do some small work for the child's parents before they passed on. He, the old man, never wanted me. There was one, small matter"-a careful belch-"but I didn't go through with it, actually." He frowned nervously. "I don't think Lilla likes me very much."

Colin stifled an obscenity when his palm caught the blade's jagged edge. He yanked the toy shovel free, noting as he did that the man wore no socks.

"Never did like me," the lawyer repeated, and he placed a manicured hand at his waist to cushion another belch. Then he pulled a scarlet handkerchief from his jacket pocket and blew his nose loudly. A deft flick of his wrist and the handkerchief was gone. An eyebrow arched. "I note that you and Peg Fletcher are seeing quite a lot of each other lately. A stunning woman. Stunning and smart."

Colin couldn't help a smile. "Now how the hell do you know that, Warren?"

"I perambulate, Colin, I perambulate." A palm smoothed his waistcoat meticulously. "I may be a drunk, but I'm not blind. Ah, the stories I could tell you…"

Colin believed it. Harcourt was everywhere, but no one thought him a snoop. Four years ago he and his estranged wife were returning from a mainland party. Both had been drinking, though neither was completely drunk. According to Warren, there was an argument, and his eyes left the road. Too late he discovered his car plunging down the ramp toward the ferry's dock-and the ferry was on the other side. Harcourt survived; his wife did not. And he had confessed one evening when he was very nearly sober that it wasn't guilt at her dying that kept liquor his company; it was guilt that he didn't miss her as much as he thought he should.

So he drank, and wandered, and once a year told Colin he could bring the woman back if only he had the nerve.

A gull shrieked, and Harcourt looked up, startled. "Damned things. Damned… things." Suddenly he seemed deflated. "Lilla is an odd child, actually," he said, sniffing, hiccuping. "Not like she used to be, not at all. I do like her singing, though. I gather it's grated on some people's nerves, but I rather like it." He turned his head, his eyes hidden by the hat's sagging brim. "If you should find an opportunity at the ceremonies, please tell her I enjoy her singing."

Colin could think of nothing else to do but nod; Warren was gone, the drunk had returned. Then: "Hey, look, I got poor Matt waiting for me back there. See you around, okay? Take care."

He trotted off without waiting for a response, stopping only once, at the foot of the boardwalk. The lawyer was already strolling down the beach, oblivious to the waves soaking his trousers. At one point he turned, held his shoes close to his eyes and stared at them. He shrugged vaguely before lowering them and moved on, topcoat flapping about his shins, hat trembling in the sea breeze riding in with the tide.

Colin shook his head slowly with a faint, sad smile, then remembered the mutilated gull, and spun around and raced back to Matt.

They came out of the trees onto a small blacktop parking lot sandwiched between the extended log cabin of the Anchor Inn and a battered deserted cottage. Matt headed directly for the street; Colin, however, slowed as he was struck by an unbidden memory of his first visit to Haven's End:

Had he arrived by air he knew he would have seen a heavily forested island four miles long and slightly less than half that wide, rocks and trees on the west and north shores, beautiful sand on the east, a clearing just off center where the town had been settled.

But he had driven, and came out of the mainland woods to the Sterling Brothers Ferry, a pair of huge, high-floating boats like ungainly rafts that carried eight to ten cars and as many passengers as could be squeezed between them. No overhead canopy, a tiny shingled cabin jutting out amidships. The surprisingly smooth ride across the two miles of deep, choppy water to the terminus at Bridge Road, the slow drive for three-quarters of a mile before the trees fell away on the left for the Sunset Motel. Another quarter mile and suddenly there were side streets, four of them until Bridge Road met the T-intersection with Neptune Avenue.

He remembered grinning his relief at the sight of the town: clapboards and cedar shakes, Colonials and Federals, all riding high on thick brown pilings or five-foot foundations designed to provide passage for the sea whenever it rose above the tide and tried to sweep the island clean. Thriving lawns and lovely trees. The trees. Save for the town and the beaches, the entire island was tree covered, right up to the point where the cave-pocked southshore cliffs heaved out of the sea.

The sea.

Wherever he turned, the mark of the sea. Air salt-sharp and softly damp, the ground round-pebbled and sandy; the fishermen who made the island famous and kept it from starving when the tourist trade faltered; the motifs of the motels, the Anchor Inn, the Clipper Run; the ghosts of smugglers and gunrunners who'd used it during the previous century; the whispers of pirates who might have used it before; the occasional gold coin, a rusted cannon, a hint of bones found in a cave… and the ocean itself, its voice louder at night when a lullaby was needed, muted in daylight when there was living to be done. There was power in that gentle land, power that reminded when the winter * storms screamed, cutting off the ferry and eroding the beaches. A power, he thought, that kept the people strong. They fed off it, lived off it, never forgot what it warned might happen if they ever grew careless.

It was perfect. Exactly what he had in mind while he tried to figure out why he could talk well to kids like Matthew and not to adults like Pegeen.

He inhaled deeply, and saw Matt staring at him from the curb. "Something the matter, kid?"

"You all right?"

"Fine. Just fine."

He glanced at the Anchor Inn and decided he'd rather eat at home, caught up with Matt, and they crossed the street together. On the corner was the small, fieldstone police station, behind it on the next corner the hedge-enclosed parking lot of Robert Cameron's Clipper Run restaurant. Several cars were parked near the entrance; diners from the mainland, he guessed as he and the boy continued walking west. Most of the islanders wouldn't be eating until after the funeral.

From one of the yards farther down the street came a sudden gust of laughter; boys playing baseball, he thought, or «a fast game of soccer. That Matt wasn't with them wasn't surprising. He preferred studying history or the way colors worked than studying how to steal second base from a fast pitcher. It set him apart, but the boy didn't seem to mind.

"Mr. Ross?"

He sighed loudly. "Good Lord, Matt, don't you ever stop asking questions?"

"But my mother-"

"I know, I know. Your mother says you have to ask if you want to learn anything."

Matt squinted up at him. "How'd you know that?"

"It's a great secret you learn when you get to be grown-up."

Matt considered that for a moment while he kicked at a stone and toed it into the gutter. Then he gestured with his free hand back toward the restaurant. "You think you're gonna win the election?"

"You going to vote for me?"

"I'm too young."

"Well, I'll just have to win anyway. It'll be close without your vote, though. Mighty close."

"My mother says she's gonna vote for you. She says she doesn't want to see Mr. Cameron running things and putting in all the gambling and stuff. She says it isn't fitting… whatever that means." Almost a half block in silence before he spoke again. "If they build those hotels and things like Mr. Cameron wants, they'll cut down all the trees, right?"

"That's right."

"Then the squirrels won't have any place to live!"

"Right again."

The boy shook his head. "That isn't fair, Mr. Ross." Nope, it sure isn't."

"I wish I could vote for you," he said softly.

Colin placed a hand gently on his shoulder and looked up just as they reached Atlantic Terrace, the town's last cross-street. Three houses down-a small, white, clapboard saltbox-a woman stood on the high narrow porch. She waved, and Colin waved back.

"Hey," Matt said, "you coming to dinner? Mom says she'd like it if you came to dinner."

Colin looked again, and reluctantly backed off. "Can't, pal. I have to get ready for Gran's funeral. I promised Lilla I'd be there. Maybe I'll see you when it's over."

Matt dashed away immediately, hair whipping at his shoulders, the hamper slamming into his leg to give him a curiously lopsided gait. Colin watched with a faint smile until he reached the front yard, then waved at Peg and hurried to his right across Bridge Road. There was no pavement here as the trees closed in and the road aimed straight for the ferry, so he walked on the verge for nearly a hundred yards before cutting into a stand of pine. The underbrush had been cleared away, giving him a clear walk, and a clear view, to his gray stone cottage and the small studio behind.

He had no neighbors except for the Sunset Motel two hundred yards farther west, and if it hadn't been for the cars sweeping past on occasion he could easily have been living in the middle of a forest. That was precisely the way he wanted it.

The telephone was ringing as he came through the front door, but just as he reached it the caller gave up. He scowled at the mute receiver, replaced it, and stripped off his windbreaker. A groan as he stretched him arms high over his head, another as he dropped onto the sofa and crossed his legs at the ankles.

"Hello, place," he said, a greeting repeated since the first time he'd walked through the front door and had grinned.

The room he was in was just twenty feet long, the width of the cottage. The walls were pine-paneled and covered with bookcases and framed prints, the pegged floor bare except for a few braided throws, the furniture overstuffed and unmatching-as long as it was comfortable he didn't much care about period or style. Nor did he care that the rooms behind this one were only a modernized kitchen, a gray-tiled bath, and a bedroom just large enough for a chest of drawers and his bed. For some it would be claustrophobic; for him it was no bigger or smaller than it absolutely had to be.

His eyes closed, his fingers laced together and he stretched again, palms pushing outward. He grunted, opened his eyes and found himself staring at the thin scars on his wrists.

I don't get it, Peg had said to him just the summer before; how can you think about it and not get… I don't know, chills.

It was a long time ago, he'd answered. It happened to a different man.

"Sure," he whispered to the empty room. "Sure it did. And next year it'll snow on the Fourth of July."

He grimaced at the show of bitterness no one saw but himself.

At twenty-one he had married his hometown Maine sweetheart because that was the way life was supposed to be: a college degree, a job teaching art, and a wife to begin a family. But three years later he'd had it with teaching, had decided perhaps it wasn't too farfetched to think about making it on his own as an artist. And why not? He was confident in his talent and his willingness to continue learning, was filled with his vision of what art should be, and ready to take on the toughest critics in the world. His wife was nervous, but supportive because his dream-talk was so vivid. A year later she was nervous and carping because the talk was the same. The year after that she refused to listen and was gone.

He left his hometown, moved down into Massachusetts, rented a loft and worked even harder. There were sales, small ones, but more than enough to keep luring him on. A gallery showing in Boston was followed by one in Chicago. He permitted himself no close friends to distract him from his painting, and the women he sometimes found all finally complained of the same thing-he was cold, he was uncaring, all he should have given them he gave to his canvas.

They were right, but change was too hard, there was work to be done. The one thing he wanted was reasonable success, and definitely before he was too old to enjoy it; basking in fame during his dotage was not his idea of living.

Four years after leaving Maine, he married a woman who was just making it as a novelist. She said she understood him, and he believed it; she said she loved him, and he believed it. His work took on color, his days took on sunlight, and two years after his first New York showing, her heart twisted and stopped, and he never felt more alone in his life.

He despaired, moped, took long walks in the rain; he stared at his paints and could see nothing but black; he stood in front of the bathroom mirror and hacked at his wrists. But when he saw the blood running and felt the pain burning, instead of panicking he grew angry. Angry at himself for not having the maturity to deal with himself as well as other people, and at the world for not handing him people who really knew.

He bound himself, and thought he was healed. He had sworn off women until he met Peg Fletcher.

Peg Fletcher, who said she understood, and he wanted to believe it; Peg Fletcher, who refused to allow him self-pity, and he wanted to prove he didn't need it anymore.

He stared again at the scars and stuck his tongue out at them and broke into laughter that had his side almost aching.

The telephone rang.

He shook himself vigorously, reached to the cobbler's bench he used as a coffee table and snatched up the receiver. The first word on the other end told him it was Bob Cameron, owner of the Clipper Run and the incumbent president of the island's Board of Governors. Colin was running against him in next month's election.

Cameron also made no bones about being in love with Peg as well.

"Colin, how's it going?"

He propped his feet on the bench's high end and stared at the curtained window to the left of the door. "I'm not rich yet, if that's what you're asking."

Cameron laughed, a series of seal-like barks that never failed to sandpaper his nerves.

"Or maybe," he said, "you want me to make a speech at the bash on Saturday. You know, give the folks a little excitement in case the party gets too dull."

The laughter again, though this time he sensed strain and immediately stretched an arm over his head, list toward the ceiling, a silent celebration for scoring a point.

"Hey, you're welcome to come, you know that," Cameron said once he had sobered. "The party's open even to the opposition. Besides, it isn't a political thing anyway, for crying out loud. It's a celebration for shucking the tourists."

Colin nodded to himself. Sure, and I just know you have some swampland in Georgia you're eager for me to see.

"But that's not why I called," Cameron continued when he heard no response. "I, uh, I was wondering if you had plans for after the funeral tonight."

"Why?" Colin asked warily.

"Well, it's like this-I got a couple of friends over today from Trenton, and I think you ought to meet them. They might change your mind about the casinos and what they'll do for the island."

"What they'll do is ruin it," he said flatly.

"So you say."

"So I say, so the Chief of Police says, so says half the island, if not more."

"You're making this awfully hard on yourself, Col. And it isn't doing the island any good, either."

He sat up, his left hand a fist on his thigh, his right strangling the receiver. "Don't," he said quietly. "Don't you dare blame me for what's happening here, Bob. I'm not the one who's promising pie-in-the-sky riches if the casinos come in. I'm not the one promising bigger houses and bigger cars and fancier clothes and all that other nonsense."

"Colin," the man said, his voice straining to hold back anger, "all I want is what's best for Haven's End."

"Jesus," he said in disgust. "Jesus H. Christ, Bob, this is me you're talking to, not some goddamned fisherman who can barely make ends meet."

"My friends from the mainland-"

"Yeah," he interrupted, "I know all about your so-called friends."

The year before Colin moved south, Peg's husband, Jim, had decided to investigate Cameron's somewhat dubious mainland connections. For months he had worked alone, and for months had held his silence, but it was inevitable that word of his preliminary findings would finally leak to the grapevine. Cameron grew increasingly defensive, the islanders increasingly hostile, and late in April Fletcher's car had blown up while waiting for the ferry on the island-side platform. Jim had been in it. Five and a half years later there were still no arrests.

Cameron had instantly disclaimed responsibility, his rapid backpedaling so skillful that people believed he'd only gotten in over his head. Nevertheless, when he tried once again to bring in the casinos, to make the small sheltered island a refuge for the high rollers discouraged from visiting Atlantic City to the north, Colin didn't trust him, didn't like him, and in a brief moment of weakness agreed to oppose him for the Board of Governors' top position.

"Listen, Ross," Cameron said, civility abandoned, "you've no call bringing up stuff that's dead and buried."

"Poor choice of words, Bob," he said lightly.

"Faggot painter," Cameron snapped. "I'm giving you a chance to get the truth, and all you can do is throw mud. And if you think I'm going to stand by and watch this island go to hell in a handbasket because some goddamned jackass who wasn't even born here thinks he knows better than me what's good for this place, you've got another think coming."

"Bob, you really are a shit, you know that?"

"Ross, I'm warning you…"

He had had enough. "Warn me all you want, Bob," he said, "but if you so much as look cross-eyed at me between now and the election, I'll knock your fucking teeth in."

"Peg," the man said righteously, "doesn't approve of violence."

"And you leave her out of this!"

He slammed the receiver onto its cradle and glared at his fists. He knew there were still a few who would never think of him as being really "island"; but there were also enough who had sufficient faith in his judgement-and in the future of Haven's End without the casinos-to back him all the way. There was no denying the fact that Jim Fletcher's murder bothered him. There was also no denying the fact that coming to Haven's End, working with the schoolchildren, meeting Peg and the others, all served to heal him inside as nothing else had.

To his mind that meant he had an obligation.

And if he was ever going to be able to call this place a home, he would have to discharge that obligation before the temptation to flee grew too strong to resist.

He rose suddenly and crossed the room to the narrow, white-curtained window on the left hand wall. Below it was a chipped cherrywood table. On a strip of white linen in the center was one of Gran D'Grou's carvings.

The Screaming Woman.

Abruptly, the election, Bob Cameron, and the nastiness were gone. In its place a reminder of the funeral, and he hugged himself absently as he realized it was almost twilight.

A car horn blared in the distance. Another answered. A third buried them both.

He backed away from the table.

The figure was carved out of gray-and-black driftwood. It was fifteen inches high, a naked woman standing with her hands at her sides, her head tilted back slightly. At a distance she seemed to be singing; closer, and she could be screaming as her neck was encircled by what appeared to be a headless serpent growing up and out of the base of her spine. Her eyes were blank. Her legs merged at the knees into the body of a second, larger serpent that formed the statue's base.

This not be snake here, it is tail. She is sea woman. Eye cut out? No, no, Colin, it is shadow. You put a light here, the eye come back. You want a big monster, you stick it in the closet; you want a beautiful woman, put it on the television.

Jesus damn, Colin, you got no imagination.

He switched on the lamp standing beside the table and hurried into the bedroom to get dressed.

He didn't blame the island a bit for wanting Gran buried right away. During the last year he had changed, and for the worse. His role of benevolent despot had darkened, and no one had thought it amusing anymore. He snarled, except at the children and Lilla. He spent more time in the woods, more time at his shack, less time at the luncheonette unless he wanted to talk with the young ones. When he looked at passersby it was from the corner of his eye. When he spoke, his voice took on indecipherable insinuation.

And he demonstrated suddenly an uncanny ability to make himself appear to be something he wasn't- instead of an embittered failure, an exile from his home, he was a mysterious figure from an exotic foreign land known for its cultivation of supernatural shadows; instead of a man who steadfastly refused the polishing of his raw artistic talents, he was a worker of dark miracles so convincing even Warren Harcourt thought his dead wife could be brought back.

The dead birds hadn't helped at all.

Lilla's singing was even worse.

And tomorrow, Colin thought, they would look up at the sun and really feel silly about letting themselves be spooked-spooked by a drunk who didn't make sense even with his carvings.

But that was tomorrow.

There was still tonight to get through.

TWO

The beach continued on for a half mile below the last jetty, to the sharp slope where the land rose and the sand gave way to boulders, barnacled and slick, providing throats for the breakers that shattered against them. Down by the beach there were gaps, for tide pools, children, the occasional lovers. Fifty yards more and the gaps closed, the boulders becoming jagged and massive. And at the southern tip they rose to hundred-foot cliffs fringed with wind-twisted trees and tenacious straggly shrubs.

There were sand dunes as well. Two parallel rows spiked with sharp-edged sawgrass, broken and nearly leveled at several narrow places by wind or stormtide or the persistence of walkers.

And there was Dunecrest Estates, the only homes outside town-larger, newer, bespeaking wealth and position in fieldstone and brick. There were fewer than two dozen, half of them facing the ocean, the rest fronting a woodland arm between them and Neptune Avenue, which itself ended where they did, at a street called Surf Court. The development was twelve years old, long enough for the townspeople to call it simply the Estates.

And there was Gran D'Grou's shack.

It stood on a raised spit of land where the dunes met the slope, hidden by dying shrubs, scrub pine, and a colony of weeds. There was no litter, but the ground seemed cluttered just the same, and the roof that pitched away from the ocean was tarpaper-patched, breached at its peak by a rusted stovepipe chimney.

Lilla D'Grou, ignoring the dampness that seeped through the cracks in panes and thin walls, stood at the front room's sand-pitted window and stared at the beach. A wave rose, crested, hissed toward the pines at the end of the front yard. She ignored it. A stiff-legged tern raced the bubbling foam, head bobbing, legs reaching, its tracks in the wet sand fast disappearing, and she ignored it.

She realized with a start that she was staring at her ghost in the window., A lean face, and soft, high cheekbones, and a rounded chin made for a palm to cup it; deep brown eyes slightly raised at the corners, half-closed now in a look that might have been seductive in another time and place, the whole framed by luxuriant black hair parted in the center and settling on her slender shoulders in tangled natural curls. Not beautiful, but arresting, a face and lithe figure that turned men around ten minutes after she'd passed. But the black dress she now wore rendered her sexless.

She signed, her gaze shifted, and the ghost vanished.

To her left she could see the small fishing fleet moving ponderously homeward. Just over a half dozen boats, but they would work until November to drag the last of the harvest into their holds. Patiently. Confidently. Once each day drawing into a large circle for a laughing mealtime rendezvous if all was well, somberly trading well-worn and well-known gripes if their nets remained empty. Most had lived on the island since birth and could, if they'd a mind, trace their lineage back to the original inhabitants-brigands and smugglers and a few honest settlers, who lived on the island in an uneasy truce.

They fished, gossiped, and few ate what they carried back to Fox's Marina. Most of the catch was swiftly unloaded and packed into refrigerated crates, the crates labeled and thrown onto a truckbed for the mainland. What remained was sold to Naughton's Market or the Clipper Run. And if it were not worth the selling, it was thrown to the gulls.

The gulls that stalked them like winged hyenas.

Lilla watched them without a glimmer of caring, while the shadows of the trees behind the crumbling shack lanced toward the water, jabbed at the darkening sand. Shadows that would last until the night fog rolled it, riding low on the waves like a massive prowling beast, silently pacing the island in furtive spurts of roiling grey. It was treacherous even for the landed-blotting out the stars, defying the bright moon, sifting through the woodland to curl low in the streets, scrape noiselessly at chilled panes, fade the streetlamps one by one to slow sifting spots of diffused white haze.

Suddenly, there was a man walking along the beach. His topcoat was open, his hat back on his head, and his shoes were carried in one listless hand. He walked all the way to the first boulder without looking at the shack, turned and started back, to the snow fence that ran from the last jetty to the woods, the division between private and public bathing. He passed a hand wearily over his forehead, walking with a peculiar gait not caused by the sand-rigid, deliberate, difficult to watch without wanting to help him. He stopped and lifted his left foot, tried to slip on a shoe and fell on his rump. He shook his head and looked skyward, then looked at his shoes and tossed them away. Rising slowly with hands outstretched for balance, he dusted sand from his trousers and moved on, swaying slightly.

She watched him without blinking. Her arms were braced at her sides, her knees pressed against the unpainted wall beneath the canted window. Hearing the rising high tide without listening to it; listening instead to the calm rhythm of her heart. And when it was clear there was no panic to ruin what she'd done, she closed her eyes tightly and hugged herself snugly.

It would be so easy, she thought, to find Warren Harcourt and join him in his drinking. And it would be so temptingly easy to believe that belonging to the only black family on Haven's End had denied her grandfather all the care he'd needed. Too easy. Like running away with Harcourt. Like ignoring the fact that nothing could have saved Gran, nothing at all could have kept his lungs from stalling, his heart from failing. Ninety-seven years he had lived, and he had simply and finally worn himself out with his liquor and his smoking and his constant praying for that one little miracle that would bring him his fortune.

Dead now, when she needed him most.

Dead now, while men like Warren Harcourt stumbled on so damned worthless.

Dead. Gran had been her family, and he'd left her alone.

When she was sixteen, she had decided that either law or medicine would fill the rest of her life. No one in her family had ever been to college before, she would be the first, and she was going to do it right. Her parents applauded. Gran grumbled and told her he could teach her all she had to know, and she kissed his knotted brow, and whispered a laugh in his ear. Peg agreed to help wherever she could, and Little Matt promised to help her study very hard. And Colin her Knight (though he didn't know he had her armor) wrote to people he knew in hopes of snaring a scholarship or two.

When she was sixteen, the boys hung around her shyly, knowing her color and wanting her just the same. Instead of Peg, she asked Colin to help sort out her feelings, not because he was smarter but for the way he wouldn't look at her when he talked.

It was grand at sixteen, and with little ego involved she knew she was smart, she was pretty, she was ready for the world.

When she was sixteen, she and Gran had persuaded her parents to take a day off from running the Neptune Luncheonette. She assured them it would not fall apart or burn down or blow away while they were gone. When they hesitated, Gran scolded them lightly in Caribbean patois. They'd laughed and agreed, and rented a small boat from the marina to sail beyond the breakers.

In taking over the store, she had celebrated by treating every child to free ice cream sodas. And it was a celebration-the first full day the elder D'Grous had taken off since she could remember. Even during winter, when most shopowners fled for a three-month respite, they stayed. There was always work after the motels closed, and they felt more secure here, where there was no time for bigotry, or the mainland's tacit harassment.

By noon she was exhausted. A pleasant, high-flying weariness had her flirting, laughing, singing Caribbean songs old Gran had taught her when Mother wasn't around to disapprove of the choice.

She wore her grandfather out.

At five past two, Patrolman El Nichols walked in, and ten minutes later she was in the back room weeping in Gran's arms.

One of the fishermen had started back to the marina for repairs on his engine. On the way he found the sailboat, capsized after a noontime squall. There was no sign of the D'Grous.

When she was sixteen, Gran walked her to the house at the end of Atlantic Terrace where they drew the curtains, turned off the lights, refused to answer the telephone's pleading.

For weeks after the dying, the funeral without bodies, he had stayed, cleaning and cooking, promising all would be fine.

"You know, girl," he said one night at the table, "your old mother was the best woman I know, the best daughter there ever be. But she think I'm a little-" And he drew a circle around his temple and laughed quietly. "She don't remember the island, the other one. She was still very small, too small to walk, when…"

He stopped, and Lilla watched his eyes as they followed his mind away from Haven's End.

"Much sickness," he said softly. "I tell your Gram we have to leave, go to the Big Place and be rich. But she died, you see. Then I have… small trouble and come*too, with your mother."

"Gran, why didn't Momma want you to sing me the old songs?"

His look, then, was almost ferocious.

"Because," he said after too long a time, "she don't remember the true island and the things it can do. She likes it here and she wants you to grow up to be just like her."

"I want to, Gran."

"And I, girl. I promise your mother I give you this chance."

But he had promised her, too, her parents would come back, and they never did.

And he had promised he would guard her-and he'd died last week. The last of her family, when she needed him the most. When she needed him to tell her what to do with the store, her life, the lure of the mainland and all that lay beyond.

He had fallen ill just after Labor Day. He lay on the bed in the shack's back room and hadn't risen again. Instead, he spent long hours, the night hours, telling her of his boyhood on the Caicos Islands, north of Haiti. Very little made sense because he rambled on so much, whispered more often than not, broke into songs he demanded she learn. But his hoarse singing entranced her, until she sang with him, seeing him smile, nodding when she was able to complete a song on demand.

And on the day before it was over, it seemed as if he had found a way to slip into her mind. One moment she was kneeling by the bed, watching his breathing slow and stutter, and the next he was in there-in there — whispering to her, easing her slight panic with a cloak of comforting fog.

He would never leave, he said, if she did what he commanded.

He would never leave if she would obey all his instructions.

And she believed him, even though his eyes remained closed, his lips did not move, and the rise and the fall of his chest became increasingly shallow.

She slept that night in the shack, had been standing at the front window just like this when his breathing stopped and he'd left her. Just like this when she'd realized what happened and raced to the back, where the walls were bare and stained an ugly rust-brown from splotches of dead insects and nails from patches where the roof had leaked. A single window at the rear was closed against the night, covered with an uneven blanket faded from green to streaked white. One chest of drawers squatted timidly in the far corner. Beside it, a chipped oak table held a hurricane lamp whose low flame wavered though there was no draft.

And in the center of the uncarpeted floor was the bed-a cheap imitation brass frame and headboard that cradled a thin, linenless mattress at an uncomfortable angle.

The man lying there was extraordinarily slender. Naked. Not a square inch of dark flesh unmarked by lines here deepened into crevices, there laced across withered and flaked skin drawn around sticks that played at being bones. Like a man immersed too long in salt water. Sexless. Rigid. Eyes wide and staring.

She had circled the bed once, not touching, not seeing. Then she'd knelt on the floor and taken Gran's hand. Snakeskin. She had pressed it to her chest, trembled, wept until she could rub her tears into the insensitive palm while she strained and willed the eyelids to blink, the chest to rise, the knees to flex. Just once. Please, just once. That's all she asked. That's all she demanded.

She willed and wept and trembled until the green-chimneyed lamp with its tarnished brass base sputtered, flared, and died. From rents in the blanket came the waxing new moon's gray-white intrusion. From the cracks in the walls, in the ceiling, in the air, the muted thunder of the cresting tide. She wept, rocking on her knees, pressing the hand hard into her flesh and feeling no pain.

"Gran, come back to me," she whimpered between sobs. "Gran, please. Don't leave me alone, not now when I need you."

The floor creaked rhythmically. The moon began to dim as the night fog returned.

"Gran, listen," she whispered earnestly.

A bloated brown spider walked over the old man's shin.

"Gran, listen, please don't go. Please, Gran? Gran?"

She spread the dead man's fingers until the skin between was taut, near to tearing, took the thumb into her mouth and bit down slowly, not too hard-she wouldn't have him screaming. She lifted her head to glare at the night; to curse the dark and the fog and the moon and the stars; to curse the sea and the island and the shack where she knelt.

The faint cry of a gull, the scrabbling of a rat, the rubbing of sawgrass like the husk of a ghost.

And her voice was a woman's ten times her age. "I won't let you go, Gran. You're all I have, and I won't let you go."

For a long moment there was a last bit of fear and a brief troubled wondering if her mind had let go. Then she took a deep breath and held it until her lungs were aching. She released it in slow spurts and in doing so released her hold on the shack, on the beach, on the island in the ocean. There was only Gran now, and the old songs, herself in a universe of slow-stirring shadows.

The Atlantic spoke, and she listened; the fog whispered, and she cocked her head; the lamp hissed, and she nodded.

Carefully, moving as if dealing with cold, fragile black crystal-do now all I tell you, child, do it all now and it will all come right-she positioned his hands over his sunken stomach, one above the other, the fingertips angled toward the shoulders. She did not close the blind eyes-she wanted him to see everything so he could correct her mistakes. If she made a mistake. But she would not, dared not. Not now. Not now.

The Atlantic; the fog; the eye of the lamp. The creaking of the shack; the dead silence of the moon.

She moved on her knees to the foot of the bed, her hands in position to mirror Gran's exactly.

A last thought that momentarily brought life to the brown eyes: is this what they taught you in school, is this what you learned from Colin and the others, is this what you believe in, is this sane… is it… sane… is this…

The sea whispered.

The thought died.

"I will sing you, Gran," was a prayer and a query, and her voice filled the shack though its volume was low, the words swooping like ravens, darting like hawks, waiting like predators on the dead man's heart. Without joy, without promise, but a hard hopeful urging that surged to match the tide and hold, hold, until the words became a humming that lasted until dawn.

The words Gran had taught her to call on his gods.

And when she had finished and had slept for an hour, she started again.

For five days she worked at the luncheonette until seven, then returned to the shack where she ate, slept, and passed the night singing-staring at the cheap decanter she'd bought at Peg Fletcher's. There was gleaming red liquid in the cut-glass container, and each night a little more.

Five days later she walked into the police station and told them Gran was dead.

Dead.

And she didn't notice the way people looked at her now-except during those brief moments when the mind fog lifted and she wondered where she was.

A movement. Her eyes shifted. There. There on the water. Seven longboats making their way south just beyond the breakers. Dark against the sea, the figures within black in their slickers. She blinked rapidly to drive off the hazy past, and saw the people on the beach. Only a few yet, but a few more stumbling down the dunes; not one of them looked in her direction.

The boats turned, pitched, and rolled as they crested the waves and made their way toward shore.

She searched for Colin. Of all the people for all this time, only he understood what magic Gran had had in his fingers, in his soul, to bring to life the driftwood and the pine. He'd helped Gran sell, asking nothing in return, had helped deal with the big city galleries that came sniffing around the shack, hands on their wallets and handkerchiefs to their noses. Gran, however, refused most of Colin's assistance. More often than not he gave the sculptures away, then complained bitterly into his bottle about the few dollars he'd saved. And the closer to death he came, the angrier he grew, lashing out at the island without once ever taking any blame for his failures on his own frail shoulders.

She seemed to recall, then, that the songs he had taught her while he lay on the bed were angry as well. But it was only a feeling, one she could not pin down.

She shivered and hugged herself more tightly.

The afternoon before, Colin had visited her when school was over, having heard through the grapevine that she didn't want Gran buried in the sea despite the fact it was Haven's End's way.

She had met him on the sand, away from the shack.

"Lil, it's all right, y'know," he'd said, hands thrust into his pockets, brown hair caught in the sea breeze. "If you don't want to do this, it's all right."

She shook her head slowly. "You don't understand, Colin."

He managed a smile. "I'm trying." His look said, why don't you help me?

She felt a swirling of the mind fog that had blinded her since the night before Gran died. "It's not a matter of want, it's a matter of must." And she hoped she wasn't overplaying the bereaved role, one she sometimes felt wasn't a role at all. Whenever that feeling came she knew Gran was listening, watching, waiting to stop her. Then the feeling would leave and the fog would come again.

"Lilla… Lilla, I'm sorry."

"It's all right."

"I'm still sorry."

She found herself smiling.

A gull shrieked, and veered sharply away toward the water.

He'd looked to the sea, down to the sand, raised his eyes without lifting his head. "Lil, are you all right? I know this isn't easy for you, but… are you all right?"

She'd wanted to tell him then; the singing, the nights, the fog stalking her dreams. But she couldn't. Do all I tell you, child, and it will all come right. She would have to let them do what they wanted without saying a word.

Then she would do what she must.

There were more people on the beach. They took hold of the longboat's gunwales and dragged them from the surf, hauled them around to face the way they'd come. Cigarettes and a thermos jug of coffee were passed around. Faces, small and pale, were checking the sky as if sniffing the wind. There were no children, and only a handful of teenagers.

Lilla's eyes closed slowly, and she wished Peg were here to hold her, to whisper something to make her feel right, and smile.

She wished Gran were here. The real Gran. The grumbling and mumbling and whittling and bitching Gran. Not the Gran who lay so maddeningly still there in the back room.

Her eyes opened, and she sighed.

Any moment now they would come to take him away. Any moment now Colin and someone else, perhaps Chief Garve Tabor, would climb over the last dune, talk a little, see who was down there and who had stayed away, and then do what they had to do. Colin, who didn't know Lilla would have given every one of her eighteen years if he'd taken her to his bed just once before that man… that man at the college… that man who'd given her all that horrid stuff to drink and had brought her back to his room and had… that man… who'd made a bet that black women were different where a white man thought it counted.

That man.

At the beginning of last August a full year ago, over Gran's protests, she had gone to the college for a weekend's orientation.

That man-his name and face gone, leaving only his expression when she returned the next day and spat in his eyes before heading for the Registrar to withdraw her name from the rolls.

That man Gran wanted to kill when he found out. She'd cried herself to sleep too many times and he was there, trembling in indignation while she talked and wept, and she held the old man and begged him not to leave her.

That man, who had taken every man from her bed before she'd known, before she'd loved.

She'd fled back to Haven's End, but Gran was never the same Gran again.

"You listen to me," he said last spring, "this place is no good. It took my fortune. It needs a teaching to show them I am…" He stumbled, not finding the words. "They took it because I am old and I am this way." He pinched his thin forearm to show her the color. "I will not forget that they took what is mine."

"Gran-"

"You are my Lilla. I love you, and you will help me and I will make it all right. I know this is true because I am your Gran."

A few heads turned to a point just to her left, and she knew who had finally arrived. There was no stopping it now. Colin and Garve Tabor were here, and now it was done.

She turned away from the window slowly, in stages, as if she were dazed. With a shuddering sigh she lowered her arms to her sides, her hands slipping into the folds of her black dress.

— the songs, child, the songs, if you want me back again-

She moved flat-footed, bare-footed, from the front room to the back, to the bed where Gran lay.

— they will take me to the water, give me drink to keep me safe-

Not an hour earlier she had finished the last singing, the words beyond translation giving her comfort nonetheless. They were his promises (though they sometimes seemed like threats), and when she was done she felt the air close around her like a giant's fist. She waited. And the air rushed from the shack like a banshee's furied scream.

— be patient, child, I will be waiting-

Then she had wrapped his body in gray canvas, with a round, ten-pound weight settled in the bottom, and had slowly sewn it closed-except for the face.

She started at it now, biting her lower lip, feeling a burr try to rise in her throat while an abrasion of tears made her eyes sting.

The room was silent; not even the sea.

Gran, can you hear me? Oh, Gran, I'm doing my best, believe me. I tell them you're my Gran and I don't want you to leave me, and they just smile and tell me everything's all right, it's all right, don't worry.

Gran, they love me, they truly do. They only want to see me smile again. They just don't know what it is to be so alone. They love me, but they don't know.

And I don't know what to do now. I don't know what to do.

I sing and I sing and I know it's right because you told me.

I sing and I sing, but I don't know if I sing enough. Oh, Gran, why don't you sing me again?

She picked up the decanter and pulled out the stopper. The mindfog parted, her hand trembled, the fog returned. She poured the sweet-smelling red liquid into Gran's open mouth. All of it. Every drop. Then she reached down to the floor and picked up a long, heavy, curved needle. She held it close to her eyes in the lamp's wavering light. She licked her lips clear of salty tears and leaned over the corpse, brushing her cheeks before taking hold of the canvas. The needle slashed into the shroud, closing it, covering by stages the waxen black face (with a trace of red at the lips) and the wide staring eyes that did not blink when the needle passed over.

And when she was done, she slipped needle and coarse thread through a gap in the canvas, taking care not to prick her grandfather's scalp.

Then she stood at the foot of the bed, hands clasped at her waist, and she waited. Not moving. Scarcely breathing. As still as the body that waited there with her.

THREE

Light slipped from the air rapidly once the sun had dropped below the mainland forest, and what remained was a dark-spotted haze that tired the eye and made shadows lose their sunset definition. Streetlamps switched on with an insect buzzing, the amber traffic signal brightened in monotonous winking, and the Anchor Inn's neon was a harsh, colorless glare. On the corner behind the police station the Clipper Run's spotlights softened the gold frigate on the stucco wall, and the hedging surrounding the parking lot seemed taller, more forbidding.

For a long moment, nothing moved, nothing breathed.

For a moment, Haven's End waited.

On the mainland, Wally Sterling moored the ungainly ferry to its dock after completing his last commuter run and peered down the road toward Flocks. He saw no lights and grunted, wiped a brusque hand under his white-blind eye, and lit a twisted black cigar with a flourish and a loud, relieved sigh. He expected no more business for the rest of the night. After all, it was Thursday. Gran's funeral. And in the very slight breeze he could sense coming rain. A storm tonight, no question about it. The way things were going these days, he wouldn't be surprised if it was followed by a Carolina Screamer before the weekend was over. They were due for one of them late fall storms-high winds, high seas-so why not now, when it was all goin' to hell anyway.

He forced a belch, and pulled a cheap silver flask out of his hip pocket, unscrewed the cap, and took a long pull at the brandy inside. A brief yellow-toothed grimace, and he pulled off his seaman's cap to scratch vigorously at white hair trimmed to a ragged marine cut. A tug at his hawk's nose. A swipe of a hand over his cleft chin to catch a dribble of brandy he licked off his scrawny finger. Another drink, and he was ready.

He stood on the dock and began taking potshots at the gulls wheeling overhead, using an old target pistol and pretending the birds were the men who had killed his brother Stu. He hadn't hit one in five years, but it didn't stop his shooting.

At the funeral-in Flocks, goddamn it, where a man got a decent burial, down there in the solid ground-a gull had landed on the coffin as it was lowered. It had pecked at the flowers, pecked at the lid, and he'd tried to brain it with a shovel. It flew off, squawking, but by then he knew the damn thing was a sign. Stu had hated them birds, and Wally figured he had to stick around until he'd potted one for his brother.

One of these days he was going to get lucky, and when he did he was going to sell the ferry and move down to Florida, or out to Arizona, some place like that. As far away as he could get from the idiots who lived out there on that rock.

Another shot, another miss; he took another touch of brandy.

Or maybe he could catch those men alive, those who'd blown up Jim Fletcher and caused Stu's dying. Then he'd be a hero, sell his story to the papers, get on the TV. Or maybe not. That would mean involving himself with the fools on Haven's End. The fools and their goddamn casinos that killed little Stu. No. He'd let them do it alone. Let Tabor work his ass off trying to prove it was one of Cameron's cronies, like he hinted when he came around asking questions about who used the ferry that day and did Wally see any strange boats on the bay and crap like that.

Another shot, another miss, another lick at the brandy.

Nope. Nice try, Garve, but old Wally knew better. It was pouring that day, the waves too high for anything but the ferry. Nope, the bomb had been placed by someone on the island.

He grinned. With luck, maybe there'd be another one, and this time it would be… he grunted, scratched his hair, his chin, a spot just below his belt. The hell with it. He didn't give a damn. Let themselves kill each other off, all of them. And that was something he knew he could drink to.

Out near the horizon the fog began to move.

In serpentine coils it drifted low over the water, riding the swells and bending away from the breeze; pockets formed here and there in the deepest troughs, eddying, expanding, shredding when an explosive gust reached down from the black; and soundlessly rising it masked the light of twilight in a writhing gray cloud.

In the trees, too, it stirred once the temperature had lowered, teasing translucent ribbons around boles and deadfalls, surging over roots thrust up from the ground. It settled in hollows and resembled cauldrons gently simmering; it sought shrubs to weave them shrouds; it found saplings and gave them cloaks; and it reached out from the shadows like specters seeking form.

It was chilled, but not cold; it was hunting, but not hurried; and it sat beyond the low breakers like a veil not yet drawn.

The passing of the light was joined by the slow seeping of warmth from the sand. Fifteen longboats were ranged evenly along the beach, and three shallow pits had been dug in which fires had been built. The flames were not high, but they were sufficient to create shadows, temporary black ghosts that rippled like whispers across footprints and faces and brought an almost phosphorescent glow to the breaker's caps.

Colin stood with his back to the dunes. He was wearing a heavy, gray Irish sweater, his jeans were rolled to midcalf, and his feet were bare. He stood beside Garve Tabor, who was dressed the same, and whose thinning sandy hair was atangle over his brow. Garve poked the unruly forelock back into place every so often as a matter of habit, after which he would pull his belt up over his slight paunch whether it needed the adjustment or not.

To their right the dunes leveled, and Gran's shack was just visible in the gloom.

"She sure has a sense of the dramatic," the chief said, his voice almost too soft and husky for a man his age, nearly fifteen years older than Colin but not looking it at all.

"She's frightened," Colin told him. "She doesn't want to lose all she has left."

Tabor, whose face in the distant firelight glow gave evidence of his Navaho heritage, shrugged and looked at his watch. "She's not the only one who's lost people, you know."

"Yeah."

Tabor raised an eyebrow. "Hey, this is your first funeral." He nodded.

"Ah, no wonder you've got the jitters." He nodded. "Makes you think we're kind of barbaric and all that, right?"

"Not exactly, no."

"Weird?"

"That, for sure."

Tabor looked to the water, his profile sharp-edged. "It's a comfort, though. My mother's out there, a couple of uncles. It beat all to hell having them dropped into the ground with mud dumped on them. That, to my thinking, is definitely barbaric."

They waited, and Colin wondered what Peg was doing. Probably finishing the supper dishes. He would call her when he got back. He didn't realize he was staring toward town until he saw Garve watching him, smiling. He shrugged, and the chief laughed.

"You shouldn't wait too long, Col. It does a hell of a job on the man's ego when the woman has to do the proposing."

"Really? Is this from the local expert?" From the waiting mourners he picked out a tall woman with blonde hair rippling to her waist. "Does it mean you're going to ask Annalee soon?"

Annalee Covey was Dr. Hugh Montgomery's nurse, a widow whose husband of three years had been killed in Vietnam when his fighter copter had been shot down a month after the pull out. Two years later, and to no one's surprise, she made it known she was tired of living alone, and she also made it clear to those who pursued her that she wanted one man of her own or no man at all. Garve was scared to death of her. She was a head taller than he was, more aggressive, and, he claimed, too damned liberated for her own good. It had taken Colin only a few months to understand that his friend was torn between the comfort and imagined safety of an old-fashioned woman and the relatively exotic allure Annalee posed. The chief also felt guilty because Annalee's husband had been his best boyhood friend, and it seemed to him too much like incest.

"Well?" he said, turning away to hide his smile.

"We weren't talking about me, Rembrandt," Garve told him.

"No, I don't suppose we were." He cleared his throat and scanned the beach, scanned the sky, and shivered.

Garve laughed quietly. "You feel it?"

"Feel what?"

Garve waved vaguely toward the horizon. "Screamer's coming."

Colin looked skeptical. Despite his years here his friends were still testing to see how much he would swallow. "What arc you talking about? What's a Screamer? A ghost?"

The chief laughed again. "No. Carolina Screamer. A late fall storm that comes up from the Carolinas so fast you barely have time to get. A lot of wind, the tides run wicked high."

"You mean a hurricane?"

Tabor shook his head. "No. What it does, see, it pushes the water ahead of it, damn near drowns the island. Folks board up their windows and light out for the mainland, most of them. Lasts about a day, you don't even know it's been unless you forgot to put the car in the garage."

"Sounds great," he said sourly.

"It can be fun, if you're careful."

"Oh, that's marvelous." He looked sideways at the policeman. "And you can sense it?"

"Some can."

"You?"

Garve chuckled and shook his head. "Hell, no. Heard on the radio there was a low forming off the coast. We haven't had a Screamer since… since you've come on. I figure we're due."

Colin checked the sky again, the water, and said, "I can't tell you how lucky I feel." Then he looked down at the beach, at the people still gathering. "Funny, I thought I saw Cameron."

"He slipped away about fifteen minutes ago."

Colin grunted his surprise.

Garve spat dryly. "Doesn't make any difference. He was here to be seen, that's all. Slap a few backs, whisper in a few ears. I expect his buddies are waiting for him at the restaurant."

"Oh, you know about them?"

Garve glanced at him oddly. "Do you?"

He gave a brief account of Cameron's phone call, letting the tone of his voice provide the commentary needed.

"Well, well," Garve said. He pushed his hat to the back of his head, and slipped the fingers of his left hand into his hip pocket. "Old eagle eye doesn't miss much, m'boy. It's in the genes with us law folk. There are two of them, actually. Came over this morning. One guy doesn't weigh a hundred pounds, I bet. He's Mike Lombard and his specialty is real estate law. He lives in Trenton and drinks cocktails with the governor. The other one, he has a knife scar from his gut to his throat, and his expertise is political persuasion. The way I hear it, they're looking to Bob to provide them with a donation for their retirement fund."

"Interesting. But shouldn't you be after them or something?"

Garve laughed quietly. "Col, this isn't the Old West. I can't give them twenty-four hours to get outta town just because I don't like their faces. As long as they don't get Cameron to do something real stupid, all I can do is make them very unhappy to see me in their shadows."

Colin would have replied but he realized the mourners were staring past him to the shack. He turned slowly. The door was open, and a few second's watching brought Lilla into focus.

Garve sighed relief. "Time, I guess. Listen, maybe you'd-"

He nodded, took his hands from his pockets and trudged across the sand.

Eliot Nichols glared into the tiny office and dared the phone to ring again. Then he locked the door behind him and rushed to the green patrol car. With everybody and their brother wanting to know if a Screamer was coming (and too damned lazy to listen to the radio), he'd have to speed so as not to miss the funeral. And if he was going to be chief one of these days, attendance was a social must.

Midway along Neptune Avenue, far beyond the darkened gas station-the last business on the street- he passed between the Rising Sun Motel and the Seaview, both constructed in the shape of an H, windows boarded now for winter and the parking lots deserted and filled with dead leaves. He glanced at them automatically, though he really wasn't looking. The Rising Sun was a meeting place for the worst of the island's teenagers. Though they'd never been caught, he knew they generally broke into the second floor rooms in back to party, drink themselves stupid on beer, do a little dope, do a little sex. There weren't many of them, a half dozen tops, and it usually happened only four or five times before the owners returned in spring. But it galled him to know they were there at all. Laughing at him. Not giving a damn. Just biding their time until they were legally old enough to get off the island. They were decidedly unlike the rest of the local kids, and he had a hard time understanding how they got that way.

A hundred yards later he saw Warren Harcourt sitting on the pebbled verge, hat in hand, legs splayed, feet bare, head bowed and nodding. With a groan, he pulled over and climbed out. Shaking his head, he slammed the door shut and hitched up his belt. Harcourt didn't move. Nichols stood over him for nearly a full minute, waiting for a reaction. When the man refused to acknowledge him, Nichols groaned again.

"You idiot," he said, grabbing the taller man's shoulders and yanking him effortlessly to his feet. "Don't you know there's a funeral tonight? Don't you have any respect for the dead?" He punched Harcourt's arm sharply, and had to reach out quickly to keep him from falling.

Harcourt belched.

"Damn it, Warren, why don't you get your butt on home?"

The lawyer blinked several times. "Wanna see Gran," he said. "I wanna see Gran."

Nichols didn't know whether to laugh or kick him. "Gran," he said with exaggerated care, "is dead. For God's sake, that's who they're buryin'! Jesus, you know that."

Harcourt swiveled around to face him, his dark eyes brimming with tears. "Dead?"

The deputy nodded. "Burying him?"

"Aw, Warren, come on! You heard what I said."

The attorney reached several times for his topcoat lapels, failed, and let his hand dangle at his side. He swallowed. "They're not… are they burying him at sea?"

"Where the hell else, huh?"

For a moment the liquor seemed gone from the man's system, so much so that Nichols took a step back and frowned.

"Does Lilla know this?" Harcourt asked sharply. "Does she know what they're doing?"

Nichols stared, frowning.

"Well, sir, does she know?"

He put a hand to his forehead and rubbed slowly. He'd seen this happen before: One moment the lawyer was so out of it he could barely stand, the next it was as if he hadn't had a drop in his life. It spooked him. It really spooked him.

Harcourt belched again.

"That's it," Nichols muttered. He took the unsteady man's arms and spun him around toward town. Another moment for consideration and he gave him a harsh shove. "Go! Go on, damn it, before I run you in and throw away the key."

Harcourt lurched forward five or six feet, regained his balance, and walked a half dozen feet more. Then, abruptly, he turned and slipped his hands into his topcoat pockets. He was just beyond the reach of the patrol car's headlights, a shadow barely formed, and Nichols could have sworn he looked almost normal.

His voice was deep, and perfectly steady. "He won't like it, you know. He won't like it at all."

Nichols turned away, more spooked than before, and looked up to the stars. Damn, he thought, wouldn't you know it. Gone more than a week and now the damned fog is coming back.

Matt had asked her again: "Mom, why don't you and Mr. Ross get married?"

And again she'd answered truthfully: "Don't know, darlin'. Maybe because there's a time for things like that, and this isn't it."

It had sounded weak when she said it and Matt had finished his chocolate pudding in silence, cleared the table and gone up to his room when she'd pardoned him from doing the dishes. He wanted to finish the picture of the gulls, he'd told her; he wanted it done by Monday so Mr. Ross could tell him what he'd done wrong and what he should practice on. And when she was alone she washed the plates and listened to the radio, humming when she recognized a melody, shutting the music out when she didn't. Afterward, she wandered into the study where she opened the store ledger and stared at the columns, the figures, the black and red ink.

She held a ball-point pen in her right hand and tapped the retractor knob against her teeth.

Ten minutes later nothing had changed-the store was still solvent, no hints of financial disaster, and she might even be able to give one of her two clerks, Frankie Adams, a slight raise for the winter. If, she amended, he kept his nose clean. She smiled. She might as well ask for a million tax-free dollars. Though the boy was ambitious, and a decently hard worker, he was also enthralled by the local godhood, Carter Naughton. As long as Cart suffered the younger boy's presence, Frankie was going to be a problem. Well, maybe the raise would turn him around. Her good deed for the year.

She pushed away from the desk and stretched, groaned with pleasure, and toed off her shoes. Her hair, a rich and sullen auburn, was bunned at the nape for convenience, not preference. Her blouse and skirt were white and unfrilled. She rebelled against smocks, lab coats, and the like. Pharmacist or not, she didn't believe she lost a dime in sales just because she looked like a woman.

A grin pulled at her classic bow lips.

A woman, huh? The only time she ever considered herself something other than someone who owned a business these days was when Matt mentioned Colin. Or when she saw Colin on the street. Or when Colin took her to the movies, or to the mainland for dinner or a drive. Or when Colin took her sailing. Or…

The grin turned to a broad smile, and she laughed aloud.

"God," she said, rising and leaving the small room for the front parlor. "God, Pegeen, you've got it bad."

There wasn't much furniture, but what she had was comfortably old, comfortably thick, solidly reassuring. For a while, after Jim had died, she'd wanted to clear the house of everything that reminded her of him-the fireplace armchair where he'd read his paper every night, the oriental carpet his mother had given them as a wedding present, the polished brass andirons he cleaned after every fire, the framed prints of thoroughbreds. The bed upstairs. His armoire.

Then she'd changed her mind.

One morning, no more special than any other, she woke up and decided that all of it was just as much hers as his, as was the house and the land around it, that he was gone and she was still alive. With Matthew.

She'd cried all day.

Matt had cried with her, as if he'd understood.

Then Colin had arrived, and two years later her son's campaign had begun.

She slumped into the armchair and drew her feet up under her. Directly opposite was the picture window, reflecting the floor lamp to her left, and her shadowed face. She could see the street, however, and the Adams' house on the other side. A puff of fog hung over the streetlamp near the corner. Though the house was warm she hugged herself for a moment and wished she'd been able to attend the funeral. Lilla, she suspected, would be angry with her now, but it was a shame just the same.

She massaged her feet absently. "Mom?"

She looked up, around toward the staircase by the front door. "You called?"

"Can I watch TV?"

"I don't know. You finish your homework?"

"Sure."

She shifted, lowering her feet to the carpet. A stupid question, she thought. If he'd had to read War and Peace by morning the answer would have been the same. She glanced at her watch and did some rapid subtraction. "All right," she called back. "But just till nine, got it? Nine o'clock and that thing is off."

"Thanks!"

"You're welcome," she said without raising her voice, then looked to the telephone on the table beside her. Talk. She needed talk, and with the funeral going on she might as well let her mother know she was still alive and unmarried. Then, thinking about the advice she didn't need but would get anyway, she rose, walked into the study again, and stared at the bookshelves and the cabinets beneath them where Jim had stored his files. She'd gone through them after he died, thinking she might be able to find his notes on the casinos and gamblers, thinking she'd be able to march into FBI headquarters and dump them on an agent's desk and demand justice be done. But she hadn't found them. No one had. And despite police efforts…

Hell, she thought, and looked back to the phone. Maybe Mother wouldn't be so bad, after all. Maybe she wouldn't be up to her lecture on the virtues of having a husband, and a father for poor little Matthew. Like Jim, she would say with undisguised grief in her voice. Or that nice restaurant man, what's his name again? Something Campbell? Cameron?

Peg's sudden smile was mirthless.

What few people knew, and what fewer would have believed if they had known, was that if Jim had lived another year she would have divorced him. Ironic, even bitterly so, but against all accounts and his crusading to save the island, Jim Fletcher had been a goddamned bastard. Miserly, philandering, and ridiculing her attempts to continue running the store she'd inherited from her father. Once, he'd even attempted to force her to choose between the business and him, backing down only when she'd made it absolutely clear what the answer would have been.

By the time of his death she had grown to hate him.

By the time of his death he had lost his son's love.

"Damn," she muttered, and decided to go upstairs and watch television with Matt. If she were lucky, the picture would be new and Matt would have seen it only a dozen or so times. By the end of the last commercial maybe the funeral would be over. Then she could call Colin and maybe he'd come over for a drink, something warm, some talk… maybe a little loving, which suddenly she felt she needed very badly.

But when she reached the staircase she changed her mind and went back to the chair, picked a book up from the floor and opened it to the first page. Soon, she told herself; the funeral will be over soon and then I'll call Colin.

Lilla met Colin at the threshold and faced him squarely. Her face was drawn, her hair tangled and damp. The black dress clung provocatively to her figure, and might have seemed blasphemous had it not been for the dirt and dust that faded parts of it to grey.

"It's time," she said when he was close enough.

He nodded.

"I have no choice?"

"Lilla…"

She smiled weakly. "I just wanted to try one more time." Then she sagged, and he held her awkwardly, unable to shake the feeling that all her protests had been lies. He was startled, ashamed, stared over her shoulder into the dark of the shack. Gran was in there.

He could sense the corpse and the shroud. And there was something else-perhaps the scent of her grieving-but whatever it was it wrinkled his nose and would have gagged him had she not pulled away and kissed him lightly on the cheek.

He gave her a weak grin. "Easy, lady, people will talk."

"They do anyway."

She was right. And only a handful understood the affinity binding the two, not as lovers but as friends, both of them outcasts in their own way and recognizing each other instantly.

"You'll ride with me, Colin?"

"Of course I will."

She looked to the beach, the boats. "Colin?" She clasped her hands at her waist, scrubbed them dryly. "Colin, Gran wasn't the man people think he was."

"I know."

She frowned briefly. "No. I don't think so. He-"

The indefinable stench from the shack increased, and he imagined it almost as visible as smoke. He held his breath, amazed it didn't bother Lilla. Incense, he decided then, some crap Gran had brought with him from the Caribbean.

"He what?" he prompted gently.

The stench on the wind now.

She shook her head slowly. "It doesn't matter now," she whispered. Then she turned around.

Stronger.

"Lilla, wait. I'll get some of the others-"

"No!" she said, the child-woman gone in the snap of the command. "He is mine, Colin. If this thing has to be done, I will take him myself.

He opened his mouth to protest, but it was too late, and something about the darkness that seemed to shift just over the threshold kept him from following. He felt embarrassed. He wanted to look back at the others and lift his hands to say I tried. Lilla spared him the moment; she returned with the body cradled easily in her arms, and he fell in beside her, holding her elbow to prevent her from slipping. The stench was gone.

Silently, swiftly, the boats were filled and pushed into the surf. They moved directly east toward the fog's boundary, stopping when they reached a point a mile beyond the jetties' tips.

Colin's arms arched as he rowed the heavy craft, Lilla sitting at the stern, Gran lying between them. But he felt no compulsion to be first at the spot; after all, he thought with a barely stifled laugh, they sure as hell couldn't start without him. The levity shamed him, and he refused to meet Lilla's gaze. He ducked his head and pulled around the already circled boats until he could slip stern first into his place at the top.

The oarlocks were silent, though the oars had been left half submerged in the water. No anchors were thrown, no lines were connected, yet each of the craft maintained the same spacing without needing adjustment. And the dark water in the center was calm, low, as if the ocean were a lake, windless at dusk.

Reverend Graham Otter, standing at the circle's base with his back to the shore, glanced around him once before slipping off his jacket, his black cassock and white collar in startling contrast. He folded his hands at his waist in an attitude of waiting. A moment later he nodded. Lilla rose, turned to face him. Colin followed, watching as the rest of the congregation moved to its feet. There was no struggling for balance, no ripples, no splashes; the boats were still, as were the people in them.

Colin was nervous. Though he assumed he had performed his part well thus far, he suddenly decided this wasn't fair at all. It was his first island funeral, and he should be in one of the other boats, observing, learning, trying to feel the solace that obviously affected the others. But somehow, without his knowing it, he'd been chosen pallbearer, Charon, and God only knew what else. It wasn't fair; he didn't like it; suddenly he turned his head away, blinking aside the flaring afterimage of a match the minister had struck against the shaft of a torch he'd taken from his boat. The cleric held up the flame until it nearly scorched his fingers before bringing it to the cloth soaked almost a day in treated oil. Blue fire, red, spiraled upward and twisted about itself as though it could be bound. Then he handed the torch to the man in the boat beside his, who lit his own torch and passed the first on around the circle until it reached Lilla. She held it close to her face, but Colin could only see the flames rising above her head. When her pause lengthened to a full minute, he thought she would douse it and he swallowed his relief when she finally passed it to her neighbor.

Once it had reached full circle, all the torches were placed in gleaming brass brackets bolted to the sterns. They burned low, with an incessant crackling like dry wood, dark smoke in dark curls rising far above the dark surface.

Blue fire, and red, and pale faces reflecting.

The breakers were muted; no lights on the shore.

The fog began crawling between the boats to the still water.

"Gran," Reverend Otter said then. "Gran, it's time."

Colin saw Lilla's back grow rigid, and he braced himself to grab her in case she changed her mind again. But when she only brought her hands up to take hold of her upper arms he relaxed and tried to listen to what the minister was saying. But he couldn't. He couldn't take his gaze away from the shrouded body, from Lilla's back, from the fingers of fog slipping over the sides.

Reverend Otter droned on; there was a hymn softly sung; yet Colin couldn't help feeling that the others were just as uneasy as he. Garve had told him stories-as had Peg and Annalee, and even Bob Cameron-the highlights of which dealt with the joy of the songs that rose above the sea, the genuine belief there was a better world farther on. That feeling was absent now. And he saw signs of impatient shifting- knees bending and locking, arms swinging, heads nodding.

They want to be gone, he thought, and not just because of Gran.

Then he saw Lilla bend her head for a moment, and realized the reverend had stopped his preaching. Colin waited, wondering if there was something he was supposed to do and cursing Garve for not telling him, staring when Lilla suddenly knelt beside her grandfather and kissed the shroud where his mouth would have been. A slight gesture behind her to keep him where he was, and she slipped her hands under the body, her expression set and her mouth slightly parted. She lifted, shifted, held the dead man against her chest and whispered something to him. Colin strained but couldn't hear her. Then she turned to face the cleric and let the gray bundle slide from her hands into the water, effortlessly, soundlessly, as if it were little more than air.

And despite the weight lashed about its feet, the body floated for several long seconds. Turning through the lacing of fog without disturbing it, sweeping in a complete circle like a compass seeking its direction… until it stopped in front of Lilla.

Then nothing moved but the fog.

Finally, the shroud began sinking, slipping smoothly into the black ocean without leaving a ripple behind. Instantly, it was over, and beginning with Otter the torches were thrown after the body until only Lilla's remained.

And when she suddenly whirled around, he ducked instinctively as she hurled the torch as far as she could toward the horizon. He had no idea why, but he knew what she'd done was wrong. Yet she only turned around to wait for him to row her back to shore.

Matt knew Mom was restless, and suspected she might come up to join him. She'd like the movie, too-

James Bond again in The Man with the Golden Gun. It wasn't so much the shooting and the fights he liked in this one, but the co-star, Christopher Lee, who he knew in real life was Count Dracula. It made the dialogue silly, and sometimes had him giggling hard into his pillow.

When it was obvious she wasn't coming, he slipped off the mattress and wandered around the small room for a minute or two before returning to the bed. There were papers scattered over the quilt from his sketch pad, a handful of felt-tip pens, and a notebook he used to keep track of his drawings. On the walls were a number of pastels he'd done this past summer, taped and tacked and pinned to the white plaster; in the far corner next to the curtained window was an easel that straddled a palette and a case of oils he hadn't yet had the nerve to use; on a single shelf over his bed were two wood carvings that were supposed to be seals but he knew they looked like something no seal ever did; and on the desk were his schoolbooks, already belted together for grabbing in the morning.

He pushed the papers aside and sat, ignoring the flickering from the portable television on the desk. His head shook in dismay. All night he'd been trying to capture the sand castle, and every one of his efforts was a dismal, amateurish failure.

"Nuts, goddamn," he said, and swept the papers to the floor. It was something he hadn't learned yet that was keeping him from doing it right, something he would have to ask Colin about the next time he came to class.

He stretched out, cupped his hands beneath his head, and wondered, not for the first time, if there was something wrong with him inside. Colin had said no, and so had his mother, but if that were true why wasn't his room like anyone else's? There were no pennants on the walls, no cowboy guns in the closet, no footballs or baseballs or an outfielder's mitt. Tommy Fox even had pictures of naked women hidden under his mattress, and he was Matt's age.

But nobody, not anybody put the pictures they drew in school on display in their rooms.

And they definitely hated going to museums-except of course, for the one in New York that had all the dinosaur bones in it, and the stuffed elephants and lions.

No matter what his mother said, he knew he was different. He had to be. And he hated it, hated it a lot. Like when Gran had shown him how to carve things with a knife; he'd done it, done okay for someone who didn't know what he was doing, and it was neat to see how Gran smiled at him in a way he knew no one else got-except maybe Lilla. But the other kids thought it was silly, making things from dead wood. Hated it, like today when the other guys kept poking fun at him while they were building the castle. He didn't say anything to Mr. Ross, but they'd been doing it all afternoon, and even though he was nearly ten he'd almost cried-until Mr. Ross came along and made everything okay.

He remembered the day this past summer that he had told Mr. Ross about, the day with Gran at the luncheonette. There was something funny about the old man's breath that made his nose wrinkle, but Gran was telling him how he used to be a great prince in the island country he came from, and how he bossed everyone around and no one dared laugh at him for being different.

"Good times," Gran had said, picking at his nails with the point of his knife. "They the good days, when I was a young man and had all my teeth." He laughed and slapped his knee. "I tell you, boy, you go with me when I go back and we be king together."

Matt's eyes had nearly popped he opened them so wide. "Yeah? Really?"

Gran had smiled, the true smile he saved for Matt and Lilla. "Oh yes, boy, you believe old Gran when he tell you this is true. Some people here, they don't believe old Gran, but they don't know anything, not these people. They don't know nothing at all what it is like when you be king."

"A bunch of sunburned people in shorts had walked by then, had looked at them, and Matt had heard one of them say "nigger."

Gran heard it too. The knife was jabbed deep into the bench.

"They're stupid, Gran," he'd said quickly, wanting to chase them and give them a karate chop, just like James Bond.

But Gran had put a hard hand on his leg to hold him down, and it was a long time before he spoke again.

"Stupid, yes. But they"-and he waved a hand to include the whole island-" hurt you too. I know. They got no imagination, but I know what you got in here." A bony finger thumped the side of his head, keeping Matt from asking how he knew when no one else did. "We be kings together, okay? Okay?"

Matt agreed readily, and they laughed together. He'd wished he really were a king so he could do something about people who hurt other people. For real, not like in the movies. He wasn't sure, but he thought he'd even kill someone before they could hurt his mother and his teacher, maybe even before they could hurt Lilla. He wasn't sure. But he thought so. If he were a king like Gran said he could be.

But Gran had turned strange, would talk to no one but Lilla, and he guessed the old man was crazy after all.

He shivered and looked over to the window, and wrinkled his nose when he saw the bottom sash still raised. Too cold for that, for sure. On the other hand, if he closed it he wouldn't hear Lilla's singing-if, that is, she sang again tonight. It had been going on for almost a week, and though it spooked his mother, he kind of liked it. One night it would sound like it was coming from the cliffs, and the next it would be coming from the woods on the north shore by Fox's Marina. The night wind took it all over the place. It was sad and it was fast and sometimes it was so lonely sounding he couldn't stand it and wanted to crawl into bed with his mother. She wouldn't let him, though. So he had to stay by the window and look at the backyard and wait until Lilla was happy again.

Pretty, sometimes, in a way he didn't quite understand, but also very spooky. Yes, he supposed it really was about as spooky as you could get.

Especially when it sounded as if he were listening to Gran telling him what it would be like to be king.

But Gran was dead, and now there were only two who didn't think it was so awful and terrible to be different from the rest.

Two, because you didn't count Lilla; ever since Gran died she was too spooky.

Suddenly he didn't want to hear the singing anymore, so he hurried to the window and slammed the sash down, took off his clothes and squirmed under the sheet and quilt. He got up again with a groan and turned off the TV and the lamp, then listened at the door to see if he could hear his mother moving around down there. It was silent and he got into bed.

When his eyes closed he saw a bundle of gray being dropped into the water. Gran. Gran was being buried right while he lay there. Stuck under the water where all the fish could get at him. And Matt couldn't decide which was worse: being eaten by fish or being eaten by worms. Some fish had teeth, but worms made holes; fish took little bites, but worms made holes; some fish could take you in two or three gulps, but worms…

He sat upright, blinked, fumbled for the lamp and squinted away from the light as he checked his hands and arms. No holes. He wasn't dead. And he decided right then that he wouldn't die at all. That way, neither the fish nor the worms would be able to get him.

He relaxed and checked the window; unease returned, and he lay back, pulling the quilt to his chin and turning his face to the door.

There was fog out there.

Vaguely illuminated by the light from the kitchen below, it masked the woods and ran rivulets down the pane, pulsed in the breeze as though it were breathing. That was all Lilla's fault. He didn't think anyone had noticed, but he had: All the time Lilla had been singing those dumb, spooky songs, there'd been no fog at all. But tonight, when she was quiet, out there putting old Gran into the ocean for all the fish to eat him, the fog had come back. As if she'd been calling it, and it had taken all this time to get here.

Nuts, he thought. Goddamn… goddamn.

In the raised saltbox house on Atlantic Terrace, three in from Bridge Road, Peg Fletcher saw a car drift grayly past the window and knew the funeral was over. She closed her book and went to the front door, opened it, and couldn't believe what she was hearing-

Lilla singing.

Matt Fletcher tossed and turned in his sleep, fat red worms slithering through his dreams, huge black fish swimming through his nightmares, all of them driven-

By Lilla singing.

Colin accepted a ride back from Garve, got out at the police station and nearly broke into a run in his hurry to get home. Lilla had refused to go to the house two doors down from Peg's, and demanded she be permitted to stay at Gran's shack for one more night. He hadn't argued, no one had. Now all he wanted was to get in bed in order to hurry the dawn.

The wind was strong, and he could feel the spider-touch of mist that preceded the rain. Not the Screamer, Garve had assured him, just a quick storm, nothing more. With shoulders hunched and head down, he began a slow trot, and before he reached the cottage he remembered his promise to call Peg. He smiled ruefully. It would have been nicer to go directly to her place, but he didn't think he'd be good company tonight.

Then he stopped, half turned, and listened.

The wind, he told himself hastily as he hurried up the steps and fumbled for his key; it's only the wind. Gran is dead. She's there in his damned shack.

But as the door swung inward he realized he was listening to Lilla's distant singing.

FOUR

Within an hour after the funeral a wind broke from the mainland forest as if it had been lurking there, waiting for its moment. It rocked the ferry at its mooring and sent Wally into the small hut to the left of the landing. He would have opened the single window overlooking the bay, but there was something about the trees' sighing he didn't like-a subliminal wailing, and a distant acrid odor he usually associated with an abnormally low tide, with dead fish and mudflats and the fresh rot of things dredged up from the bottom.

He stoked the wood stove, shrugged into his worn pea coat, and sat in the chipped Boston rocker in the corner. There was a cot and a blanket beside him, but he made no move to lie down, the temptation of sleep long banished by his nerves. Instead, after lighting a bitter pipe he hadn't cleaned in weeks, he flipped through worn magazines whose words blurred before his one good eye, whose photographs of nude women smeared as if the eye were weeping.

The wind skimmed over the water, raising white-caps in its wake, coasting over the island and shredding the fog. There were thick night clouds looming overhead, blotting out the stars. The tidal swells hunched and the breakers grew more insistent, slamming into the jetties to form walls of brief gray. The caves that pocked the cliffs added deep-throated howls to the keening overhead.

The boats at the marina scraped against their docks; branches scraped against windows; the amber light on Neptune Avenue flared once, and went out.

The ocean was cold, nearly as cold as it was dark, and Lilla felt her flesh tightening as if she had been suddenly encased in stiff, cracking leather. She was naked, and she had begun to wish she had worn something to warm her, but there had been very little time to pick and choose among her wardrobe-most of it she kept in the house on Atlantic Terrace, and the few pieces left were in a trunk in the shack.

Besides, she thought, the clothes would be a hindrance, and right now she needed all the freedom she could get.

After Colin had reluctantly left her at the door, clearly not believing her assertion she was fine; after Reverend Otter had paid his condolences and commented on the service; after Garve and the others had drifted silently off the beach, she had sat on the floor, cross-legged and waiting. Patiently at first, until the wind began to blow; then fidgeting, drumming her fingers hard on her thighs, rocking on her buttocks, humming to herself until she thought it was midnight.

Hang on, Gran. Hang on, hang on.

She sat, humming and rocking, and every few moments blinking her eyes slowly as if vaguely aware of a distant beckoning light just below the horizon. A light that stirred memories, a light that had her frightened.

Once she shook her head violently and leapt to her feet. She stared about her in helpless panic. This is wrong, she thought (the light flaring for a moment). This was all wrong and she was condemning herself to the worst kind of hell if she… if she… (the light flickered)… if… (the light died)… she sighed, closed her eyes, a spectral smile on her lips. A smile that lasted until she opened the shack's door.

Hang on, Gran, I'll be singing you soon. Hang on, hang on, don't leave me, don't leave.

She stumbled down off the flat and raced up the beach, vaulting the snow fence as if it were only a foot high-, landing lightly on hands and knees in a dark spray of sand. A scramble for balance, and she was running again. No attention was paid to the wind now, or to the waves that hissed angrily toward the woods. She was dimly aware the moon and stars were gone, and just as dimly heard the distant blare of a car's horn.

The beach narrowed, became rocky, and the trees stalked the waterline. She slowed and moved into the shadows, picking her way cautiously through dank shallow pools and across long stretches of mossy rocks, dead leaves, and sodden needle carpets. Her hands shoved aside branches, her face ducked away from sharp twigs, and she felt nothing at all when a wide thicket she plunged through tore gaps in her dress. Her hair matted and snarled. Cracks spread across the heels and soles of her bare feet. And finally she bent forward into a partial crouch and slipped past stiff shrubs to the edge of the manna's reach.

To her left, on the other side of a crushed-gravel driveway, was a sturdy, three-story white house topped by a widow's walk and girdled by a closed-in porch. A station wagon and red jeep were parked in its shadow. A wide, well-kept lawn spread down to the water, illuminated in silver by spotlights bolted to tall poles at the end of each dock. All the boats, including the trawler, were there rocking against the nudging of the wind, dull thumps soft in the night air as used-tire buffers caught the hulls and eased them back.

On this side of the drive, in line with her left shoulder, was a huge, gray, barn-like structure that served as Alex Fox's workhouse, starkly outlined by glaring lights in the eaves.

She waited, squatting on her heels.

Then, on command of a timer Fox kept in his kitchen, the lights snapped out, one by one in rapid sequence, the black vacuum filled by a photo negative afterimage that blinded her for several moments. Once her vision cleared, however, she was out of the trees and running, hitting the nearest dock as quietly as she could and darting out to the end. A rowboat moored at bow and stern rose and fell with the rising wind.

She thought nothing, planned nothing. Her hands untied the ropes, her right foot pushed the boat off, and the oars were slipped expertly into their locks without a sound. She had almost turned the craft around when she realized what she was missing. She maneuvered back to the dock, tied up the bow and ran for the workhouse. The tall double doors were unlocked and slightly ajar. A swift glance at the house, and she ghosted inside. Though she barked her shins several times against obstacles invisible in the dark, it didn't take her fingers long to locate the shelving she knew was there, and to close around a gaff and a waterproof flashlight.

Once outside, she paused and stared up the drive, marking the place where the gravel became blacktop and started Neptune Avenue. The amber light was out. The Anchor's neon was blind. For all the movement she saw then she could have been the island's only inhabitant. Not even a leaf was stirred by the wind.

In half an hour, arms protesting and back dully aching, she reached the burial place. The water was cold, her flesh tight as cracked leather.

Now she was below the surface, and there were creatures of the night sea she had forgotten or had not known. They swarmed about her like black shadow lightning, taunting, teasing, darting nips and nibbles at her legs while she fought to keep air in her already straining lungs. Four times since she'd arrived she had slipped out of the rowboat, four times using the rough anchor chain to guide her as she pulled her way down; and four times she had failed, embattled, the cold too much and the air bubbling up and out in reluctant spreading streams, preceding her to the top where she clung wearily to the bow and spit, coughed, felt the salt stinging her reddening eyes and the cuts on her feet.

Her teeth chattered uncontrollably, though she no longer felt the water droplets on her face.

Her hair pulled at her scalp, as if trying to work loose.

On the fifth drive she nearly failed to locate the chain again, and the flashlight gained unconscionable weight.

On the sixth dive, as she sobbed silent fear and anger in equal frustration, she was lucky.

The shrouded corpse lay on the uneven bottom between two low ridges of tide-gouged sand; the feet were half buried by the weight inside, the torso and head canted upward and drifting in the slow-moving current. The pale beam darted over it, passed it, returned and held. Shapeless, yet unmistakable, the light giving it a gray aura that shaded out to black.

Lilla grinned and wanted to laugh, tasted salt water instead and returned flailing to the boat, breaking the rolling surface with a sound like a bark. She clambered over the side and lay panting on the boat's bottom, staring at the sky. Resting. Grinning. A dark strand of kelp burrowed into her hair, and pearls of water shivering across the bridge of her nose, in circlets around her breasts.

"I told you, Gran," she whispered. "I told you. I told you."

She hummed snatches of several tunes, all of them Gran's, and her left hand beat time on the planks while her right used the flashlight like a bloated baton. Her thighs quivered. Her stomach pushed out, caved in.

Hummed the old songs she had sung in the shack.

"Told you, Gran. Told you to trust me."

She giggled suddenly, and covered her mouth.

The cold rushed through her in spasms, and she made herself rigid to drive them away.

A cramp uncoiled in her right foot, and she jabbed out her heel until the pain subsided and died.

Then, over the humming, she heard the thunder coming at her from the mainland. Her head shook in outraged dismay; not now, no, not now, not now. She had found him. She had run the length of Haven's End and had stolen a boat and had rowed right to the spot and she had found him. She knew where Gran was, and now she wanted to rest. The thunder gave her answer. She sighed a weak protest, and saw lightning beyond the trees.

"All right," she muttered. "All right, damn it, all right."

She picked up a gaff with thick roping knotted at its looped end and dropped back into the ocean before the storm changed her mind. Unerringly, she swam directly down to the shroud and plunged the rusted hook into the upper end. She tugged at it repeatedly, as hard as she could to be sure it would hold, then retreated once more to the boat and the air. She lay there for a moment, her breath in shallow gulps, before scrambling around to her knees and taking hold of the rope. A shuddering inhalation, a murmured prayer, a mirthless smile… and she began to haul Gran in, feeling her palms sting and burn as she pulled slowly, slowly, hand over hand, bracing her knees on the coils building on the bottom, every few moments glancing over her shoulder to the shore to check for lights.

Hand over hand until Gran was beside her and she could sag against the rear seat, gasping and weeping, cooling her hurt palms against her stomach, her breasts.

She paid no heed to the thunder now, felt nothing but the sea swell beneath the keel and tip her gently, side to side.

"It's going to be all right now, Gran," she said five minutes later, taking up the oars and heading for the beach. "You're going to be all right now. I told you not to worry, didn't I? You got to trust your Lilla, Gran. You don't have to worry now. I've got you. I've got you."

In less than two hours the boat was returned, and the gaff, and the flashlight, and the night was still black.

Lilla sang.

(the dimlight flared and she almost screamed, but a darksoft whispering insinuated itself between the scream and the glare, a whispering that became the fog that comforted her again)

Slowly, she backed out of the shack, her nearly blind gaze on the shimmering glow in the other room. She could see the foot of the bed, she could see Gran's feet, and she could still hear the singing that lingered after she was done.

She walked away from Gran's house without once looking back, making her way stiffly over the dunes to Surf Court. She paid no attention to the looming houses and their yellow porch lights, to the cars in the driveways, to the trembling streetlamps. She showed neither haste nor purpose, as she walked down the road to Neptune Avenue, turned right and followed the broken white line past Tess Mayfair's dark-windowed boarding house, past the Rising Sun and the Seaview, and into the mile-long stretch of unbroken woodland. She did not feel the damp tarmac under her feet, nor the wind pushing hard at her hair.

A gray haze in the distance, the streetlights of the town, but she cocked her head to one side and knew she wouldn't have to go quite that far. There was a dark lump on the verge fifty yards ahead, and when a vicious gust passed over it, it squirmed and tried to crawl.

Lightning reached out to drag thunder after. Lilla smiled, and kept walking.

The figure shifted again, a shifting shadow against shadows, and finally stirred itself to standing.

Lilla stopped, but kept smiling.

"Warren," she said, her voice clear despite the howling wind. "Warren, you weren't at the funeral."

Harcourt passed a weary hand over his eyes and peered into the darkness, his mouth opening slightly when lightning showed him the speaker. "Lilla!" He tried to straighten his spine, his lapels, reached up for his hat and froze when he discovered it wasn't on his head. He stammered and managed an apologetic smile, became suddenly aware that his feet were still bare. "Lilla-"

She faced him. "You weren't at the funeral." Not an accusation; a simple fact.

"I am… was as you see me," he told her, wincing as the storm moved from howls to shrieks. He moved closer, to be heard. "I could not disgrace you."

"You wouldn't have."

"But I would," he insisted, wounded dignity in his eyes. "I would." Then he glanced up the road, back the way she had come. "It's over, then."

"It has been, for hours. Warren, we missed you, Gran and I."

He waved away her kindness. "He's in the sea, then?" She nodded.

"He let you do it?" He was astounded and relieved.

She reached out to touch him, and even through the topcoat he could feel her cold grip. "Gran is dead, Warren. Now he's buried the way they wanted." Closer, almost touching. "I don't think I want to stay in his house tonight."

Harcourt's expression was befuddled as he attempted to sweep aside the alcoholic fog he carried with him. When her hands moved to the back of his neck, when his skin felt her fingers idly twirling the ends of his hair, he tried not to shudder. She was bereft, he reminded himself; now she wants to go home. But he almost wept when he realized he couldn't remember where she lived.

"Atlantic Terrace," she whispered, as if reading his mind. "Just down from Peg Fletcher's, you know that. It's late. I'm a little frightened with all this," and she looked skyward, back to his eyes.

A slow and deep breath to steady himself, and he nodded. "I quite understand, Lilla. If you need someone to accompany you, you only have to say the word. I am always at your service, as you know."

She dropped her hand to his elbow and smiled at him broadly. "You'll be a gentleman?"

Offended, he almost drew away. "Always, Lilla. Surely you know that."

She giggled softly, kissed his cheek, pressed her forehead to his chin. Her voice was muffled. "You and I, Warren, we're alone on this island now. The others, they think they know what we go through, but they don't. Not really. They feel sorry for us, but they don't care." She looked up at him. "Do they care?"

He wanted to say yes, and knew instantly it was a lie.

"You see?" she said.

The wind was a hint of winter, and before he knew it he had his arms around her, drawing her into the warmth of his coat. So small, he thought. He hadn't realized how small she was, the girl-woman, the child. So small, and so soft; he startled himself by feeling things he had thought were long dead. One hand slipped down to the slope of her buttocks, the other into her hair.

They kissed.

Soft, he thought while her tongue searched for his. Soft. So soft.

He felt her trembling against him, and wanted to open his coat so he could feel her stomach and breasts and the ridge of her hips. But to open the coat would mean breaking the embrace, and it had been so long, so terribly long… so he hugged her instead and closed his eyes at the low groan that warmed the side of his neck.

"Are you shocked, Warren?" she asked softly.

He shook his head once. "It is a trying time for you, Lilla. Solace, comfort, it's what you need, what you deserve."

"Are you sober?" she asked then, and he almost laughed aloud.

"I would say, my dear, that I am about as sober now as I have been for years. That isn't saying much, I grant you, but it's the best you'll get tonight."

They clung beneath the wind and the lightning, against the battering of dead leaves, against the dust devils that leapt from the verge to the road.

She kissed him again, gently, not insisting, and when she lay her head tenderly on his chest he felt a thrumming through his clothes. He frowned for a long moment until he realized she was singing. Very quietly, virtually unheard as the wind brought the first rain. Then a connection was made, and he remembered El Nichols pushing him down the road, remembered turning around, remembered Lilla's night songs.

"Warren," she whispered, "are you alive?"

There was more than the night cold now working down his back. He pushed her away, but she held onto his arms.

"Alive?" she asked again.

"Of course," he snapped, trying to pry loose her grasp.

She smiled, and in a sudden blue-white flare he saw her eyes, the death there, and would not believe it. Nor could he believe the power in her hands.

He could think of nothing else to say but, "That singing…"

"You know the words?" she said, turning her head to see him sideways.

"I have had French, yes, and I've traveled a bit in my time."

"Warren-"

"And I am just drunk enough to be glad he's in the ocean."

"Oh, Warren," she said, shaking her head slowly. "Oh, Warren, dear Warren, he's not there, he's behind you."

A gnarled black hand from the dark grabbed his shoulder, and as he whirled to look behind, the razor she held measured the length of his exposed neck.

Then she left him upright in the shadows and walked back to the shack.

Hearing nothing but the wind, and her singing, and something behind her, drinking.