Desolate Earth, Stable Moon, Desolate Sea
The fox hides in its den. It must not reveal itself until the danger passes. It will not want for food.
Flipping further through in the text, I saw one that seemed appropriate:
Vibrant Moon, Desolate Moon, Stable Sea
Beneath the water, the eye watches the stars. When the mistress calls, it will make itself known.
As I turned the remaining pages, I was once again struck by a vague sense of recognition, though I couldn’t place it. As I examined each entry, a whisper of meaning drifted past me, but expired before I could catch on to anything. I closed the book.
Standing there, I felt a nagging sensation in the pit of my stomach. Something wasn’t right. Something my body knew but my mind did not. Again, I picked up the photo. The hands, was there some clue for me there?
After examining the hands closely, I came to the conclusion that they were unrecognizable and bore no distinctive features. But then something in the background did catch my eye. A young woman dressed as a maid, head bowed, ducking out of the room.
“What?” I whispered as I peered down at the photo, trying to get a better look at the face. “No, it’s not possible.”
I felt like I’d been kicked in the gut. The woman in the photo, this anonymous maid ducking out of view, I knew her. It was my cousin, Paloma.
My heart beat so loudly that it was almost deafening. Paloma had been here? A wave of cold settled over me as the world seemed to turn upside down. Paloma had been in Colorado? When could she possibly have been here? Discordant emotions and realities clashed into one another and seemed to coalesce in my heart, which had begun to beat wildly out of control. Unable to put a name to the kind of fear I felt, I decided the smartest thing to do was to get the hell out of there. In a panic, I realized I couldn’t take the book and the photo with me, because I needed to swim. I would just have to return for them later. Still shaking, I put everything back as I’d found it and closed and locked the front door.
After leaving the little office, I started back the way I’d come, but when I got to the marble pillar, I felt an odd pull to it. I walked through the plants toward it, and when I reached it, once again I hoisted myself up to sit on it. From my perch, I looked out over the trees and couldn’t fight the sinking feeling that something terrible had happened here.
Again, something caught my eye, something in the dirt, down at the base of the plants. I hopped down from the pillar and hurried over to it, pushing aside the foliage. There was something down there. As carefully as I could, I dug down until I had a clear view into the dirt. Suddenly I hit it.
