Sing us the song of a girl lost to sea,
Who was she, that fair lass, to me?
Bidding farewell, ’twas too much to bear.
She wouldn’t stay put, my lass—
Might she go looking for thee?
I am the girl. My rock is eroding beneath me and I’m about to be lost at sea. Would I go in search of myself? The song…it’s so familiar, but I cannot place it. Cannot see what’s around it, though it’s important.
I smell flowers—heather—lacy and floral andeverywhere,and I think of the man on the beach with the kind brown eyes, and of AJ. I shove up on the rock with my feet, but it’s wet and I inch down. There’s nothing to grab, nothing to anchor me.
A tap on the shoulder, and someone’s here—not Ansel, but the older man who was across the beach. “Good day to you,” he says, his eyes watchful as if he is trying to decide how to tell me something.
“Good day.” I smile. “What might I do for you, sir?”
He’s tall and gruff, but the harshness is worn around the edges. He smiles and it’s a sad smile. “Care for company, dear?”
I move over to give him space on the rock. Perhaps this is how things are done in Cornwall. He exhales, settling on theedge and leaning back. Then he tells me he’s visiting and asks if I am too. I tell him yes. It seems easiest.
He’s watching me, studying my face in between words exchanged. I cannot think why. The conversation is stilted until we begin talking about poetry and the enchantment of Cornwall. I ask what exactly has struck him about this place, still waiting for whatever it is he’s come to say to me. He sits back, staring over the crashing waves. “I met a lady here years ago, and back then I believed I’d found heaven on earth.” He shakes his head. “That was so long ago, though. I see it all differently now.”
“It’s us who changes, not the landscape.” I look over the hidden cove where my younger self likely ran about, clambering over rocks and splashing in the surf.
“You’ve visited before, have you?”
I watch his face. “I grew up at Dunn Cottage, actually, just up that hill, but I’ve not been back for some time. I know the melody of this place as if I’ve never left.”
He reveals nothing, but gives a firm nod. “Rather a magical place, isn’t it? I’m a rational man, but even I was charmed.”
“Did you marry her, then?”
He shoots me a quizzical look.
I smile, happily settling into someone else’s story for a moment. “I can read it upon your face. Your tragic love story.”
“Like a seer?”
I shrug. “Like an observer. You met someone here, and you fell in love.”
His eyes flick back and forth over my face. “Yes. Yes, I did marry her. Or a version of her, I suppose.”
“You see her with different eyes, then.” I know something about that. “Time does that.”
His eyebrows rise. “You’ve not the years to know of such things.”
“I’ve years enough to be wed.”
“And disillusioned, from the looks of it. I know that expression.” He leans over his knees. “Oh that the shifting shadow of Cornwall’s ghosts doth shape his memory, his vision of the lass with the long red hair. So unspoiled was she, so wild and free…”
Such beautiful words. His heart has clearly been broken…but by his wife? I glance down at my knees, still curled up close. “Did you find her much changed? This great love of yours?” I hold my breath, anxious for his answer.
“No,” he says simply. “I merely came to know more of her. The childish impetuousness, the demanding obstinacy. The deep, dark depression that was as intense as her happiness the moment before.” He pulls out his book, which is a half-filled journal, and he scribbles something, then stares off again to the sea. “But…she is also the bonny young lass, barefoot with wild red hair flying out behind her as she races her horse along the sand.”
Heat swirls in my midsection, cheeks flaming. How does one reconcile opposites within the same person? “You came here to remember that side of her, didn’t you? To fall under Cornwall’s spell again.”
A grunt and a nod. “I shall only think of her as I knew her here. That’s who she will be to me, and the rest…well, it hardly matters.”
