“She’s got it in her head that yer her mother,” Clay says, nodding at her asleep at my feet on the front porch.
“Maybe she’s an indoor sheep, and we should let her live inside.”
Clay balks, smiling a little. “I suspect ye’d have her eating at the kitchen table if I turned my back.”
I smile up at him, not denying it.
The days slip by like sand in the wind.
The hours impossible to count.
Clay makes endless repairs across the island: a shed door with a broken hinge, a window no longer sliding up in its frame. One morning I even hear him up on the roof of the house, repairing a patch of missing shingles from the last storm. “You’ll fall,” I call up to him as the wind rips across the eaves of the roof.
But he lowers himself down to the ground easily, as agile as a feline, lips tugging into a half smile—a boyish grin that I’ve started to notice in recent days. One he hid from me early on. “Haven’t fallen yet,” he replies, pushing the sleeves of his shirt up to his elbows. He tips his eyes at me, a wildness in him, a fearlessness that comes from living at the very edge of the world.
He turns toward the barn, and I watch him stride away through the soft rain.
I find myself existing within a life I never imagined. One that feels both terrifying and foreign, and yet at times like something I’ve always known. Or maybe even craved—in some basement part of myself. The simplicity, the hardness of daily chores—the exhaustion at the end of the day, the aching muscles that I never felt back home, even after a long run through the Seattle streets. This tiredness is something else, not purely physical, but chemical. A fatigue that can only be described as beautiful. Whole and absolute.
I sleep now each night as if I’ve never really slept a day before this. A restfulness that feels childlike, something from a storybook: She slept so deeply that even the wolves could not wake her. And when she finally rose with the sun, she was restored to who she was always meant to be. It’s the kind of sleep that I won’t be able to describe once I’m back in the real world. There are no words for it. Unless you’ve felt it, unless you’ve been pulled into your dreams like sinking below a waterline.
In the greenhouse, I harvest corn and tomatoes and sweet peas.Along the outer wall of the greenhouse grows an unruly blueberry bush, and beyond it, a small orchard of green apple and Anjou pear trees, their branches trimmed and manicured—the fruit nearly ready to be harvested. Beside the stone wall that leads to the barn, where a wheelbarrow is tipped on its side, an overgrown strawberry bush has tangled around a snap pea vine.
I learn nearly every corner and hedge and shadow of the island. It becomes so familiar that I begin dreaming about it at night.
The pace here is slow.
Every task and chore is done with meaning and purpose. Nothing wasted. Nothing overlooked. I begin seeing the world differently, moving differently, even my own hands feel changed—skillfully pulling carrots and onions up from the soil, washing bed linens in the metal basin by the back door with a bar of sheep’s milk soap. I skip over the wet rocks at the shore, deft and precise, collecting the crabs and oysters and fish that Clay pulls from the sea, carrying them back to the house to be cleaned. These things that would have made me cringe in my life back home now feel like second nature.
Out here, it’s survival.
If Clay loses a crop, if his chickens die off, he’s in trouble.
But he’s also resourceful. He nurtures every plant in the garden, touching the leaves with care and devotion, as if they were a woman. Even the cellar is lined with glass jars filled with jams and pickled vegetables. He tells me that he’ll show me how to make preserves at the next harvest. I smile at the thought of learning something new—though quietly, I hope I won’t still be here by then.
I busy myself with chores, I help where I can. I fill the time so my mind won’t dig too deep into the darkness of what-if. And always, always, I keep my eyes on the horizon.
The young lamb loses interest in me, stops following me from the barn. She realized that her own mom is the true source of food. I was just a curiosity. I feel a pang of sadness at first, longing for the company,but I know it’s better that I don’t get attached. Better if I don’t have something to miss when I finally leave.
Seated at the kitchen table, sipping tea just after sunrise, I think about the little coffee shop four blocks from my house. A tiny brick building with only three tables crowded along the sidewalk. The coffee was overpriced, but on weekends I’d stroll down, order a latte and a cranberry scone, then sit alone watching the people moving past, the dogs happily tugging on leashes, the kids skipping by, the lovers hand in hand—savoring the slowness of an early Saturday morning. I’d stay until another customer would begin hovering over my table, waiting for me to leave, then I’d walk home—usually in the rain—my umbrella shedding every drop, the air tasting more alive in my lungs.
Now I stare down at my lemon balm tea, craving a stiff cup of coffee, or a pinch of sugar. Some remnant of home. Something decadent to satisfy my longing.
I feel Clay watching me and he places his mug on the table, then stands up, walking to the kitchen sink. He retrieves an empty mason jar from the shelf, and one of the sharp knives from the drawer. “Follow me.”
My eyebrows crunch together. “Where?”
“I may not know every thought that passes through a woman’s mind, but I think I know what yer wantin’ now.”
I almost smile, but rise and follow him into the damp morning.
He leads me to the far side of the island, beyond the grove of slender birch trees—their bark curling like paper—past the grave marker, where wild lavender, yarrow, and stonecrop cover the ground. I haven’t explored this remote section of the island—there’s nothing here, mostly rocks and shrubs, no chores to be done. And I haven’t wanted to venture near the burial ground, a place that feels like his. Not to be disturbed. A reminder of what he’s lost.
But we pick our way through the overgrown terrain, and when we round a stand of rocks, almost to the sea, I see a wooden structure, low to the ground. And I hear the sound.
Bees.
I look to Clay, and he nods.
