He passes merchants with their carts, boys with deliveries, an old woman leading a donkey on a rope. All of them whirling about him as he runs.
For a gasping moment, he sees not the tumult in the street around him, but a different street entirely, one that wound its way near to the blue crash of sea, to where the fishing boats docked, where poor children gathered shellfish to fill the bellies of their families. Down that street runs a woman, her cloud-white hair snarling in the wind of her swiftness, one hand pressed to her narrow chest, as if to keep her heart from beating through the bone. All the way down to the beach she runs, her feet sinking into the black sand where, sometime earlier, the footprints of a boy were swept away by the same tide that swept him away from her forever in a pirate ship. She calls his name, hands cupped around her mouth so the sound will carry. She calls until her voice is hoarse, her throat aching. Up and down the beach, stopping the fishermen as they return for the night, nets filled. Begging for news.
She spies a pair of shoes and caves into herself there, her knees giving out. She sits, awkward, upon the rock into which the boy used to tuck himself, where he listened to the calling seabirds and the rhythm of the water. She finds the bag beside him, the bag she wove with her own cramped fingers. Inside, she finds shells, just perfect for stringing into necklaces, for a moment lying white and black and iridescent against the lines of her palm until she flings them from her with a wild, torn cry. They patter into the sea, return to the water, as water washes the woman’s face, as she keens her grief in a forbidden tongue.
Petrus’s chest cracks and he lets out a desperate sound of his own. And then—he sees her, Antoinette—and for a moment it is as if he is viewing a painting. A woman, perhaps a little younger than he, bending toward his child; Antoinette looking up into the woman’s face, her own face tear-wet. The woman’s fingers around Antoinette’s wrist, the gentle tugging of them, and his daughter following, docile and trusting as a pony on a lead.
Petrus is barreling through the street toward them before he knew he meant to move, running with the swift urgency of a dog on a scent, his body recognizing the danger in the moment before his head had managed to catch on. He has grabbed Antoinette about her middle before either she or the woman holding her wrist had noticed him coming, half-lifting her from her feet so that she yelps. Then she looks back, sees that it is her Papa holding her, and twists so that she can catch Petrus around his neck with her free hand, wildly sobbing, fingers scrabbling to find purchase.
Petrus, bent in half, clutches her, and he looks up at the woman, who still holds his daughter’s wrist, who is looking back at him as if he is one of her nightmares come to life. For once, he is grateful to be seen as a wild man—a single low, throbbing growl of his voice, and she has dropped Antoinette, has backed away, has begun to run.
And his daughter wraps her other arm now around his neck, buries her face in the hollow between his neck and shoulder, wets his collar with her tears. “I want Pierre, where is Pierre?” she cries, and he says, “I am here, my littlest love, I am here.”