Colette had moved in with Sidonie to love her and be loved in return. In view of the certain transience of her love, she felt whole for the first time in her life. It was all there. It had always been there, but she hadn’t noticed: a love of women.

The second week after she had moved in, Sidonie asked her to take her to the stones she had always longed to touch. Stonehenge, the wandering stones of Death Valley, the magical palaces of Malta and the altar stones of Palestine. Her doctor forbade her to travel. Colette flew into a rage and implored him, but he stood firm, warning of a premature death from exhaustion, and she fell silent.

Everything had been in a state of flux recently, as if the steady maelstrom of the passing days had intensified its fateful blows in an attempt to catch up on something that could no longer be reeled in—the past.

Though summer was all around, bathing the August days in Finistère in dazzling light, and the numbers of tourists were growing from day to day, their lives settled into a new pattern.

When Marianne wasn’t working at the guesthouse or for the Goichons, she got up before dawn to play the accordion beside the sea and listen to the sound of the waves spilling their secrets to her—secrets that were older than the standing stones. On her days and evenings off she would meet up with Yann, and they would visit Sidonie and Colette as often as they could. The sculptress found peace in Marianne’s embrace. Marianne told her what the sea, and its queen, Nimue, had whispered to her during their private conversations. It had said that death and life were like water. Nothing was lost. Their spirits would flow through the other world and find a new receptacle in another place and another time. A decanting of souls. She never knew she could hear the sea. But it turned out that all she had to do was listen.

Then, one afternoon, Colette and Sidonie were gone. A week later, Colette rang from Malta. “After all, it’s life that carries the greatest risk of death, so wouldn’t it better to do some living first?”

Having simply upped and left, they had spent a few days in Paris with Sidonie’s children in the knowledge that they would never see each other again. Sidonie had insisted on this leave-taking: her children were not to watch her die. She wanted to tell them how much she loved them and how proud of them she was, and they threw a three-day party before setting out on their travels to see the world’s most beautiful stones.