30.
Mrs. Ranier,” Elijah said, his voice paled by the sad strum of the sea. “What’re you doing out here all alone?” I opened my eyes and realized for the first time that the night had broken for a violet morning. On land the birds were chirping, bells were chiming. Hours must have passed since Gabriel dove beneath the water.
Elijah extended the oar from his boat into mine, to prevent me from drifting away. “Mrs. Ranier, you all right?”
My dress was still wet, frozen against my legs. Elijah leapt into the boat and wrapped me in his coat. I felt I should not speak, as speaking might wake me up. The awful dream would belong to the day; it would be real.
“Mrs. Ranier, come on now, say something.”
“My cousin Gabe—he went looking for something.” I shivered through the words.
“In the ocean? In the middle of the night?” Elijah asked. I nodded my head. “That boy don’t listen.”
“Blue and shining, he said. Like a kingdom down there,” I said. “He said he hadn’t been drinking.” The sun was suddenly high above us.
Elijah jumped out of the boat and swam around it, dipping down under the surface and up again.
“We’ll do a search,” Elijah said once he returned to the boat, lifting himself into it with one motion. “We might still find the body.”
“The body?” I screamed. Gabriel could not be dead. Death was not the end of his story.
“I’m sorry, ma’am,” he replied. “Mr. Gabe went looking too deep.”
Then Elijah was gone. Where am I now? I press Gabriel’s blue shirt to my face. It was almost lost to the surf. It smells of his sweat. Tick tock, the grandfather clock. Knock knock, Elijah’s knock. It’s nighttime again. No body. A sensation of being beaten all over by wings. Elle, they’re only twenty feet down, at most. Can’t you see ’em? Gabriel Gabriel Gabriel, no. Come with me, Elle. Just hold my hand. We’ll go just halfway to get a better look. I won’t let you drown. No, Gabriel. I’ll tie us together with this rope and tie the rope to the boat. I just felt something against my thigh, Gabriel. This is insane, Gabriel. There’s nothing here that can hurt us, Elle. The sharks are all sleeping. I’ve got you. No, you go ahead, Gabriel. Go without me. I’ll hold the rope. Why don’t you believe in me, Elle? Why do you always give up on me? I can’t see anything, Gabriel. I promise you they’re right there, Elle. You go. Okay, Isabelle, just don’t let go of me. My belly full, full of light. I keep hold of the boat, the rope. I’m with child, I want to say, never say. He kicks up small waves as he dives down deeper, waves I can feel beneath my feet. The tug of him in my hands. His gravity. The silent ocean. Just echo, just the eternity of water. Fear turns my belly. My belly full, full of bats. The water howls. I jump back into the little wooden boat, hull beneath me, a gust of wind overhead. And the rope, the rope slips out of my shaking hands.
It slithers down. So quickly. The black sea takes it. Like it never was. And now the house is empty. What has happened? Where has everything gone?
“Where am I?” I scream.
Someone’s face comes into view, like a shadow against the bright sun. “Home,” she says. “Lyra.”
“Has Elijah found Gabriel yet?” I ask her.
“Elijah was my husband,” she says. “He’s not been with us for some time.” She sits on the windowsill beside me. Her hands wander through my hair. “I’m Ethel, remember?”
“It was a mistake,” I whimper. “I wasn’t supposed to let the rope go. He was supposed to come right back up.”
“What rope, honey?” After a moment, she stands up again. “Soon you’ll be on your way out of here and to Savannah. A real town, just like New York. Mr. Simon got you a pretty house over there. And all this, all them ropes, will just be past.”
Ethel is on her way somewhere else. Desert, the ancient soul of the ocean. A hush falls over it at dusk. “Phoenix,” I say aloud.
“Yes, I’m heading to Phoenix soon enough,” she says. “Can’t be like Lot’s wife all our lives. We’ve just got to not look back. I’ve got to get released of all this memory. They say that’s what the West is good for.”
And soon enough, I will hear her footsteps shuffle down the hall. I know by heart that sound. She has said good evening to me at this blue hour, as the day slips into night, for sixty years—but never like this, never for the last time. “I remember back when Elijah told me Gabriel went and died for that blue shiny,” she says. “And I said to Elijah, ‘Well, he was a doggone fool after all, wasn’t he? Crazier than we thought.’ And as I’m sayin’ all this, this look was goin’ through Elijah’s eyes. Real mournful-like. Like he was saying back: ‘I’m a doggone fool, too, Ethel. I ain’t no wiser than that boy.’ ”
Ethel retreats from me, then pauses at the door. “But you know, Ms. Elle, up north what we always said is that that place is more beautiful than the most beautiful dreams, so beautiful it sends all this world to cinders. Lord, I pray Elijah got to see what Gabriel did when he chose to leave me all alone here. I pray every day he did.
“I’m gonna be making my way now,” Ethel continues. “On toward the sunset. But before I do, I’ve got to light that flaming sword behind me. My mama used to say: ‘Sometimes it’s left to us to do God’s work here on Earth. Keep His paradise safe from those who would’—well, maybe by now you understand our Lyra.
“Farewell for now, Elle Bell. I’ll be seeing you in the kingdom come.”