THE GATHERING IN SOMERS’ OFFICE BROKE UP IN A SAD WAY, WITH LITtle Eddy showing Caleb Visser the way to the White Horse pub, which had been in Fallon’s family for generations, where the distraught fisherman planned to drink himself into a stupor. Ezra Somers headed home to go to bed and Fallon and Elinore walked slowly towards the fisherman’s shack on the edge of the marsh, their secret place. Unfortunately, their excitement at seeing each other was inevitably affected by the plight of poor Caleb Visser and the utter hopelessness of his predicament.
They entered the shack with the key Elinore kept under a rock by the door and Fallon began building a small fire. It was a simple, one-room shack with a small table and chair on a circle of rug and, of course, a bed beneath the window where Elinore sat. The question now was whether they could set the world aside for a few moments and be the lovers they wanted to be.
As the shack heated up, the answer appeared to be yes. Elinore stood up as Fallon knelt and poked at the fire; she slipped off her coat and then her dress and undergarments, and when Fallon turned and looked up he gasped, for she was the most beautiful woman in the world, glowing white as an apparition, her blonde hair falling over her breasts, her legs slightly apart, the moonlight just peeking between them.
In moments he was beside her and her hands tore at his clothing with a fierce urgency that spoke of her fears for him and her need for this moment. All thoughts of the world’s troubles vanished as they fell onto the bed, Elinore’s hands and mouth finding remembered places and her tongue tasting the salt of the sea on Fallon’s body. She guided his hands where she wanted them, and when he mounted her and began pushing gently she smiled a wicked sort of smile and rolled him over and sat astride him, still in command of this moment, breathing short gasps as she moved back and forth, holding him tightly inside of her. She leaned down over him, inches from his face, and began slowly rocking, then faster, until finally she sat up and arched her back and pounded her hips into him with a ferocity that came from someplace primal, undiscovered until that moment; and she screamed a scream of sexual release that filled the shack and perhaps the night around the shack.
Spent and wet from sweat, she collapsed.
Fallon held her to him and felt her heart pound his chest, her body relaxed at last, soft and tender again. He thought she might go to sleep just like that, on top of him. So he was surprised when she suddenly spoke.
“The bell,” she said softly. “We need the Bermuda Bell.”