3

Along the dock, tall vessels

In sea swells silently tilting

Fail to guard against cradles

That women insist on rocking.

Ensconced in the bed in the lighthouse, Mie tries to remember the rest of the words her mother sang in the cabin, but she can’t. She does remember lying there for a long time, slumped in front of the goose with a fox’s head, able to drag herself from the room only once Noé too had left it to watch the sun drop into the waves. She’d started by crouching under the table, her mother silhouetted against the light in the doorway — her skirts, her hair, her arms long and lithe like rope, her fingers skinny cords knotted at their ends. Mie glanced at the objects piled up on the shelf across from her and spotted a long, flat, narrow container. Staying low to the floor, she drew near, grabbed it, and slid it into her smock. Even though it was made of wood, the tobacco box kept clinking like metal; she went out the back way and, leaning against the wall of the cabin, opened the box — the small hinged lid inlaid with ivory and jade — and tipped its contents into her lap. A white feather, a copper sphere attached to a lock of black hair, a desiccated queen bee carefully wrapped in a piece of black fur. She didn’t have time to grasp the meaning of her discovery; the bushes shook and she stuffed everything into her pockets. Abel appeared and rushed over, wanted to know what she’d found in the house. He followed her to the beach, saying over and over, “Tell me.”