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All these emotions arose in her at once, until she felt crushed by them, and he was there watching, taking her in.

His eyes hooked into hers, and she stepped out of the water and went to him. He turned her around, toward the water again, and began unlacing her dress. His mouth pressed against the back of her neck, sending shivers through her entire body.

He loves me, he loves me.

He pulled her down into the grass, and she pressed her hand on his heart as she slipped out of her dress. She luxuriated in this, this human feeling. Being this soft, this sensitive, naked in the grass, with the breeze flitting over her skin, his fingers pressing into her. The things this skin could feel!

And then he was crushing her in his arms until she couldn’t feel anything except his mouth and that need, a pain that wasn’t a pain, from the center of her body, a place she had never felt before coming to this world, warm and aching, wet, pressing against him, and then he was turning her over, on top of her, moving into her, filling her, and her body seemed to dissolve, what little body she had left, until it was just him filling her, and from the depths of her body a screaming came, a strangled cry, and it was warmth and water. And she was, she was certain, healed.

She was shaking, her body red, warm, she had never been so warm. Her body itself like the ocean now.

And for a moment she felt a great, blissful nothingness.

He lay next to her, stroking her hair. “You remind me of someone,” he said. “You seem so familiar to me. I know I’ve said this before, but I can’t shake this strange feeling I have with you.”

She looked up at him, shining.

He leaned forward, opened her mouth. “You’re so perfect, so beautiful, and yet you have no tongue. You’re like a dream creature, sent here just for me. Aren’t you? I can tell you anything, and you just look at me with those beautiful eyes, like you understand everything.”

She reached out her hand and stroked his face.

“I have felt so strange lately,” he said.

My soul, she thought. Tell me everything.

He lay back, pulling her in next to him. “I almost died,” he said, “not too long ago. I saw all my men die, my friends. It was terrible. I used to love the sea, but she took everything away. The sea, I mean.”

Tell me.

“We were on a sailing expedition, me and a crew of men. I wanted to see the end of the world. They say there is an end, past the ice and snow, where the world just stops. Past the Northern islands, they say, though no one knows for sure if they are really there. Can you understand that? Wanting to see the end of the world?”

She nodded. Yes. Something in his voice, some softness, something unbearably sweet, made her want to hold him in her arms and stroke his hair, kiss his forehead over and over.

“I haven’t been able to tell anyone else about this, what happened to me. What I saw.”

My soul. Tell me.

She was so open. Just a vessel to hold him.

“My men thought I was crazy, but I convinced them that it would bring all of us much honor, and that I would reward them with jewels and gold. I want to explore, see the world. This kingdom is so small, but I look up at the sky and out at the water, and they are endless and vast. So we set off, my men and I, with a chest of treasures, prepared for whatever we might find. Your necklace, actually”—he moved his hand over the red stone that dangled from around her neck, falling to his chest—“it reminds me of the jewels we brought.”

She smiled into his shirt as he continued.

“Then one night we were caught in a storm, and my men died. I should have died with them, but I had a vision, the most beautiful vision, an angel in the water.”

She sat up, staring at him with wide eyes. He barely noticed, lost in the memory he was describing. His hands were automatically tracing the line of her spine.

“She was calling to me, lifting me from the wreckage and carrying me to shore. I just have the faintest memory of this, staring up at the sky, which I’d never seen so clear.”

He remembered! Surely, he knew who she was. Surely that was why he had led her