Standing on the Edge

She stood on the outcrop, her edge of reason, the place where she had watched him leave and return over the years. This time he had stayed for a year and a day. Together they had fished, dug, sown, reaped and stocked up for winter, although what passed for winter on the island was barely that. In the evenings they had broken bread and shared stories as they had always done. Hers were mythical imaginings of Gods and distant lands, tales spun like gossamer threads delighting his adult ears just as they had his childish ones. His were life experiences, the places he had been, the things he had seen, the demons he had vanquished. Sometimes their stories would meet in a space neither light nor dark, cold nor hot, a space where something was yet to happen.

This time, unlike all the times before, she wrote them down, filling sheets of yellowed parchment with characters that danced across the page or sometimes faded into the distance. She would place a hand over what she had written once the ink had dried and feel the words moving, wriggling, jumping, forming their own patterns. At night, to keep it safe from moths and other insects, she would put the book into a box and stow it underneath her bed. When it became too hot to sleep, she fancied she could hear the book whispering its secrets, calling to her in a million different voices.

One morning, not long before his latest departure, she asked him if he had heard the voices and he smiled, taking both her hands in his. "No", he said. "But if you want me too I will." For the next few nights she watched him pacing the room between the hours of 12 and three, saw him lay down next to the bed to be closer to the book and the thousands of words it nourished. Those were restless nights, but finally she slept, a deep and dreamless sleep for once.

She woke to see him sitting in his favourite chair, bag packed with his meagre possessions. "You are leaving",  she stated flatly. He simply nodded, then rising from the chair and heading for the door he said. "Walk with me." Together they strolled down to the cove where his boat lay anchored in the lee of a cliff. She drew pictures in the sand with her toes while he prepared to set sail. Finally ready, he looked at her, squinting into the rising sun. "It was the book," he said. "The book demands more stories. It will not be silent. Keep writing and I will be back before you know it with legends to fill the pages until the ink runs dry."

She stood on the outcrop, her edge of reason, and watched him leave and another tiny sliver of her heart went with him.