They Are Not Lost

I shared Anika's imagined tale of seeing Kathrijn and Adriaen with the millwright Elias, while we were drawing from the well. I cloaked Anika's tale with scorn, expecting him to shake his head sadly and offer sympathy. Instead, Elias went quiet, not with disbelief, but in that hesitation I know comes from fear of speaking the truth. I pressed him on it – even threatened to strike him, until at last he cried out that he had seen them, too. “They're not lost,” he said. “They've been coming back. Each of them… sometimes to the fields. We see them walking among the flower beds, but gone at our approach – we work in pairs now, for fear of being led off into whatever hell claimed them.” I told him that if we were lost out there, we would want to be found. He shook his head. “It is bad enough they have come back to us, we should not go looking for them. They aren't our people, our family anymore - they belong to the island.” Marisse