“This is new,” the girl muttered, and didn’t look pleased. She had a slight accent, but Kacey couldn’t place it.
“What is?”
“The flower fields. They weren’t here before. The fact you can see me. Well. You will forget me soon enough.”
“No, I won’t.” It would be impossible to forget a personlike this. The girl’s expression was too vivid, her hands too worn from work, the scar too much like a raindrop, pale against her brown skin. Her eyes were as dark as velvet inside a closed box.
“Yes, you always do.”
“Me?” Had Kacey met this girl before?
“I mean your kind.”
Stiffly, Kacey said, “And what exactly is my kind?”
The girl shrugged. “Prey.”
“Tell me what you mean.” Kacey thought of the flowers, waving in a fragrant blanket behind her. “Who are you?”
“No one important.”
Kacey wondered whether the girl was resentful, whether she thought that Kacey, who was rich now even though she couldn’t quite think of herself that way, was the type to ignore the rest of the human world.There is another world, and it is in this one, William Butler Yeats wrote, and Kacey had touched those printed words on the page and thought how true it was, that wealth meant that some people lived dream lives. Their Earth was a fantasy. They made islands into homes, built yachts the size of villages, made plans to launch into space. The girl’s expression was starting to change into something like pity as she regarded Kacey, whose annoyance grew, to be given cryptic, meaningless answers. One thing, at least, made sense, and provided the only explanation for this encounter. “You followed me here, didn’t you?”
The girl’s full mouth twisted in a wry smile. “I’m Amara.”Her voice was rich with cynical humor, yet gentler when she spoke next. “Do not worry. You will forget my name; forget that I followed you.” Then Amara turned, walking toward the barn, her black braid a rope down her back.
That night, Kacey’s husband found her in the library. He took the book from her hands—a first edition of Yeats’s poetry. Kacey’s gaze clung to the words she had been reading, which he began to read.I will arise and go now, for always night and day / I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore...
“One of my favorites,” he said. “My darling, I must go on a work trip. I leave tomorrow morning. Will you miss me?”
There was only one answer to that question. “Yes,” she lied.
He wagged a finger at her. “Keep your promises.”
Kacey remembered, the memory cold and bright, fluorescent, that their wedding vows had been traditional—to love, honor, and obey. He had joked about it. So old-fashioned, he said when planning the wedding, face in a mocking grimace. Yet they had said the words anyway.
“Don’t get too cozy with the staff,” he said. “They’ll take advantage. When the cat’s away, et cetera, et cetera.”
Kacey recalled the girl by the flower fields. The black eyes. The teardrop scar. Memorable mouth. Yet what was her name? What had they said to one another? Annoyed with herself, with him, Kacey said, “You don’t know that.”
“Trust me. They’ve worked for me forever.” His strong hands slid down the page of the book he held, then neatly ripped the paper from its stitching. Kacey couldn’t help the sound that leaped from her throat. He folded the poem and tucked it into the pocket of his Brooks Brothers shirt. He leaned forward and gave her his dry evening kiss.
Later, in Kacey’s bedroom, she looked down at her engagement ring, which seemed to weigh down her whole hand. It glowed, although Kacey had turned on no lights. Black eyes. Strange words. That long braid. Kacey seemed to feel the rope of it beneath trailing fingers. The poem.While I stand on the roadway, or on pavements gray.Slowly, as though struggling underwater, Kacey tugged the ring from her finger. She took a deep, clear breath—the clearest, it felt, in a long time. In the darkness, Kacey dropped the ring into a desk drawer and slid it shut.
Amara. That was the girl’s name. Kacey remembered, and would not forget.
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.
The next morning was sunny, as were all the days here, but the air crisper, with a light wind. Kacey glanced up at the weathervane and saw that the wind was pushing down toward the flower fields, which meant that it carried their scent away from the property.
Kacey set out to find Amara. Her work uniform meant she was a farmer, so Kacey looked near the chicken coop andthe cornfields. She walked around the beds of strawberries, their white blossoms flowering. She avoided the flower fields, remembering how Amara had called herprey. Kacey loved flowers but hadn’t liked how she had felt among them—like a bee, maybe, drunk on pollen, its brain filled with the buzzing sound of its wings.
Kacey found Amara walking toward the barn, a lamb slung over her shoulder. “Amara, wait!”
The girl halted, rigid with what looked like shock, and turned. Her black eyes were huge. The lamb on her shoulder bleated weakly. Kacey jogged up to her, breath sharp, but it felt good to run.
“I cannot talk to you,” Amara said.
“But youaretalking to me. Youdidtalk to me.”
