Page 3 of What Happens in Hedone

A creature the size and shape of his fingernail clung to the strand of seaweed. Bright stripes of color slashed the brown shell, a startling contrast of vivid and plain. “Is that⁠—”

“A blue-rayed limpet. My first! I intend to sketch it, but my friend has my sketchbook.” She tossed an airy wave in the direction of the promenade where another young lady strolled, hands tucked into a muff against the playful breeze, head turned in their direction.

He’d wondered that a gently born girl would approach an utter stranger and converse so unselfconsciously with him. Particularly a man so indecent as to bare his feet to the world. Mortal girls were not so bold. The girls of his acquaintance blushed and tittered and cast coy glances, rarely spoke sentences with one complete rational thought.

This one regarded the limpet on its perch as if she’d unearthed a priceless jewel. As if she honored him by sharing it.

“So you see,” she said confidingly, “you might find more than only sand.”

He was charmed into his own admission. “I meant to find sand. And this is not only sand. This is building material. It makes—” Words failed him. He lifted his hands to gesture at Brunswick Terrace behind them, at the bricks and stones that were growing the town before their eyes.

Her brows were wideset, adding innocence to her look, yet that hint of mischief never departed. “Oh!” Her lips parted on a puff of air. “You mean all of this—the land, the hills and mountains⁠—”

“The bricks we build with,” he said, trying to explain.

She nodded. “And the silt that lined the riverbeds. The earth that grows our crops⁠—”

“Can you grow crops in sand?”

“Can you not?” He couldn’t detect to what degree she was serious, with those wide deep blue eyes and that merry pucker to her lips. “Kelp grows in the mud. Only think,” she said, pointing to the shingle that stretched the length of the beach, “these pebbles comprise the mountains that hold up the earth. Then along comes the water and wind breaking the great rocks apart, and then those stones wear down into your sand. And then the sand becomes, somehow, I don’t know, all pressed together, and then you have—” She waved a gloved hand as if conjuring— “the earth and the mountains. Building everything, just like you said.”

Jay stood with his feet in the water, touching waves that had perhaps traveled the world over and over since the dawn of time, and he felt simultaneously two impossible things: that he was anchored to the earth in a way he had never been in his life, and that at the same time he was a balloon filled with air but attached to a string, and the string was attached to this girl, and whenever she drew him, he would go.

He didn’t know where to begin with her many errors. Sand and stone and earth were all very different substances, to begin with, but if her explanation lacked an understanding of geological processes, her vision was the more poetic. In his experience women did not care for discussions about different kinds of stones, sandstone and limestone and granite and flint, any more than they cared for explanations of how to make bricks.

And he did not want to bore a nymph. Or chastise a minor goddess. She had appeared like a soap bubble, like froth on a wave, and if he were stern she would disappear and the most enchanting interlude of his life would be over.

He wanted to stay in the enchantment, so began cautiously. “That is very⁠—”

“Marvelous! I know! I’d never thought of it quite this way before. But it must be that everything is connected, and we are made all of the same building material, as you said. Sand. For God made Adam from the dust of the earth, did he not? So we, and the mountains, and everything else that is good grows from what you hold in your hand.”

Jay looked at the mud in his hands. He looked at her, and it was as if the gray, sober Earth he knew had broken apart. The world was no longer blocks and squares and a steady progression through one’s days. It was a vast, breathing network, shot through with light, glittering like dawn dew on a spider’s web of the most brilliant and intricate design.

Blood hummed through his veins. This woman. Who was she?

Her companion on the promenade lifted an enormous sleeve and called out. “Iphigenia!”

“Coming!” the girl called back, waving her kelp at her friend.

“That cannot be your name,” Jay said. “That is a doomed name.”

She laughed again. He didn’t have to explain the myth to her; she caught his thought as if they were passing a basket. “I am the eldest and most favored of my father’s daughters.”

“So was she.”

That laugh. The air sparkled, refracted light and wonder through that sound. The clouds rolled off to the east, dragging a blanket of sun over the sky. Some great boulder in Jay’s chest fell away, exposing him to a rush of lightness and air.

“Effie!” the other woman bellowed. “You’ll make us late.”

His nymph’s eyes danced. “One is not behind times for an appointment with Miss Elphick.”

“The world is better for bending to the will of the Miss Elphicks,” Jay agreed.

She giggled, and he’d done the most remarkable thing in this life, matching her wit. She was light and life and everything ineffable, and he, in her presence, was no longer dull clay but quickened, a statue come to life.

“Adieu, Master Builder. Do not forget the rock pools if you wish to find creatures among your sand.”

And off she ran—yes, ran, abandoning the dignity of poke bonnets and fashionable pelisses and skirts just to the ankle. Her leather boots left light prints in the sand; she was made of flesh, after all. And he had not asked her name, her direction, the direction of her friend, any way he might find her again.