I can't remember the last time I wept like this. Oh of course you do, May. When Gerald cut our umbilical cord. Eighteen years after Molly was born, and I still couldn't get her (or her father) out of my system. That's when I went to India, to clear my mind. I found a guru. He made love like a god — and I, the perfect acolyte, abandoned all sense of identity. Every cell scattered and went on leave. When I became seriously ill, I woke from the trance. Nothing had changed. I still wanted to fly back to Gerald and Molly, to look in through the window, behold my child.

Oh, God, I'm the toad.

I'm surprisingly weak. I can't catch my breath. The tumor is now pressing up on my lungs and down on my thigh. It's a mound heaving out of my stomach, densely packed with cells gone haywire — revolutionaries breaking out, unable to contain their frustration. They're finished with strangers, with being estranged. My tumor baby wants a different life, and who can blame her? My intimacies with strangers all end the same way. One good turn round the deck, dinner and a roll in the sack, and it's goodbye. Last sunset. He says: "You're my flower, my secret, my forget-me-not." Ship pulls into the harbor. I march down the gangway towing my own bags. No one to greet me on shore.

I promise not to become sodden. I don't do self-pity. My mother used to say, "No one will ever feel sorry for you if you feel sorry for yourself." She would say that when she was feeling sorry for herself, lying in bed, tatting her shroud.

I've finished my business here. I've toured the globe. I've collected a bit of treasure. I never expected to form attachments. I've always loved fairy tales about supernaturals coming in and landing — seals becoming human, swans marrying mortal men, maidens from the stars bestowing their gifts. Time and time again, that's where I find myself. But when it's all said and done, the spirits take their pelts, feathers, wings, and fly away. There are no happy endings for supernaturals, only leavings.

Who am I in Thumbelina? Everything, of course, like we all are. But especially the flying things. "You don't have any feelers," the cockchafer said, looking down on Tiny. He was very proud of his feelers. From his vantage point, humans were stupid and ugly and they never came out of their boxes to have a look at the view. He deplored them.

And I'm the butterfly determined to tow his darling fairy child away from the toad, and draw her downstream to sunlit meadows, fragrant with spring flowers. The butterfly wanted to show her sunflowers, moonflowers, spider webs studded with diamonds — fly her to the lands he knew. Alas, the attachment was too strong, and the butterfly was bound to get tangled up in the lines — which I did — and die downstream. Which I did.

In the end, I'm the swallow. He's as close to Thumbelina as I'll ever be. He sings to her as she makes her way alone through the cornfields. Like him, I've stayed too long. Winter's coming and I need to fly.

What day is it? Monday, I think. I can't clear my mind. Things don't have edges anymore. Everything is softer, melting into everything else. Friday will be too late. If I'm going to go, I need to go now. I've taken care of business— sold my furniture, done my bequeathing. Nothing here belongs to me.

It's time to say goodbye to my daughter and her father. Or, better still, just go. I'm finished interfering. I need to summon the dignity of the swan woman who, once she finds the wings her husband stowed away, puts them on and flies out through the window without making any human excuse.

My heart is breaking. My lungs are collapsing. I've got to get off the floor.

The sofa supports me as I struggle to my feet. I don't need to pack much. I can change my ticket at the airport. I'll make a couple of phone calls. I just need to get myself to that little oasis on the Big Island a short drive north from Kona.

He calls me Malolo, Flying Fish. He is 'Au-kele, Great Traveling Swimmer. He names himself something different for every person he meets. I don't know his original name. I suspect it would be Octopus. He's a barrel-chested, broad faced, smiling, loving stranger who was trained as a medical doctor and knows the water well. He has promised me a painless death. Is it his voice I'm hearing call to me from the bottom of the sea? Will the King of the Underworld also extract a fee?

I've got to stay focused. I'm sinking. Breathe. In and out. Steady, Mayfly. Watch your breath. You've only got so much oxygen in your tank. Keep your eyes on the dive master.

I make it to the bathroom. Wash in the sink. Poppy red lips, a bit of blush. Nothing required on the eyes — I hate mascara. Makes me look like a clown. So long, lovely mirror. I can do this. The flight leaves at 2:15. It's 11 now. I'll call a cab. My rolling bag is ready. It is never unpacked.

The walls support me on my trek to the bedroom. Pull on some clothes — the purple knit dress is easy to slide over my head. I choose a red Chinese silk embroidered coat to cover the uprising. I can just hear the passengers worrying, "What is that lump in her stomach? Is she carrying explosives?"

Yes, my pretty.

Molly

I had a dream last night. I was standing in a field, trying to make a teepee to shelter myself from the coming storm. The thunderheads in the west were galloping in. I felt so tiny. All my efforts to make a shelter were futile. When the storm hit I'd be blown apart and scattered to the four winds.

The dream was a new version of a repetitive dream I've had since childhood. It always starts the same way. I'm looking out a window in the middle of the night. It's a warm, quiet evening and the sky is glittering with stars. Then I see this sinister brown cigar-shaped object sail in overhead, and there's a huge explosion. The window shatters, and I shatter with it, and I don't know how to put myself back together again. I wake up sobbing and confused or, worse, I don't wake up. I just wander around trying to speak to people who can't hear me or see me.

I should get some work done, but all I can do is sit at my desk and shuffle paper. I have to force myself to get the newsletter organized: start looking up the physicians I want to interview, check out the hospice staff, plan my approach. I should probably witness a day in the life of a palliative caregiver, someone who really knows how to speak with the dying. Possibly the pastor... .

I'm biting the end of my pencil. A psychology professor once told me I was demonstrating oral aggression. I say it's fear. Gnawing fear. Something awful is happening. My stomach is in knots. Whatever possessed me to do an issue on palliative care! Screw it. I can't concentrate.

What I want to know is whether or not I found shelter in the dream. I'm always looking for shelter. It's the same wish that drove my fantasies about Eric. He would give me shelter. It wasn't about the air, or flying into the sun, or exploring the world together. It was about holing up with somebody safe and sound. I hate that he was right, but he was. When I'm in a crisis, I shut down. I growl at intruders. I need safety. Why? Why do I need safety so much?

I need to look at these explosion dreams. I've never taken them too seriously. Mom certainly didn't. I remember the time she told me that her grandmother was in the fall of Antwerp. My grandmother's description of the way the German zeppelin appeared in the night sky was exactly like my dream. I was only twelve or thirteen when my mother told me the story, but I blurted out, "I was there. I saw it."

My mother was taken aback. We were up at a cottage near Huntsville, sitting in a screened-in veranda on a muggy June day and listening to the whine of black flies outside. "What do you mean?" Mom asked. "Are you telling me you that you had a past life?"

"I don't know, Mom. All I'm telling you is that I was there." I became defensive because she was defensive. Mom didn't believe in past lives, or maybe she really believed in them because whenever they were mentioned, she'd get all upset, as if she had her own memories she was trying to forget. Maybe she had been in the war, too. Maybe I wasn't the only one to get blown to pieces.

Maybe that's why she had become such an old field mouse. I remember her distinctly in that moment, frowning in the pearly light, her little brown cane shoes narrowing to a point, her gray trousers bagging around her thighs and her brown gardening T-shirt announcing in green block letters, DIG IT! Her nose practically twitched. That's when I first understood that my mother needed safety above all. She lived a hunkered-down existence, and focused all her light on the work at hand, just like her grandmothers, those myopic lacemakers who toiled at night by glass and candlelight.

I need air, but my stomach hurts too much to go far. Maybe I'll just get on my bike and cycle along the boardwalk, find a place to lie down in the sun.

As I'm pedaling towards the lake, that silly Danny Kaye song starts rolling through my head... .

Thumbelina, Thumbelina,
Tiny little thing
Thumbelina dance
Thumbelina sing.
Thumbelina, Thumbelina
Though you're very small
When your heart is full of love
You're ten feet tall!

The planks of the boardwalk beat out the rhythm under my tires. I used to hate that song but it stuck, the way the story stuck. I've never been able to get away from being Tiny. Airy. Fairy.

I veer off the boardwalk and onto the grass. I get off my bike and head to a willow tree. Its trunk feels sturdy against my back. The tree is snowing catkins. The story is pushing through.

I had been playing out in the backyard in the wading pool with my friend Ellie when Auntie May arrived. I told Ellie I didn't want to swim with her anymore. I told her to go home, and she wailed. Ellie was a bit of crybaby anyway, and she had started to annoy me. To my seven-year-old mind, it was high time that Ellie lost her baby fat and took a few dares. "Wading pools are for babies," I said, stomping my foot on the side of the pool so the water gushed out.

My mother came out to deal with the bawling baby while I tramped into the house. Auntie May had come in the kitchen and it was as if my fairy godmother had just sailed in and had stepped out of her bubble coach. It didn't matter that I was sopping wet and that she was wearing a silk red halter top. She gave me a proper squeeze and kissed me on each cheek, which made me feel very cosmopolitan. "I've been waiting the longest time for you to reappear," I said precociously, crossing my arms. She had visited me many times before she gave me the story of Thumbelina when I was six. She would come in with a carpet bag full of fairy tales, costumes, games and stuff. But then she seemed to disappear. She wasn't there for my seventh birthday in the fall, and she wasn't there for Christmas, or for the spring. And we hadn't finished Thumbelina.

While we curled up on the living room sofa with the big picture book, Mom stayed outside, draining the pool and watering the garden.

"Now where were we, Molly mite?"

"Going down the river, and I know the part about the white butterfly and the cockchafers because Mommy read it to me."

Auntie May flipped through the pictures of the marsh and the river. "Oh, but do you know, Molly, there was a swallow who had seen the cockchafers get ahold of Tiny. He heard what they had said to her, too, and he didn't want her to believe them, not for one moment, so he sang her the prettiest songs he knew."

"What kind of songs?"

"Songs that he had learned from the flowers, about the beauty of sunlit meadows and mountain streams, but mostly about the beauty of Tiny herself."

"Sing one!"

"Oh, well, you know, the whole story is a song from the swallow. But here's one you might recognize." She began to sing sweetly, in a voice that landed softly on every word.

Row row row your boat
Genty down the stream
Merrily merrily merrily merrily
Life is but a dream!

"Is life really a dream, Auntie May?" I asked, spellbound.

"Yes, it is, Molly Mite, and you're learning to read it, just like this storybook. You must learn to read the dream of your life!"

I was a bit puzzled by that, but I wouldn't dare admit it.

Auntie May continued the story, improvising. "After the cockchafers had finished examining Tiny, they decided that they would have nothing more to do with her. They picked her up in their claws and put her down on a daisy that was growing in a meadow. She had to climb down the daisy pole, and that was no easy feat, because it was as high to her as a tree! When she got to the ground, and looked up, the daisies grew so tall around her that Tiny could barely see their tops. Their white petals blazed under the sun like a hundred golden halos, and Tiny felt that she was standing in a crowd of angels!"

During the whole summer poor Tiny didn't really know where she lived in the wide world. She wove herself a bed with blades of grass, and hung it up under a broad leaf to protect herself from the rain. She sucked the honey from the flowers for food, and drank the dew from their leaves every morning. Summer passed and then autumn came. The birds who had sung so sweetly to her flew away. The trees and the flowers withered, and winter came blowing in from the north.

She felt dreadfully cold, for her clothes were torn, and she herself was so delicate that she very nearly froze to death. It began to snow too; and the snow flakes fell heavily upon her, for she was only an inch high. Then she wrapped herself up in a dry leaf, but it cracked in the middle and could not keep her warm.

Near the wood in which she had been living lay a cornfield, but the corn had been cut a long time. Nothing remained but bare, dry stubble that stood up out of the frozen ground. To Tiny, the corn stubble seemed like a forest of stiff, gray soldiers who shivered in the wind. Oh, it was miserable! But then at last she came to the door of a field mouse, who had a little den under the cornfield. The mouse lived in warmth and comfort, with a whole roomful of corn, and a kitchen that Tiny could see through the window. The poor little maiden stood before the door like a waif, and begged for a small piece of barleycorn, for she had been without a morsel to eat for two days.

"That's awful," I said, staring at the page.

"What is, darling?" May put her arm on the shoulder of the couch and gave me her full attention.

"Wasn't Thumbelina born out of a barleycorn?"

"She was indeed."

I frowned. "And now she has to beg for one?"

Auntie May stroked my cheek and gazed at me with shimmering eyes. With her dark mocha hair curling around her bare shoulders and her crimson halter top and her shining red lips, she looked like I wanted to look when I grew up.

"Life isn't always fair, is it, Molly Mite? We find ourselves shut out where we think we most belong. But not to worry. Things have a way of working themselves out." She laughed a chirruping laugh, melodious and swallow-like. "But, you know, I think that field mouse might have had a kind heart. Let's see."

We turned back to the book.

"You poor little creature," said the field mouse. "Come into my warm room and dine with me. You are quite welcome to stay all winter if you like; but you must keep my rooms clean and neat, and tell me stories, for I shall like to hear them very much."

Tiny did all the field mouse asked her, and found herself very comfortable.

"We shall have a visitor soon," said the field-mouse one day. "My neighbor is better off than I am; he has large rooms, and wears a beautiful black velvet coat. If you could only have him for a husband, you would be well provided for indeed."

"Unfortunately, there were some problems with that mole," Auntie May noted. "He might have been rich and learned, but he was completely blind — inside and out."

"He didn't see?"

"Not a thing. And he didn't care to see. He always spoke slightingly of the sun and the pretty flowers. Tiny was obliged to sing to him — but none of her songs ever moved him, not even her saddest songs."

"What kind of songs?"

Auntie May's eyes glistened. "Songs she had learned from her mother. Tiny's mother knew a lot of sad songs."

"Sing one, please!" I said, tugging on her halter top.

Auntie May's eyes fixed on a distant point. Then she opened her mouth and began to sing:

Come all ye fair and tender maidens
Be careful how you love your men
They're like the stars on a summer's mornin'
First appear and then they're gone
If only I were a tiny sparrow
and I had wings and I could fly so high
I'd fly away to my own false lover
there I'd stay till he loved like I
Alas I'm not a tiny sparrow
I have no wings so I can't fly
I'll go away to a lonesome valley
Weep and pass my troubles by.

The song took Auntie May away from me — far, far away. After she had sung the last mournful note, we fell into silence. "That mole only ever wanted to hear sad songs," said Auntie May, finally. "I think he was trying to feel something, but those songs practically put poor little Tiny to death."

I couldn't easily shake off the heavy weight of that song. Auntie May had taken us to another world, a dark and painful underground place. "The field mouse isn't going to make Tiny marry the blind old mole, is she?" I whispered.

"Well, she had a pretty strong interest in their union."

"Why?"

"He was rich. He had a lot of stuff and you know how mice love to hoard things."

May shifted on the sofa, and laid the open book between us. I stared at a picture of the field mouse talking to the mole. I felt annoyed.

"Yes, but she doesn't care about Tiny, does she? All the field mouse cares about is stuff she wants!"

"That seems to happen to Tiny a lot," said Auntie May, picking up the book. "Toads and cockchafers and, now, mice and moles. They all want her to do things that will please them. But what about Tiny herself? What about her dreams?"

"Does the book say anything about Tiny's dreams?" I asked, peering into it.

"I don't know," said May. "We should talk about what a fairy would dream for herself."

"We should talk about tea," said Mom rather fiercely, appearing at the dining room door. "Who wants tea?" She began to bustle noisily about in the kitchen, and soon May was in the garden with Mom and I was left alone on the couch with the book on my lap, trying to decipher the story's code. I felt strangely guilty. What had I done to make my mother mad at me? I had hogged too much of May's time — that's what. I shouldn't have, but I couldn't get enough of Auntie May. It upset me that she had disappeared. I needed her to help me figure out what a fairy dreams, before it was too late and I got trapped underground with the moles.

The air is soft under the willow tree, catkins falling like feather down. Out on the lake, a swan soars by, writing its name on the page of the day. It dawns on me that I was torn between two mothers who had two different plans for me. One mother had taken my wings and hidden them so I would be safe, but also so I wouldn't fly away. And the other kept swooping in, showing me the outside world, telling me sunlit stories about exotic places, trying to tell me I was a fairy child and I must find my wings.

Because I felt guilty, because I felt that spending time with Auntie May was hurtful to my mother, I started to refuse her company. I shut her out. I decided to live in darkness rather than to feel guilty and torn apart for reasons I could not name.

When I was eleven, I told May I wasn't interested anymore in fairy tales, and especially not Thumbelina. We were eating dinner. She had come over for Christmas after being away for a long time — and was all prepared to tell me a fairy story after we'd eaten.

"I don't need to hear a story," I said, breaking a turkey wing. "I don't like fairy tales anymore."

She dabbed her lips on a paper napkin, and tears caught in her lashes like dew drops.

"That's all right, Molly Mole," she said.

It was the first time she had called me that.

The name stuck.

May

The phone rings. It's Chris, the concierge. "Taxi's waiting, Ms Galloway," he says from down below.

He's from Trinidad, sweet man. What a voice! He speaks several languages and every word that comes out of his mouth is a honeyed treat. He's somewhere in his late thirties, I imagine, and he has promised to teach me salsa.

"I'm coming," I say.

My voyage has begun. At the elevator, I press the arrow Down. I don't even know why I'm taking my carry-on bag. I'm shedding layers. A few bras, a couple of pairs of panties and some saris, that's all I need. Maybe I'll just roll my bag away. I'm tempted to send it flying down the hall but I don't have the strength to perform the act so it rolls after me, like a domestic dog.

The elevator takes me down. Twenty-two stories to the bottom of the sea, to the Lord of the Underworld who lives in a coral reef.

Chris is beaming at me, dressed in his tawny uniform with silver buttons and black trim. "Where are you headed, May?" he wants to know as he reaches for my luggage. Must consider giving that doggie bag a name... .

"To the bottom of the sea," I tell him.

"I always wanted to scuba dive," he says, carrying the bag to the cab and hoisting it into the trunk. The driver is a small turbaned Sikh who watches so mournfully you'd think my doggie was being lowered into the ground.

"Yes, well you've got ten seconds to decide whether or not you're coming with me," I say salaciously.

"Give me twenty and I'm your man."

I give him a twenty dollar bill and he leans into the window. "Don't you go away and not come back now, you hear?" Before I can answer, he has wheeled away and he's singing,

I've got sunshine on a cloudy day,
When it's cold outside I've got the month of May
I guess you'd say
What can make me feel this way?
My girl... .

I'm glad to give him a bit of May, a bit of the dying spring. We fly through the city. The lake whirs by, a ribbon of blue undulating under a golden sun. I'm being towed out to sea. I've got a rock in my belly that will take me down the bottom when they throw me overboard.

I must have slept. We're here. Airport. Oh yes. Right. Haven't had a word out of that sullen driver. My ferryman. Well, here's a few coins to put in the eyes of the dead.

I'm going to have to change boats now. Get on a bigger boat — no it's a plane. What does it matter? It's all boats to me. I'm going out to sea, and after a few transfers, I'll get to get to that place where I can finally sink.

The driver has taken the trouble to comport my bags to the sidewalk. He has opened the passenger door. I need only come out. Come out.

I need only come out.

"Unfortunately, my anchor weighs me down," I tell him, struggling to get to my feet.

He offers me an unwilling hand.

"I'll need more of you than that," I say, wincing. Not easy to laugh when your anchor is a ball-bearing with spikes jabbing your organs every which way you move.

He leans in. "Are you all right, ma'am?"

His tone has changed. At last he's come out of his sad little hole. Who knows what has put him there. Family deaths? Torture? A lost child? A mutilated wife? I've seen too much to judge.

He gives me his shoulder and slings his arm around my back. He's got muscle, this small man. He has done this before. His mother, perhaps.

I am up on my feet. He bends into the cab and retrieves my beaded bag.

"Bless you," I tell him, giving him lots of good hard cash.

And I am launched.

Up the gangplank, into the airport I go, dragging my doggie bag.

Ruff. That's his name.

Ruff.

Gerald

Molly just called. I wasn't doing much, other than sitting by the woodstove with Miriam, listening to the crackle and spit. Miriam was talking about Luke, my eldest brother, who she was once married to, back in the days when Luke was marrying one woman after another. Luke was a pretty good builder, but he couldn't get the foundations of his life poured.

Molly said something was the matter with May. The hospital called, and said she collapsed at the airport. What was she doing there? Trying to get out of town. She had dumped her secrets, and now she was trying to get out of the way. There's a lump in my throat the size of a fist.

I go out to where the women are gathered. The fire is still blazing but nobody's speaking. Cora is slumped in her lawn chair, staring ahead, seeing nothing.

"Cora, I've got to get back," I say.

"Go then," she barks. "Fly away. Disappear."

Her tone is nasty. Man, she's in a black place.

"Miriam will take me back," I tell her. "It's urgent."

Cora isn't interested in knowing what's urgent, and that's fine because I don't feel inclined to tell her. She will be okay with the Crones. She's got to work through this and I can't help her. Nobody can help her, but the Crones can drive her crazy enough to let out all the tar that's stuck in her innards. She's got to vomit it all up before she can become human again and I know White Snake knows that. Nobody can stick a finger down your throat like her.

On the drive back, Miriam and I are both silent. She knows something has happened because after Molly called, I told her that I had to get to the Princess Margaret Hospital. I didn't tell her what for. But it was enough to quiet her about Luke.

The nurse who talked to Molly didn't say much — only that May had collapsed just after she went through the airport security. When I called the hospital, all I could find out is that she's in the ICU, and that her condition, for the time being, is stable.

It's a long drive back. Last time I saw May in hospital was after Cora left with the baby. May didn't go home right away. The doctor wanted to watch her for a few days. If Cora had come to see May, maybe the two of them could have healed something, but Cora was preoccupied with Molly.

May had a private room, which was a good thing as far as I was concerned. We shut the door and the nurses understood that what May needed was what I could provide. I didn't hold Molly nearly as much as I held May those first few days of Molly's life. I got right into bed with her and took her into my arms. I never held anybody so bereft. "Bring her back, bring her back, bring her back," she cried, over and over again. Nobody has seen that side of May. I know that for a fact.

I didn't want Cora to do it in the first place. But she'd gotten so depressed I guess I was as desperate as anybody. The doctors had finished pumping her with hope. The conversation had turned to adoption, but Cora was adamantly against it. I never understood where her fear came from. Where do any of our fears come from? She was sure that if she adopted, she'd get a child with a defective gene. It didn't occur to her that one of her own genes could be defective, or one of mine might hold a few surprises. Her friend Shareen suggested that maybe her infertility had to do with the fac

I've been trying to figure out the inner workings of Cora for our whole married life and I still don't understand the mechanism. But I'd say it has to do with fear. She doesn't want to let anything in that she can't control, or direct. Of course, if you can't get anything in there, you can't get anything out, either. What Cora doesn't want to see under that blindfold of hers is that she has a defect of her own — and that's her own fear of defects.

She had shut herself in deep that winter when May returned from her first trip to Europe. I couldn't even get her to talk to me. I brought Renata in to get Cora to air the grief that she had bottled up. Cora did all sorts of shouting about how barren women will never be understood, and that just made things worse. I made birdhouses, which was the only way to survive the misery in that house. I took joy in cutting and carving latticework, tiny cedar shingles and shutters, and studying nesting habits, hole sizes and house shapes.

When May left after her visit with Cora that Christmas, I didn't know anything about what the two sisters had concocted. I didn't see the change in Cora till the next morning. Her mood had brightened. She had actually scrambled some eggs instead of pulling boxes of breakfast cereal out of the cupboard.

When we sat down to eat, she said: "I've been talking to May." She closed her hands round her coffee mug. "She's made an interesting suggestion."

I was mostly enjoying my eggs and Cora's chili sauce, which she'd opened for the occasion. I was thinking maybe we were going to have a proper Christmas and not just go through the motions.

"She offered to be a surrogate for us. To carry our baby, Gerald."

"I didn't know you'd been talking to your doctor about surrogacy," I said.

"I haven't." She put a warm hand over my hand, and lowered my forklift of creamy eggs. "And I don't intend to."

She had a meaningful look in her eyes. I didn't like that look.

"It could all be done so easily, Ger. We could have a baby that would be genetically ours, mine and yours."

What did she have in mind? Implantation? Cora's egg and my sperm inserted into May's womb or something like that? "How does the doctor see this all coming about?" I asked.

"No doctors need to be involved. Gerald, we can do this."

"Do what, specifically, Cora?"

"Have a baby," she said, putting pressure on my hand. "You and May could do this together. Make a baby for us, Gerald."

"Just what are you proposing, Cora?"

She cuffed my hand and sent the eggs on my fork flying off the plate. "Don't be dense, Gerald. Just get into a room together and do it."

I was completely stunned. I watched my eggs go cold. I had never considered doing anything with May other than telling her stories, which she'd grown out of, and holding our connection sacred in my heart. Ours was an innocent bond, not involving incestuous relations, and I told Cora that.

"May is not your relation. She's not blood," she said darkly, as if that gave us license to do anything we wished.

"Look, Cora. If May wants to be your surrogate — and she's too young to understand any of the implications — but if the two of you are idiot enough to do this, then you get me an appointment at the clinic. But I'm not going to bed with my baby sister."

"Well, you think about it," she snapped, taking my eggs away.

For two weeks Cora hardly said a word to one another. Finally, I told her I would have a talk with May. I wasn't promising anything, but the seed had been planted and I was already beginning to look at May differently. I guess I had frozen her into childhood, and she wasn't a child anymore. She probably wasn't even a virgin. How could she be if she was prepared to go along with a plan like that?

Still, I wanted to know where all this was coming from. May and I went for a walk down by the lake. It was mid January, freezing cold. She was all bundled up in wolf furs that were bought for her by some aristocratic fellow she'd met on her travels. I didn't want to notice her Russian beauty, her creamy skin, and I especially avoided her glistening mouth, that point of entry into depths that had been off limits to me for good reason.

"It's pure lunacy," I said. "How could you have made such an offer, May?"

"I want to do this, Gerald." She stopped me. Touched my arm with her gloved hand, and turned me around to face her. "It's completely up to you, Gerald. But you know me well enough to know that I don't plan on settling down with anybody. I don't have any real friend but you. All I want to do is travel, take it all in — get my interplanetary visa stamped." She grinned. "Seriously Gerald, giving you and Cora a baby is the only sense of destiny I ever had. I was meant to do this."

"It's got to be done in a clinic, May. Anything more intimate will mess us up."

"That's between you and Cora," she said. "You decide how you want it to be done."

We walked along and we walked along. Her arm felt warm under mine. The tears froze on my cheeks. The fire was lit already. All reason protested, but there was no point going against Cora's will. It was a train roaring down a straight prairie track.

So I did what I never should have done, but I had already done it.

I defected.

Neither May nor I knew what to do when we stepped across the threshold into the hotel room. We were both in another land. We had agreed to do this — out of love for Cora, or out of love for one another, I don't know. It had all become confused. The last thing I'd said to Cora before I left the house was, "What are you trying to prove, Cora?" She winced and my suspicions were confirmed. She was testing me. She would test the strength of my love for her and get herself a child at the same time. It was a crazy, all-or-nothing gamble.

"Just do it, Gerald," she said. "Don't tell me you don't want to."

I stuck my foot in the door. "I don't want to," I said.

When I turned to go, she slammed the door behind me. At that precise moment, something in my heart broke and I could not put it back together again. I never felt the same about Cora.

Inside the hotel room, I kissed May lightly on the forehead. There were tears in her lashes. "I always loved you, May," I said. "But never this way."

Neither of us made a move. But her lips were open, and so were mine. They brushed, soft as petals, hardly touching. What we held was delicate and would fall apart with the holding and we both knew it. She didn't do anything that I would later come to see as classic May. She didn't make a lewd remark or start peeling off her clothes to dance on the bed. Of course, she was hardly out of her teens. She was wearing a lavender sweater and a pair of jeans. Her hair smelled like cedar and roses. She told me it was her first time.

Hard to believe, but true. I knew it when I broke into her. I don't know who was more broken through, to be honest. In my arms, with all her petals pulled apart, she was the beauty no man can hold. She cried when I came, and then I made it so she cried again. And then we explored everything, over and over again so we would never forget what we'd been given for a night.

It was only one night. And not even that. I was home by two.

When I report in at the hospital information desk, I am told that May is still in the ICU.

She's asleep when I go in. Her blood pressure is being monitored. The nurse assumes that I know. I don't know. She had been sick a year ago, but I thought the cancer had been beaten. The nurse tells me it's a non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. It's not treatable. May has had three rounds of chemo since she was first diagnosed five years ago. Her immune system is shot. The tumor is growing alarmingly fast. She doesn't have much time. How much? Nobody knows. We're not running by the clock. We're on May's time.

Her face is lined and her skin is white as limestone. I feel like I'm looking at the princess in her crystal coffin. There isn't much color in her cheeks, and those generous lips are bluish. There's still a glow under her skin — but the flame is wavering.

She opens her eyes and turns to me. Smiles weakly.

"I think I just got dumped off the boat," she says. Her hands, trembling, go to her hair. Her wig is askew. Good God. I help her to set it right.

"Where are you, baby?" I ask.

"Falling," she says.

"I see you," I say, preparing to catch her when she lands.

She drifts, and so do I. I rest my head on the bed. It's gonna take awhile to absorb the shock of the news. Right now I just feel stupidly at peace and even happy that I'm with her, that we have this precious time.

When I married Cora, May was only eleven. She was still in the family home, under the care of a young nanny named Patricia Pringle. Patricia's true love was pottery. She set up a kiln in the garage, and changed her name from Patricia to Polly, hoping that Polly Pringle's Pottery would catch on.

She made bowls, mostly — very pretty bowls with blue and green glazes, and eventually made a small fortune for herself in burial urns. After May had grown up, she gave her an urn for her own ashes, which I think she still has. It's an indigo vase with silver and green waves running round it, and fishes swimming in and out. I can't bear the thought of May in that urn, but then again, she's a genie, and every genie has to eventually return to her bottle.

The sheets are wet with my tears. This is not the first time this woman has made me cry. I've watered a place in the park where I go whenever May leaves. Cora had no idea how many hiding places she would create when we laid that letter in the ground.

I met Cora in 1956. I was a kid, only 17, and she was 19. Me and my brothers were putting a roof in next door to where Cora lived with her roommate Ali. Cora had curly blond hair and a cherubic face. It was summer. I'll never forget when I first saw her. Ali had come out — she was a flouncy, olive-skinned girl with big breasts that made my brothers gasp and stop working for a moment.

"Are you coming, Cora?" she shouted through the screen door. Enter Cora. She was a vision in a peasant style blouse that had slipped down over a shoulder, and a coral skirt, I remember, because I made the connection between her and coral the moment I heard her name spoken.

I stood in the center of the lawn where I'd set up a saw table, and I said, "Glad you decided to come out, Cora."

She stopped in her tracks, fixed me with those frank blue eyes, registered my sincerity, and laughed. She had a small, sweet smile, straight white teeth. I was smitten by her child-like beauty and her transparent train of thought. I imagined I would never tire of watching her figure things out, and I haven't. I just wish I didn't have to participate in her plans.

Over the days that followed, we started to talk, and one day after work, we took a walk out to a local diner to get a cup of coffee. She always loved coffee, and the stronger, the better. She asked me about my family and I told her I was the youngest brother of seven. Only six of us were still living. My brother Stephen died in 1948. Wandered onto the tracks so pissed he didn't even hear the whistle of the train. Me and my brothers started a construction business in Stephen's name, hoping to renovate the damage to his afflicted soul. Cora said that was weird because her baby sister Mabel died the same year, 1948. She wanted to know how my parents met and I told her that my father, Gordon Underwood, came to Canada in 1910 from Leeds, England. He worked on a farm near Selkirk, Manitoba. One day, a tree fell on him and it broke his back. He met a Metis nurse in hospital who came from the Berens River area and they married. She died giving birth to me.

Cora had stars in her eyes. "I always wished I had native genes," she said.

"Why's that?" I asked.

She shrugged. "I dunno. White people are so bland."

We both thought that was pretty funny. Later, she would joke, "Don't get too close to me, I'm too white." And I would say, "Why don't I give you something red?"

I did, eventually. But we never produced anything pink.

After we'd been dating a few months, she took me over to meet Polly and May. Her "baby sister," as she called May, was eight. She was surrounded by books and toys, but not people. All she had was Polly, who was mostly interested in pots. May seemed to adore her older sister Cora, who would visit most weekends and bring her fabric ends that May would use to play dress-up. The first time I saw her, she was wrapped in a sari and had a little golden star painted on her forehead. She declared herself to be an Indian princess. The sari was blood-red — a good color for her, with her dark hair. She sat beside me, looking regal, holding a plastic gold-painted wand.

"Can you use that wand to turn yourself into something other than a princess?" I asked.

She looked at me like I was daft. I noticed there as a mole on her left cheek. "I can only turn myself into what I am," she said.

That's where we began.

As May's guardian, Cora supervised her upbringing. She would sit with Polly and get an update while I would visit with May. The child wanted to know native stories, so I told her some. I taught her about the seven directions and the wheel, and after a few years had passed, I gave her a medicine bundle with a turquoise heart in it, because by then I'd seen the state of her heart. She kept a formal distance with everyone, except possibly me, and played roles of her own design. Unlike Cora, who always knew where she was going even when she was headed the wrong way, May had no sense of direction. She would look at me and say things like, "Isn't it weird to be here, Uncle Gerald?" Everything seemed completely foreign to her, except for fairies and people who lived in the stars, under the sea, or in animal skins. But human beings were the dullest lot she'd ever encountered on her universal travels. I was fascinated by that little girl, maybe because I never had a sister myself, but mostly because she was pure Manitou, one of the little people who had managed to get into the world somehow, and didn't know how to get out.

I told her a lot of stories, because I had them in my blood. My mother was Norwegian and Cree Indian, and her sisters told me stories, especially my Aunt Renata. They told me that we were made of earth and sky, and that the blend was difficult, but the sun and the moon had been working on it for a long time. They taught me not to reject the white culture — not to reject anything antagonistic because that would harden my heart — and they went on to tell me about the light and the dark brothers who were the creators.

I told those stories to May and she wolfed them down. That girl's spirit needed to be fed so it could root here. I told her most of the stories I knew and then she and Polly started going to the library for the ones I didn't. Cora wasn't the least bit concerned about the time we spent together. She would shine happily when we drove away, saying, "You're going to make a good father, Ger."

When May got into high school, her talents started to unfold, one after the other. There was no end to her gifts. She was soon acting in school plays, organizing events, designing yearbooks and who knows what else — dating all the jocks, probably, and pissing off the cheerleaders. But she'd only ever date anybody once and it soon became clear to her peers that May wasn't going to settle for anybody. It wasn't a matter of her being better than others. It just wasn't in her nature. Rumor flew round (amongst the boys) that May was gay. I asked her once, "Does that trouble you?" She said, "I don't mind. Anyway, I don't know yet. Maybe I am."

By the time she graduated from high school, her modeling career had already begun. It was easy for people to write her off as a social butterfly, though when she landed, no one could dismiss the weight of her intelligence, or the force of her charm. Their discomfort could only be relieved by the fact that she would soon fly.

May was arrestingly beautiful. Still is, but words can't do justice to the beauty she was in her twenties, thirties, and forties, too. You'd look at her once and you'd have to look again. It wasn't just her good bones, or those gorgeous lips, or that selkie body, or the shimmer of wings in the air around her. It was her eyes, those translucent gray eyes. She had a look of absolute vulnerability and wonder, the kind of expression you'd expect Dorothy to have the first time she stepped into Oz. Lost and amazed. It was disconcerting to look into those eyes and then be thrown off guard by some lewd zinger she'd make that would jolt you into the recognition that you were in the presence of an experienced woman. You couldn't not be in love with May. No red-blooded male — gay or straight or sideways — could resist her allure. It was and is a spiritual thing.

Now here she is, laid out in her crystal coffin like Snow White. That prince went all around the world looking for the treasure of the earth, and when he finally found his way to the dwarves who worked in the heart of the mountain, what did he discover but that the greatest gem on the earth was a girl who, to his dismay, was frozen into crystal by the internal pressures of jealousy.

Snow White rose from her bed. Not my princess.

I rest my hand on her belly. The tumor is hard. What must it be like for my precious girl to have this tumor in the place that Molly occupied? It's too much to bear. How do I catch this falling star? I could never hold her. When she lands in my arms, she'll be gone.

The nurse is coming and going. She wants me out of here. But I'm not going anywhere. I can't lose May. I can't. I stroke her mountainous belly. What part did I have in this?

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