The air is almost still this night. A light breeze has softened to whisper rumours of distant or mythical lands. Across the water there is another song which is, or was, or will be, sung with the colours of darkness.
Before the day ends, Billy Ben walks on the beach with Rosalind, watching the waves. He is teaching her how to skim stones across the surf. Mostly they use the circular plate like shells of the long dead clams that had lived in the tidal sands, but occasionally one or the other finds a true stone, sculptured by the sea throughout an aeon for their purpose, thin and flat and cool and smooth. They chatter in a mixture of Spanish and the musical tongue the blonde woman has brought with her - a language of their own learned slowly but eagerly over unnumbered placid days in the green world’s eternal tropic summer. They both laugh often, for they are happy in each other’s company. Billy crouches.
“Like this,” he says and spins a darkly patterned shell low and hard into the wind. Perfectly parallel it hits the calm water between two crests.
Skip, skip, skip and it dissolves into the advancing white foam of a swift little breaker.
“Now you try.”
Rosalind holds her shell awkwardly, spanned between thumb and fingers. He takes her hand and shows her how to grip the edges - pantomimes the throw.
Skip, skip. She claps in delight and he smiles with wide white teeth against dark skin as her shell follows his into the ocean of forgotten play - sinking beneath the kindly waves. They run on, bounding and calling barefoot round the shore.
As the light fades at last they sit down near the hut facing fire island. The sand is damp but firm beneath them. Insects simmer in the forest at their backs, promising winged meetings in the night. For a little while they are quiet as the young Mexican remembers the day when the Estranjeros brought this fine lady from their island. Four of the Estranjeros accompanied her in a canoe which they paddled across the straight. She was frightened then, and shy, but she was company. The long loneliness had ended and the imaginary friends he peopled his world with vanished forever into the forest.
Rosalind pushes her fingers into the wet sand, savouring the sensations as it squeezes through her hand. She wriggles her toes, delighting in the freedom. Recently she has cut her dress above the knees and the tender air touching her limbs speaks of new liberty and the end of old formality like a forgotten winter cold. It will all be well here, she knows now. Everything.
The sea glows with a faint blue luminescence from a myriad micro-organisms. Just now and then the breeze brings faint hints of the revelry in the volcano cone - a snatch of song at the limits of hearing.
Then Billy sings. His love song is hesitant at first. the melody is slow and he does not know where it comes from. Twisted out of an old ballad he may have heard but with elements of that alien ceremony, the sea and the breeze, it is totally new. Born of the green world he sings it on the instant, quietly composing, drawing the threads of their lives; thence to be forgotten. Rosalind listens entranced.
And it is thus that the moon finds them as it clears the summit of the volcano. Glancing across silvered beaches it picks out their dark figures; landmarks on its patient journey through the tropical night.
