Ahab's Wife by Sena Jeter Naslund Page A

seemed to cut the blackness. It was as though a star had come down to speak to us. The sides of the light flared like a megaphone, and what the light said was Loud, Loud, Loud .
    â€œMy senses are confused,” I said.
    â€œIt is a wondrous thing,” my mother said.

CHAPTER 9 : A Difficult Farewell
    A T HOME , in Kentucky, I had liked to stand my paper dolls against the windowpane so that they were surrounded by light. On the Lighthouse, as we moved in the morning of the first day, my mother, uncle, aunt, and cousin seemed similarly defined to my eye, as though they stood always against brightness. Though the cabin window’s light had seemed to elevate the dolls and make them more important than mere flats of paper, here the light almost overwhelmed the human figures—my mother, my aunt and uncle, my little cousin. Four-take-away-one would leave but three to populate the moated Lighthouse. No, add one. Me.
    We all worked outdoors that day. Mother and Aunt Agatha sat in chairs on the little pier and mended fishing nets. Frannie and I frolicked about, at Aunt’s particular command, which countermanded my mother’s suggestion that we take up the hoes—Frannie had a small one—and cultivate the soil between the rows of onions and radishes. To please Frannie, I consented to splashing water on the ground to make mud pies. From a dirty little basket, she promptly lifted a nest of cunning tin dishes with fluted edges just for the purpose of holding mud dainties. Frannie informed me one of the flat rocks was the oven-rock, and there we would leave the pies to bake.
    I noted that Frannie, like myself when I was younger, used far too much water in the mixing of her pies, so that they were unnecessarily soupy, and would surely take a prolonged time to firm. But I saidnothing. At one point, I noticed some small, purplish rocks, and I said that we might pretend they were currants and raisins and add them to the batter, but Frannie objected. “I save them for him,” she said.
    â€œFor whom?”
    She gestured toward the tower, and I noted Uncle up on the encircling platform washing the windows of the lantern house.
    â€œFor your father?”
    â€œNo. For him.” She gestured again, as before. “For the Giant. I’m making him a collar of all the prettiest stones.”
    Still I felt confused.
    â€œI’ll show you. The collar is on the ground around him. Like a path.”
    She scampered up the flat rocks till she reached the base of the tower, and there I saw several patches of stones, some dun, some purplish.
    â€œThe colors show up best when they’re wet.” She picked up a small dun rock. “These turn golden.” She licked the rock and held it toward me, and it was like a smooth lump of gold. “And those purple are red as rubies”—I reached out and took her hand to restrain her—“when they’re wet.”
    â€œWhy do you do this?” I replaced the golden stone among its dull fellows.
    She shrugged. “I like to.” And she ran back down the boulders to our mud kitchen on the edge of the garden.
    I sensed that I would be strangely caught between the adults and the child. But as I spooned my pie into its mold, I knew there was pleasure in the idea. I would be who I liked here. No one wished to constrain or define me. And I liked my kinfolk.
    I walked down to the pier where my aunt and mother were sitting, their laps covered with nets, and asked, “What kind of light is this, here on the Island?”
    Both women looked at me with open mouths. Then Aunt reached out her arm and swooped me on top of her lap onto the net.
    â€œWhy, look! I’ve caught me an Una!” she exclaimed, and she kissed my cheek heartily.
    I wondered where the needle was, and she held it out, as though to answer my question, at arm’s length, and the sunshine caught its tip like a star.
    â€œThis is the light of unbridled Nature,”