“Go on,” RuthClaire said.
So with the urn in my arms the way small children sometimes carry a rubber boot into the water to give them both ballast and a fragile sense of security, I carried Tiny Paul into the shallows of Caicos Bay. Like his father, he was home. Without looking back at the people who had sent me, I sowed the murdered child’s ashes on the murmuring inlet. Those that stuck to my palm I washed away in the gentle lapping of the evening tide. They weren’t inconsequential, I told myself, and they weren’t lost: They were afloat in the consciousness of God.
And I tried like crazy to believe it.
About the Author
Michael Bishop is the author of the Nebula Award-winning novel No Enemy But Time, the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award-winning novel Unicorn Mountain, the Shirley Jackson Award-winning short story, “The Pile” (based on notes left behind on his late son Jamie’s computer), and several other novels and story collections, including The Door Gunner and Other Perilous Flights of Fancy: A Retrospective, edited by Michael H. Hutchins. He also writes poetry and criticism, and has edited the acclaimed anthologies Light Years and Dark, three volumes of the annual Nebula Awards collections, and, more recently, A Cross of Centuries: Twenty-Five Imaginative Tales About the Christ, and, with Steven Utley, Passing for Human. Soon to appear is his novel for young persons, Joel-Brock the Brave and the Valorous Smalls, dedicated to the Bishops’ exemplary grandchildren, Annabel English Loftin and Joel Bridger Loftin. Michael Bishop lives in Pine Mountain, Georgia, with his wife, Jeri, a retired elementary school counselor who is now an avid gardener and yoga practitioner. They share a house with far, far too many books.
Copyright
A Fairwood Press Book
September 2013
Copyright © 1985 Michael Bishop
All Rights Reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Fairwood Press
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Bonney Lake, WA 98391
Cover illustration & design by
Paul Swenson
Book design by
Patrick Swenson
First published in the United States of America by Arbor House Publishing Company in July 1985,
an imprint of Grafton Books,
a division of the Collins Publishing Group in November 1987.
ISBN13: 978-1-933846-39-2
First Fairwood Press Edition: September 2013
Printed in the United States of America
eISBN: 978-1-62579-328-7
Electronic version by Baen Books