Was there physical substance after death? She wondered — more often now that she was about to die — but she did not know. She hoped there was. She would like to hold her son once more and tell him that she loved him.
And, perhaps, somehow she would find Martin, and the best lover she had ever had would lie with her again.
She lay down in her hut, wrapped herself in her thin coverings and closed her eyes. Death came and it seemed to her that she was borne off upwards inside a great beam of light.
She thought she saw Arthur and, behind him, another.
Arms open in greeting, a smile on his still-handsome face, Martin stood there waiting for her. And, an answering smile on her own lips, flying across the misty ground as if she were a young woman once again, Sirida ran to meet him …