“Our child did not survive,” she insisted. “This is not a thing that one forgets, no matter how old one lives to be.”

I knew better than to keep trying to convince her it was only her imagination. This was another argument that I simply could not win.

It was clear that she was not speaking to me, but for herself, when she added, “It was a mercy, it had to be. It had to be.”

Since I could not persuade her this medieval child had never existed, I decided to concentrate on our current lives.

“You’re not going to die, Marianne. There are no Three Masters.”

“All my hearts are gone.”

“Feel this.” I took her hand in my own, and I pressed it to her chest. “Your heart is still beating.”

“For now. What comes next depends on you.” She looked out over the ocean for a few moments before finally whispering, even though the nearest people were dozens of yards down the beach, “Do you remember what you said when I was leaving Brother Heinrich’s house before the mercenaries arrived? You promised that our love would not end.”

I remained silent, not wanting to encourage her, as she pulled her arrowhead necklace up over her head. “This has always been yours, and someday you’ll know what to do with it.”

“I don’t want it,” I said.

She pressed it into my hand anyway. “I’ve kept it all this time so that I could return it to you. It will protect you.”

I could tell she would not let me refuse it, so I took it. But so she would not think that I was endorsing her story, I said, “Marianne, I don’t believe this was ever blessed by Father Sunder.”

She leaned her head into the crook of my shoulder and said, “You’re a wonderful liar.”

And then she asked a question she had never asked before.

“Do you love me?”

Our bodies were pressed into each other, our chests touching. I’m certain she could feel my heart racing. My birth-scar was against the place where, under her sweater, she had carved my name into her breast.

Do you love me?

I had never admitted aloud to anything more than “caring” for her. I had rationalized that she knew the truth without my speaking it. But really, I was just a coward.

“Yes.”

For so long, I had wanted to confess myself.

“Yes. I love you.”

It was time to stop failing her, so I brushed back the wild cords of her hair and poured out the words that had been in the crucible of my heart, becoming pure, since the first moment I had met her.

“I spent my entire life waiting for you, Marianne, and I didn’t even know it until you arrived. Being burned was the best thing that ever happened to me because it brought you. I wanted to die but you filled me with so much love that it overflowed and I couldn’t help but love you back. It happened before I even knew it and now I can’t imagine not loving you. You have said that it takes so much for me to believe anything, but I do believe. I believe in your love for me. I believe in my love for you. I believe that every remaining beat of my heart belongs to you, and I believe that when I finally leave this world, my last breath will carry your name. I believe that my final word-Marianne-will be all I need to know that my life was good and full and worthy, and I believe that our love will last forever.”

There was a moment in which we just held each other, and then she stood up and began walking towards the ocean. She peeled off her clothing as she went and the moonlight made her skin seem all the whiter. By the time she reached the water she was entirely nude, ghostly in her pale brilliance. There she turned and faced me for a moment, under stars that sparkled like frost through the bitter cold; she stood as if trying to memorize what I looked like, looking back at her.

“See?” Marianne said. “You do have God.”

She turned away from me and waded calmly into the ocean. The water climbed up her legs and back, and soon it shrouded the tattooed wings inked into the alabaster of her skin. She leaned forward and began to stroke out into the vastness of the ocean, her black mess of hair trailing behind.

I didn’t do anything but watch her move away from me until, at last, the waves swallowed the whiteness of her shoulders.

After a quarter hour Bougatsa began to howl terribly and turned in agitated circles, imploring me to do something. But I just sat there. So he ran into the tide, ready to swim, until I called him back. I knew the water was too cold and it was already too late. He trusted me enough to do as I said, but he whimpered as he lay at my feet. Still, his eyes remained hopeful. It was as though he believed that if only he waited long enough, eventually you would come wading back to us, out of the ocean.

XXXIII.

Everyone agreed that Sayuri was exceptionally beautiful in her gown. Her mother, Ayako, cried happily in the front row and her father, Toshiaki, kept raising his hand to cover his happily trembling upper lip. When Gregor slipped the ring onto her finger, Sayuri’s smile had never been more radiant.

It was an August wedding, in a garden under a cloudless blue sky. Luckily there was a gentle breeze; my tuxedo didn’t allow my skin to breathe properly. Special arrangements had been made to ensure that the groomsmen, of whom I was one, would stand under a large elm tree during the ceremony; it was one of the many kindnesses shown to me by the bridal couple. I was surprised that they had invited me into the wedding party at all, despite the closeness we’d grown into, but neither Gregor nor Sayuri seemed to mind that there would be a monster in their wedding pictures.

Technically, my date was the bridesmaid opposite me, but really, my escort was Jack Meredith. She managed mostly not to embarrass me, despite the massive amount of Scotch she consumed later during the reception. Clearly there was nothing romantic about her accompanying me, but we’d been spending a fair amount of time together in the preceding months. At some point, she had discovered that she could actually stand me. Our new understanding was almost a friendship, although I won’t go quite that far.

For their wedding gift, I gave Sayuri and Gregor the Morgengabe angel. They looked at it strangely, not knowing what to make of this strange little statue, and asked if Marianne Engel had carved it. I didn’t try to explain that, apparently, I had; nor did I attempt to explain that, despite its age and weathering, it was the finest gift I could give them.

At the reception Sayuri would not allow herself any champagne, because her pregnancy was just starting to show. There had been some debate about whether the wedding should occur before or after the birth, but Gregor is an old-fashioned sort of man. He wanted the child to be “legitimate,” so he and Sayuri flew to Japan, where he hired a translator to convey his honorable intentions to Toshiaki. Sayuri could have done this herself but Gregor did not want her to translate, to her own father, his request to marry her. When Toshiaki granted permission, Ayako cried and bowed many times while apologizing-although for what, Gregor was not quite sure. After Ayako wiped dry her eyes, they all drank tea in the garden behind the house.

Sayuri’s parents did not seem bothered in the least that she was living abroad or marrying a foreigner, nor that she was well past the age of fresh Christmas cake. (In fact, Ayako pointed out that, as greater numbers of Japanese women were getting married later in life, the cutoff age for spinsterhood was no longer twenty-five. Single women who reached the age of thirty-one were now being called New Year’s Eve noodles.) The only thing about the marriage that troubled Sayuri’s parents, just slightly, was that she had decided to take her husband’s family name. They privately lamented that “Sayuri Hnatiuk” lacked any sense of poetry and, despite their best efforts, they could not learn how to pronounce it correctly.