Arc d'X

51

IT WAS ONLY AFTER the priests had come for the body, wrapping it in sheets and taking it from the cell, that Wade examined the remains of the rubble in the box more closely and, piecing together several tiny fragments, realized that with a little patience he could reassemble nearly all of pursuit of happiness. And then he knew that in his possession he had the most forbidden artifact of all, and buried it so deep in his corner of the cell that he gladly risked never retrieving it again, if it meant it would never be obliterated into the ground outside.

In the yard the next day he saw, through the penal walls, the wagon come up the road. The girl at the reins had found the charred wagon out in the lava fields, its horse wandering in confusion looking for a patch of grass if not a familiar street, the blaze of the Bastille still in its eyes. Two large gray dogs ran alongside. Wade watched the wagon pass the wall nearest him, and Polly was met at the colony gates by several priests who loaded the body in the back, draped in the same sheet with which they had wrapped it the night before. If he could have talked to her for only a moment, Wade would have asked whether she had known he was dead or whether she just came a day too late; but all he could do was stand and watch her go, even as the guards barked at him to return to work. She disappeared up the road. She came to the highway that led to the city and crossed the highway, continuing on over the hard lava. She neared the volcano and was wondering how she was going to get the body up beyond the ridge and as far as the crater when, though it might have been simply the sound of the ocean breeze, she stopped the horse to turn and see the breeze lift the sheet right off the body, because she thought she had heard someone say something.

And she watched take flight, like a black moth from his dead mouth, the name of the woman he loved.