Tours of the Black Clock

4

SHE KNEW HE’D LEAVE someday. When he was eleven he got it into his head he wanted to be a monk. Every day he built a small cathedral out of the iceblocks in the dirt; after a while all that was left of his monkdom were the ice cathedrals on which he would lie and listen to the crackling of the melting blocks. It seemed like the sound of ticking. It would be many years later, when he was sailing the boat back and forth to the island, that he’d forgive the men who found release in the legs of his mother. It would be many years before he forgave her, too.