"It's all right, Bloomy. They don't understand, but I do. Well, mostly. Sort of. You didn't mean for any of it to happen, I think. And besides, it's not like you really knew it would. You didn't understand about the rats. We still don't, not exactly. And that worries me, a little."

Ramona sat next to a cluster of daisy chains she'd given up on meticulously crafting after working at it for the past hour. She'd eventually grown too flustered at the thinness of the flowers' stems; these were field daisies, weeds essentially, not the sort with the nice thick shafts one could slice the tip of one's fingernail through to create a precise incision for pulling another stem into. (The process of daisy chaining was not particularly complicated, but lack of proper floral resources was a set-up for failure, regardless of one's lack of determination.)

"It isn't us. None of it is us. We can't see enough of it to know it all, so there's nothing worth telling anyone. And we promised we'd never tell, anyway," Ramona continued in earnest, speaking to the doll propped against the basket a short distance apart from her. They sat on a white blanket, surrounded by plates and bowls of snacks: a few bright green grapes, a semi-circle of round crackers with a bit of salami and some cheese cubes, an open packet of peanut butter chocolates, one uncapped bottle of Perrier (her mother had taken the other), and various utensils and paper products. On occasion, Ramona would offer a bite of something to her doll, but Bloomy seemed only to care for the chocolates, which the girl was unwilling to share for fear of staining the white fabric of her friend's face, and so she sat in stubborn silence as an act of defiance.

Around the two, the gold and green grasses of the meadow, interspersed with multitudinous wildflowers, waved gently in the sea breeze. Ramona's mother had brought her along today while her father had gone to teach his class, but after sketching a bit and then snacking a little, the woman had decided to wander closer to the water, and her daughter hadn't wanted to go, so Ramona and Bloomy had stayed behind to munch on the remains of their picnic and try their hand at daisy chains. It wasn't like her mother to leave her on her own, Ramona had reflected more than once, but then, her parents had become a little distracted lately, she knew. They all had become a little distracted.

"It's just her way of things," Ramona sighed, staring off at the distant blue waters beneath the endless blue sky.

The impossibility of this gorgeous, sunshiney day seemed nothing more than normal to her. She was a child, after all, and while she bore an understanding keener than most, there was still much she did not know of the world. This world—this strange summery beach world—was one she was finding quite enjoyable, even as odd and unpredictable as it had proven itself to be, but Ramona was beginning to wonder whether the secret things she knew were best kept as secrets, anymore . . .

"Oh it's fine!" she insisted to her white-faced, yarn-haired companion. "I'm not going to say anything. You don't need to worry about me."

A shadow fell suddenly over the picnicking pair.

"Child, might I join you?"

Entirely unsurprised at the deep, Scandinavian-accented voice above, Ramona didn't even look up before replying in obvious annoyance, "Well, I suppose you'll have to, but I'm not all right with it. I was hoping you wouldn't come for a long time."

The man that seated himself across from her on the blanket offered an apologetic expression, yet Ramona couldn't make it out for all the black patterns tattooed across his face. "What have you been discussing with her?"

His hand wafture toward Bloomy annoyed Ramona, but she said nothing, only finally gave him a glance. The man's age was difficult to judge, though he couldn't have been older than her parents. He was dressed something like a pirate, with fitted black pants belted over an open white cotton shirt. His revealed chest showed copious more tattoos, as did his sculpted arms. His hair was black and cut strangely so that it hung straight down one side of his head but not at all on the other, and he wore earrings and a necklace. His forehead, even, was tattooed almost delicately, so that it appeared to have lace across it. His whole affect was strange, but Ramona had expected him, so she wasn't afraid.

"We've not been talking about anything," the girl nonchalantly replied, "except that she wants the chocolates, but I won't give her any."

The man ever so slightly narrowed his eyes. "Well, that isn't very kind of you. We all know Ib—"

"Don't!"

Ramona snapped her command so quickly the six-foot-two man flinched.

"We do not say her name! We made a promise!" the girl added, practically hissing the words. She rarely grew angry; her black hair seemed to float about her white face, and her eyes burned with a rare intensity. "Bloomy and I keep our promises."

The man quickly regained his composure, again took on the bearing of some sort of Viking warrior. "Where is your mother?"

"Why?" Ramona raised an eyebrow.

He picked a grape from the remaining few still attached to their withered vine and popped it into his mouth. "I must speak with her," he said, chewing and swallowing.

Knowing enough of what sort of secret things transpired between adults to be suspicious, Ramona turned her head a bit sideways to study the man. She went over what she knew of him, and it wasn't much, only what she'd been told. He was called The Painted Man, and of course he was part of the show, as were all the others, but there was a cloud about this one that Ramona couldn't pierce with her understanding. There were more like him, the ones she'd not been told a lot or even anything at all about, and they shimmered behind deep waters in her thoughts, inhabitants of a sunken city whose silent sepulchral streets she was unable to walk.

But she had obligations, and she was too young to know how to avoid them. "She went down the hill, toward the sand."

With a curt nod, the man reached for the chocolates, gingerly pinched one between his thumb and forefinger, and, leaning forward, gently placed it in front of the doll. "You let her have it," he ordered before getting to his feet and brushing himself off. "She's earned it as much as you."

Ramona watched the man as he crossed the picnic blanket and headed off through the grass down toward the beach until he eventually disappeared from her vision. Then she looked back at Bloomy, sighed, and decided to leave the chocolate where it was.

Somewhere closer to that in-between space where earth met shore, reveling in the absolute perfection of the sunshine and its accompanying breeze, in the way the concomitant warm and cool kissed her bare arms, her cheeks, the exposed breast above her tie-strapped sundress, Lilia turned carefree circles. She was barefoot, as well, her toes curling in the mixture of sand and grass as tiny crabs scuttled from the path of the smiling, spinning giant above them. Where had this sudden euphoria originated? She'd been sitting with her daughter, enjoying the child's company for lunch, when she'd been so suddenly overwhelmed with a desire to move, to run, to breathe the air and open her arms as if to send out her very soul across the waters of the Atlantic. This sort of joy she'd not felt since she was a child herself, since she had run through the fields beyond her own home, since she'd gone swimming in summery lakes and picked wild blackberries in the mountains, camped in backyard tents and sled hills of snow. Those long-ago childhood fancies . . . they seemed to fill her now, consume her, as if they were all at once set to burst from her fingertips, to empower her with a thousand glimmering, pure memories. She'd been unable to contain herself, to keep from dancing amongst the weeds and flowers, from singing, from spinning. She must've looked like a mad woman, and that was how he first came across her, The Painted Man; he saw her turning like a Whirling Dervish, her cherry-red lips smiling blithely around her laughing white teeth, eyes closed to the rays of the golden ball burning above, black hair shimmering freely behind her. He was there to catch her when she did at last grow dizzy with her own exuberance and tumble backward.

Lilia continued to laugh as she opened her eyes to the vision of a man above, and though she might have been startled had such a person entered her life under any other circumstance, nothing about this moment surprised her. Whatever passion had taken hold would not allow concern, and in fact, the trembling that overtook her when she realized who in fact held her in his strong arms—she'd never seen him before, but she didn't need to. He was the presence from her dreams, his form and features exuding youth and strength and conviction. She was breathless at the beautiful markings spinning in webs across his sculpted chest, his arms, down his nose and around his eyes—he was a work of art, and she wanted to trace the contours of every one of his lines, touch her fingers to his hidden brushstrokes and her lips to the finest of his details.

"I've caught you," he said to her in his deep Scandinavian tone, not tearing his pooling eyes from hers.

Lilia quivered so flutteringly inside she feared responding, couldn't quite inhale enough to form words.

The man smiled at her, pulled in the arm at her back and drew her closer toward him so their noses nearly touched. Lilia widened her eyes but didn't react otherwise. "I must have you," he breathed, his words hot and minty against her face.

"Wh-who are you?" the woman at last managed to whisper, to which he husked,

"Jaska,"

before laying Lilia down upon the ground.

She knew nothing of herself, nothing at all in her expanding mind—saw only the vision of green and golden grass along her periphery, the bluest bright blue sky above this all-encompassing man who protectively, possessively hovered above her. She had no memory of her husband, of her children, of her past life or even hardly of who she was. Lilia could only watch in blushing anticipation as the man removed his shirt and bared his upper body in all its gorgeous patterns; her own anatomy quickly remembered her visions of the previous nights and responded in kind, pumping blood hotly through her perspiring core. She longed to press her mouth against his—oh she would've given anything for it in that moment!—but Jaska had other ideas. His teeth brushed the tender flesh of her neck and Lilia gasped; his muscular chest pressed against her begging breasts and Lilia moaned; his hands pushed up her skirts and bent her knees and he disappeared down beneath the tent of her dress and she, quite astonished, cried out in desperation. It was impossible to contain the carnal bliss, the sheer gratification that undulated throughout her frame. Lilia had never experienced anything like it, anything so wholly consuming, so exhaustingly satisfying. As this stranger brought her physical pleasure beyond what she thought possible, Lilia lost herself in showering scintillations, bioluminescence, flashing sealife electrifying the world around her with each touch, each stroke, each exploration Jaska offered.

After some unknown passage of time, Lilia at last opened her eyes to find the man sliding up beside her in the sand. He kept a hand beneath her skirts, dexterously continued his task as he met her beautiful, begging eyes. She tried to speak, but the pleasure threatening to overpower her once again forced her into silence.

Jaska noticed her tremulant lips. "Shhh," he encouraged her, and she obliged. "Let me worship you." He brought his cheek next to hers, breathed into her ear, "Tomorrow I will take you completely. I will make you mine."

As he spoke the word mine, a physical ecstasy so great seized Lilia that she was lost to everything but its perfection.

She woke to the sound of her daughter's voice. The sun was a good deal lower in the sky, though evening had not yet fallen, and the wind had picked up. Sitting abruptly, the woman found herself lying on the sand and grass, a bit achy from presumably having been there a while. Lilia startled to discover a few sandcrabs on her dress and swept them off with one of her hands, then noticed the rumpled state of her dress and recalled . . .

Jaska.

Sucking in a quick breath, she remembered everything: her strange mood, his arrival, the sexual acts—

"Mom!"

"Oh, God, Ramona!" Lilia turned about and saw her daughter mere yards from her. She'd forgotten hearing the child. What in the world had happened? Had it even happened? No. No, she'd fallen asleep and dreamed, Lilia told herself. Was she sure that'd been a bottle of Perrier she'd grabbed for herself and not something alcoholic? The whole thing had been so odd; she'd felt drunk, or high, or . . . or something. It'd been so strange for her to wander off like that.

She got to her feet.

"I was getting worried about you," Ramona said, reaching her mother at last.

Lilia glanced at her daughter, who held her doll in the crook of one arm. She shook her head, pressed a hand against it. "Sorry, honey. I must've just fallen asleep. I didn't mean to scare you."

Ramona began to say something, but Lilia looked past her daughter, up the hill and into the meadow. Her mind was flooded with memories of what'd happened, of that man. Had it happened? Between her legs, she thrilled dully, the memory of his touch, of what she'd felt . . . oh, it'd happened. It had to have happened. Her body recalled it. There was no doubt of that. And what had he said? Oh, God—he'd said he was returning, tomorrow, to take her. Tomorrow! What had he meant? When? Where? Lilia felt suddenly ridiculous, shameful. She was too old for such things, and she was married! She . . . she'd been unfaithful to Arthur! Not that it—but this was different, and—oh God, oh God . . .

"Are you listening to me? Mother!"

Ramona was pulling on her dress. Lilia at last turned down to look at the girl. "Yes? What? What is it?"

"I've been trying to tell you. I didn't want to answer but they called five times, so I finally did."

Lilia shook her head, confused. "Who? Who called?"

"The hospital," said Ramona, holding up her mother's phone. "They said Dad's been hurt."

Everything came to a halt inside Lilia's thoughts. "Your father?" She snatched the phone from the girl.

"Something about his cuts from the bush."

Without hesitating, Lilia redialed the number she'd missed, and waited to connect with someone. Ramona watched her mother in relief, glad to finally have that weight off of her, anyway. Something was going wrong, now, very wrong. It had to do with those rats, for one thing, and now The Painted Man. He'd done something to her mother, Ramona could tell, just like something had happened to her brother Ivan. They were both getting so distracted. At least Oliver still seemed all right, but who knew how long that would last? If there was one thing Ramona knew, it was that whatever Bloomy had told her, it wasn't enough, and she needed to figure out what was going on with her family before it was too late.