At first Brian could find no source for the faint light, the dim orange with a hint of motion that had no right to be here. He peered into the gloom of the auditorium, fixed his eyes on the oblong of blacker shadow that was the door he meant to use, but it told him nothing.
The windows, of course. He had almost forgotten there were any. The light, hardly deserving the name, was coming through them. But sunset was surely well past; he had been here a long time, delaying and brooding before he played. Sunset should not flicker.
So there was some kind of fire on the mainland. There had been no thunderstorm. How could fire start, over there where no one ever came?
He stumbled a few times, swearing petulantly, locating the doorway again and groping through it into the Hall of Music. The windows out here were just as dirty; no use trying to see through them. There must have been a time when he had enjoyed looking through them.
He stood shivering in the marble silence, trying to remember.
He could not. Time was a gradual eternal dying. Time was a long growth of dirt and ocean salt, sealing in, covering over forever.
He stumbled for his cave, hurrying now, and lit two candles. He left one by the cold stove and used the other to light his way down the stairs to his raft. Once down there, he blew it out, afraid. The room a candle makes in the darkness is a vulnerable room. With no walls, it closes in a blindness. He pulled the raft by the guide-rope, gently, for fear of noise.
He found his canoe tied as he had left it. He poked his white head slowly beyond the sill, staring west.
Merely a bonfire gleaming, reddening the blackness of the cliff.