‘I’ll sleep here,’ said Evelyn. She looked up at her sister and smiled. ‘It’s all right… Alicia?’
‘Yes.’
‘I won’t ever wake up,’ she said with that strange wisdom. ‘I wanted to do something and now I can’t. Will you do it for me?’
‘I’ll do it,’ Alicia whispered.
‘For me,’ Evelyn insisted. ‘You won’t want to.”
‘I’ll do it.’
‘When the sun is bright,’ Evelyn said, ‘take a bath in it. There’s more, wait.’ She closed her eyes. A little furrow came and went on her brow. ‘Be in the sun like that. Move, run. Run and… jump high. Make a wind with running and moving. I so wanted that. I didn’t know until now that I wanted it and now, I… oh, Alicia! ’
‘What is it, what is it?’
‘There it is, there it is, can’t you see? The love, with the sun on its body!’
The soft wise eyes were wide, looking at the darkling sky. Alicia looked up and saw nothing. When she looked down again, she knew that Evelyn was also seeing nothing. Not any more.