STARSHINE, THE OCEAN AND THE UNICORN
Chapter Four                                                                                              Part Sixteen




                  Joe sat cross-legged on the floor in the round tower.  It was night.  Many moons had risen and many glasses of brandy had been drunk since Clare's story had begun.  Joe looked through the window and saw that the moon had waned to a half circle.  He drank back another glass of brandy, it burned through his empty body.
                   As he had listened to Clare he had wanted to reach out and touch her, to hold and be held by her.   But he could not, because he was not George.  He had listened to her story and had understood, but now that the telling was done he understood nothing.  Clare had taken him into her world, he had seen and heard her world but now she was sleeping, she had left him alone in his own world where it seemed to him that nothing could be seen or heard.  His understanding of Clare's world made the confusion of his own more dark.  He sat in a dark room with a black void in his mind and all he had was a sadness that trickled from his eyes because he did not understand.
                   In the feint light of the half moon he looked at the outlines of all the strange objects in the room and he left his blankness to be drawn back through Clare's words.  He knew about the punch bowl filed with earth, he knew about the broken china bride and the dead daughters from the two emptied halves of the barren Russian doll.  He knew about the shells and the wooden Noah's ark and about the picture on the wall.  But he did not know about the school desk beneath the window or the puzzle at his side.  He made up the sides of the jigsaw puzzle and joined them to the four corners, but there was nothing in between.  Nothing but the blackness of the void.  Then a cloud covered the half moon and the black void darkened and in it Joe forgot Clare's world and lost his mind. He saw pearls sinking in black water.  They were white and pure and perfect.  He wanted them. They were beautiful.  They were precious.  They were jewels.  Their loss terrified him.  To watch them sink was like death.  He grasped and clutched at the black water but the pearls had disappeared.