The invitation had been given. Emilie stepped into the room.

  A woman from far-away countries sat in the master bedroom. How forward of her.

  Emilie felt affronted to be commanded so, and in her own house no less. At the same time, the woman had a presence which demanded attention. There was a promise in her, of scaling heights as great as the mountains beyond the fog. She was like a mother to the assemblage of strangers; Emilie had heard her voice ringing through the house, cajoling and guiding. She had felt her exasperation too. It drew Emilie toward her, even as she wished to pull away from the woman. Love, duty, resentment, forgiveness; love, duty, resentment, forgiveness. The woman sitting at the writing desk had a tidal pull to her, in which it would be all too easy to lose oneself.

  The bedroom looked all wrong to Emilie. That bed was not her bed. It was far too grand: a four-poster, like something out of a painting. Had her husband really permitted such changes to happen? How had he afforded it? The foreign woman's belongings were strewn across the bed and other furnishings. They barely could be called outer clothes, so thin - and were those trousers? Yes, on the chest before the bed lay a pair of dark trousers, and the woman from far-off countries wore a pair right this moment, similar to the man in the second-best bedroom. At least her trousers were neat, form-fitting (scandalous), and had no holes at the knees. Her hair was done up tidily in a plait over her shoulder, and for all that her clothing was odd and too revealing, there was an elegance to its lines and the subtle choices of pastel colours. In this; in her posture; in the fine angles of her face; and in the way her hand wrote on the strange tablet; there was a studiousness to her. One might assume she was someone of an improper trade, given how she had put herself in this occupied bedroom. Yet there was only the air of a scholar to her, nothing of licenctiouness.

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  And yet.

  This woman was not quite right. She could not hear the cry. The roaring hush of the lake water was too loud in her ears instead, stultifying her.

  Emilie could not stop here. She needed someone more sensitive to the wail which rent her heart with every moment it went ignored.

  Then the woman stopped writing. She spoke some words to the air, and Emilie rose to her fullest height. Had she been summoned? Though she did not understand the English words, she was sure the woman from far-away places had spoken her name.

  After speaking, the woman closed her eyes and placed her hands flat on the desk. Her breathing grew deep. Emilie was drawn in, as if every breath was the haul of mariners pulling a long boat out of the waves. The woman at the desk sought her for some purpose; knew she was present even if, like her companions, she could not see Emilie; her questing desire reached from within her to summon Emilie in -

  and just as Emilie was sure the woman would pull her within, the woman huffed with frustration and slapped her palms on the wooden desk. The pull was gone, and Emilie was allowed to escape to the doorway.

  She looked back at the black-haired woman from distant lands. Emilie felt pity for her. There was a strong, powerful desire in her to know the unknowable; so too, was there an impassable barrier within which would not allow her to find it. She was too much in the world. Accolade and achievement surrounded her; how Emilie knew this, she could not say, only that it was in the woman's bearing; and these things anchored her here, grasping which only begot yet more grasping, never satisfaction.

  Emilie fled. She could not allow herself to be pulled into this woman's tide, not if she wanted the plaintive cry to be answered.

  This woman would never hear it; her ears were trained to listen to the music in herself alone. Not the lone voice keening, yet undiscovered.