When I was a girl, I lived on an island. Nobody lived there but me, my brother, and my dad. In the evenings, all my work done, I wandered the sandy trails through trees hung with moss, until I came to one or another beach. There were five beaches, each with its own character. My favorite was Swimming Beach. Swimming beach had sand sloping into deep indigo water. Three others were edged with swampy, stinging grass leading to shallow mossy water. These were only good for watching boats pass in the distance, and getting bitten by insects. Although I spent a lot of time in the water of Swimming Beach, it was Shadow Beach that drew me again and again. Not because it was any shadier than the other four, but because, while I played there, turning up shells, rocks, and bones in the white pearlescent sand, I often had the sensation that something moved in the corner of my sight. Whether it were a fish, just disappearing in the blue-caps, the arc of an bird just dropping into the trees behind me, or a shadowy person moving through their trunks, no time I spent at Shadow Beach was without their intrusion.
