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hint of trouble,” says Isabelle. “It’s loving someone and having them completely ignore your love.” But Isabelle feels less convinced. She thinks of the stories she is drawn to, the heroines she has portrayed in her photographs—Guinevere, Beatrice. Is she attracted to these stories partially because she has seen them depicted so many times by male artists, by people like Robert Hill? Maybe, as a woman, she should resist these stories, not embrace them?
    “Ophelia,” says Annie.
    “Ophelia,” says Isabelle, standing up. She no longer wants Ophelia to drown. She wants her to not care a whit about Hamlet, not bother about his love. Why does she need to drown herself anyway? Why can’t she just love someone more appropriate?
    The sun has made runnels of light on the water, coming down from the green boughs above. There is a patch of light at Annie’s throat, like a word lying on her skin. The delicate line of collarbone looks as frail and solid as a bird’s wing.
    “What do you want me to do?” asks Annie.
    “Ophelia,” says Isabelle again. “Maybe you’re not going to drown yourself.”
    “But what about the spurned love?”
    “Well, maybe this time you’re just going to think about drowning yourself over Hamlet. Consider it.” Isabelle moves back to her camera, back to get perspective on Annie and the stream. “Besides, this stream isn’t really deep enough to drown in. You would have to make a tremendous effort to die here. I think we’ll just offer it up as a possibility.” Isabelle plucks a wild orchid from the stream bank, tucks it into the turned-down collar of Annie’s dress. The flower droops towards Annie’s throat. Something young and natural, considering defeat. “Put your hand in the water again.”
    Annie trails her hand in the stream, playing scales of watery notes with her fingers. She is glad that Isabelle has decided to let Ophelia live. Ophelia wouldn’t want to drown herself on such a fine sunny day, Annie is sure of that. No matter how much she loved Hamlet. And really, wouldn’t Ophelia have thoughts and feelings that had nothing to do with Hamlet at all? Annie tilts her head up to Isabelle. I am alive, she says to herself. She can feel the pulse of the water playing against her hand. I am alive, and I am everything.
    “Perfect,” says Isabelle, from behind the camera. “Don’t move.”
    *
    Eldon cannot stop thinking about Annie Phelan and the story she told him that afternoon when they walked out together. Her story seems more clear to him every day that passes. He remembers the angle of the sun on the fields, the sounds in the hedgerows. How when she started talking, telling him about her brothers and parents, the outside world thinned to nothing and all he could hear was her voice, all he could see was the road she described her parents working on. A famine road. Eldon has heard various stories of the Irish plight during the famine. The famine seems recent because there are still so many Irish people living in England. A lot of them brought the hunger sickness with them. Eldon has memories of walking with his father in London twenty years ago and seeing entire families huddled against brick walls, too sick to stand or talk, their hands out for money, their eyes dark and blank. He remembers seeing an Irish woman walking the streets with a basket. She was a “pure-finder,” collecting up dog excrement to sell to the tanyards. Poor wretch, said his father. That must be the only work she is able to get.
    And now, this summer, Eldon is reminded of the famine again because of the cattle plague that has descended on England. A mysterious swift-moving disease, the “rinderpest” has devastated the dairy herds. On almost every farm now there are massive graves dug for the carcasses. In Ireland, twenty years ago, Eldon knows there were similar mass graves for the victims of the famine. Often, at the side of these vast pits would be a coffin with a sliding bottom so that a