in the village square of another country, he is about to be short-whipped a dozen times as she stands with her father who insists on pressing charges under Canadian law. She looks younger than she did last night, but older than the sixteen years he now knows her to be; there is time to remember it all: The swarming goldfish looking more like orange peels thrown by workers years before the quarry sprang a leak filling itself to the brim, leaving a train loaded with rock to rust on its tracks now blurred far beneath the raft gone lopsided by his weight. Before he was dry from his swim from shore, she was lifting herself aboard, tanned and untouchable as any goddess rising from the sea of a dream. A fish nibbled at her toes, and he shared her surprise; they propped their heads on their hands and talked for the moment it takes to know that there are no words. Lying together in the dusk, he ran his hands through the water, teasing the fish, her fingers finding his, her arms wet still and warming, her back stretched like young leather, softly oiled, her legs straight out and inching toward his until they gave heat the length of his body. They slid from the raft and swam in silence to the farthest rim where the pines had spent years preparing the shore. He lifted her weight and laid her down at his side to watch the fish pucker their