I Will Return

“Some lives are not lived once but over and over, until the earth itself

remembers.”

The Cornish Gazette

13th April, 1938

LOCAL MAN RETURNS AFTER BEING PRESUMED DEAD

Three years after his body was recovered from the Helford estuary, William Covington, 26, has returned to Cornwall, claiming to have been “abroad” during his absence.

No official records have surfaced to explain his survival. Friends and family describe him as unchanged in appearance, despite the passing years.

When asked for comment, Mr. Covington simply replied:

“I have always been here.”

The Manor Gardens, Cornwall — 1921

The heat of late summer lay heavy upon the gardens, pressing the scent of salt and roses into the humid air until it clung to the skin like damp silk. Beyond the clipped yews and tangled hedgerows, the murmur of the sea carried faintly on the wind, its hush and roar folding into the distant cries of gulls. Somewhere among the lavender beds, the bees droned lazily, their hum as steady and low as a remembered lullaby.

Two children had climbed high into the great copper beech at the heart of the garden, its branches spreading wide and ancient above the manicured lawns. The boy crouched on a limb just above her, his hands loose against the bark polished smooth by generations of climbing. Below him, the girl clung to a thinner branch, sunlight spilling through the canopy and catching the pale hollow of her cheek.

Her stockings and boots lay hidden at the roots below, tucked carefully behind the curved knot of wood where Nurse would not see them. The bark was cool beneath her bare feet, the breeze soft against her legs, and the simple wildness of it thrilled her. She knew she would be scolded later; her mother would frown at the dirt-stained pinafore and perhaps reprimand her for “behaving like a farm child.” But she had never been one to mind the rules.

“I will reach the top before you do,” she called softly, her words carrying on the hush of the wind.

“No, you will not. You will fall,” the boy replied, though there was no warning in his voice, only something calm, almost certain.

“I will not.”

She shifted her weight, moving higher, her toes navigating the random burls and galls of the tree. For a moment, all was still. Even the bees seemed to pause, their hum faltering as though the garden itself had caught its breath.

Then came the faint splintering crack of wood giving way, and the girl tipped backward in a single, soundless motion, her arms flung wide as though yielding herself to the air. The sunlight flashed against her dress, a pale blur against the shadows below, and then she was gone.

Above her, the boy did not move. He gripped the branch with both hands, his breath shallow, his gaze fixed upon the place where she had fallen. He watched until the leaves closed over her absence, whispering softly in the restless Cornish wind.

Journal Entry — 2nd August, 1921

I have sat here for hours, pen in hand, unable to make sense of the words I ought to write. The house is very still, save for the steady ticking of the longcase clock in the hall and the faint sighing of the wind beneath the eaves. Even the sea seems subdued tonight, its roar softened as though it, too, has fallen into mourning.

My little girl is gone.

William Covington was with her.

I write the words because I must see them, else I cannot believe them. She fell this afternoon from the great copper beech in the garden, the one she loved so dearly, the one I had forbidden her to climb so high. Nurse insists it was quick, that she did not suffer, yet the sound of it will not leave me: the faint crack of splintering wood, the silence that followed. It was deeper than any scream.

I cannot bear how the restless fluttering of the leaves continues, folding over what has happened as though the tree itself conspires to hide it. I had been sunning close by, and that unnatural hush, that dreadful pause, was absolutely horrid.

The Covington boy has been staying with us this summer, as he so often does while his parents are abroad. He has always been quiet, though never timid, and yet since the accident he has scarcely uttered a word. He sits in the nursery now with her doll clutched in his hands, pale as chalk, his gaze fixed on nothing. I have not had the heart to send him home to his aunt, though I cannot bear to look at him without thinking of how they were together, high in the branches.

It was an accident. It must have been. And yet I find myself staring at that tree and thinking of my grandmother’s words:

“Some places keep what has fallen, not as memory but as recurrence; every sorrow, every slip, every scream returning on the wind as though time itself had never moved on.”

Foolishness, I know, and yet the thought will not leave me.

Tomorrow, I must write to Mrs. Covington. God help me, I do not know how I will tell her.

I cannot write my daughter’s name. Not yet.

Perhaps tomorrow.

E.

Journal Entry — 14th August, 1938

Last night, I drowned again.

The memory clings like salt to my skin: the cold pressing against my ribs, the weightless pull of the sea drawing me under, my hair lifting above me in long, pale ribbons unraveling into the dark. Yet, I awoke here, dry and warm, the seagulls crying beyond the window as though nothing had happened.

Sometimes I think the water remembers me, even when I cannot remember myself.

The tide has erased every trace of me. No one remembers.

But I do.

I dream of another woman still beneath the surface, her fingers reaching upward, her hair tangled like kelp. Sometimes, when I hold my breath, I feel her inside me, still struggling, still drowning.

I no longer know which life belongs to me.

Vivienne

Cornwall, 1938

She sat at her dressing table, brushing out her damp hair, though she could not recall bathing. The gulls screamed somewhere beyond the cliffs, their cries carried by a wind that rattled the drawn windows.

She had woken that morning with the peculiar sense of being watched, though the room was empty and the sea lay calm beyond the window. The feeling clung to her, as though the walls themselves remembered someone she had forgotten.

Her journal lay open beside the mirror. She didn’t remember writing the entry, yet her handwriting sloped across the page in ink still fresh.

A knock startled her.

“Miss Vivienne?”

Miss Penrose, the housekeeper, eased the door open without waiting.

“A letter for you, miss. From London.”

Vivienne took it with trembling fingers. The handwriting on the envelope stopped her breath.

William Covington.

She hadn’t seen the name in three years — not since the spring when his body was pulled from the estuary, tangled in reeds and eelgrass.

But the letter was dated yesterday.

She broke the seal with numb hands.

My dearest Viv,

It’s been too long, hasn’t it? Forgive me. I’ve only just returned from abroad, and I find myself longing for the Cornish air and your company. Might I call upon you tomorrow?

William

Cornwall, 1938 — The Cliffs

The wind carried the taste of salt and heather as Vivienne climbed the narrow path that curled along the cliffside, the sea far below shifting like molten glass beneath a veil of mist. The air was damp and heavy, the kind that clung to the skin, and her skirt caught at the wild gorse as though the land itself meant to hold her back.

The path slipped beneath her boots, as though the earth remembered his warning: You will fall.

She might have turned away. She had thought about it, more than once, but the letter had left her restless all through the night, its words curling around her thoughts like sea fog, impossible to escape.

When she reached the crest, the wind struck harder, pulling strands of her hair into her mouth and eyes. She lifted a hand to shield herself and saw him there, standing at the very edge where the world dissolved into air and water.

William.

For a moment she thought her knees might fail her, for he was precisely as she remembered him: the same dark coat belted against the wind, the same lean, unyielding posture, his hair swept back by the salt breeze. And yet there was something different she could not name, something beneath the surface, as if the light did not catch him in quite the same way it touched the rest of the world.

She wanted to call his name, but the sound stayed trapped in her throat. Instead, she approached slowly, her boots sliding on loose stone, the gulls circling above in wide, shrieking arcs.

When he turned, it was as if no time had passed at all.

“You came,” he said, his voice carrying easily across the wind, smooth and low,

with the same familiar lilt that once belonged to quiet evenings and murmured

secrets. Then, after a pause, his gaze deepened.

“This feels familiar, does it not?”

Vivienne froze, the words striking somewhere deep beneath memory, though she could not say why.

“I should not have,” she said at last, though the words came weakly, barely more than breath. “You are…”

“Dead?” He smiled faintly, as though amused by the thought. “No, Vivienne. Not dead. Only gone.”

Journal Entry

I remember now.

It has come back to me in pieces, slow as tidewater creeping over sand, pulling at what was buried until nothing remains hidden. The memory had been waiting all along, deep beneath the surface, and now it rises, cold and salt-heavy, as though it was meant to find me again.

It was night on the cliffs, the wind high and wild, tearing at my skirt and driving the taste of brine into my mouth. The sea below was restless, its waves breaking white against the rocks, their thunder folding into the roar of the wind so that the world was nothing but sound and darkness and the pull of the deep. Above us, the moon poured its silver light over the cliffs as though to bear witness.

William was there. I see his face as clearly as the day it happened, pale beneath the flickering spill of moonlight, his eyes fixed on mine with a kind of terrible brightness. We had quarreled. I know that much, though the words blur like ink bled by rain. There was anger in them, sharp and unyielding, and something beneath it I did not want to name, even then.

I turned to go. I remember the scrape of my boots against the stone, the raw edge of the wind pressing against my cheek, and then his hand on my arm, sudden and hard.

There was shouting. I think I struck him. Or perhaps it was he who struck me. The memory slips between us like mist, never settling, always shifting, yet what followed I cannot forget: the sharpness of his push, the tearing of fabric beneath my fingers as I caught at him, refusing to fall alone.

And then we were both weightless, flung into the void together. The world turned upside down. The stars wheeled above us, cold and careless, and the roar of the sea filled my ears until there was nothing else. No anger. No fear. Only the deep, claiming us both.

The water closed over us, dark and merciless, and for the briefest moment our hands found each other, fingers slipping against fingers until they were gone.

I know now that this is not the first time I have fallen.

I cannot see his face in every life, but I know his hand. I have always known his hand.

The memory of another life stirs faintly: a summer long ago, two children high in the branches of the copper beech, the sunlight bright and hot on their faces, the air heavy with the scent of roses and salt. I cannot quite see the boy’s face, but the wind moves through the leaves, and I think, perhaps, I have felt his hand before.

And always, always, there is the falling.

And still, I return.

Vivienne