“There was a girl, and her uncle sold her. Put like that it seems so simple. No man, proclaimed Donne, is an island, and he was wrong. If we were not islands, we would be lost, drowned in each other’s tragedies. We are insulated (a word that means, literally, remember, made into an island) from the tragedy of others, by our island nature and by the repetitive shape and form of the stories. The shape does not change: there was a human being who was born, lived and then by some means or other, died. there. You may fill in the details from your own experience. As unoriginal as any…

“…So what I want to know is why it is that I can no longer find you, in my mind. You are still there, just, but you are there like a ghost, a will o’ the wisp. Not long ago you burned–your heart burned–in my mind like silver fire. But after that night in the inn it became patchy and dim, and now it is not there at all.” “Could it be that the heart that you seek is no longer my own? …I have given my heart to another.” “The boy? The one in the inn? With the unicorn?” “Yes.” “You should have let me take it back then,…