Where the Crawdads Sing

by Delia Owens

Marsh is not swamp. Marsh is a space of light, where grass grows in water, and water flows into the sky. Slow-moving creeks wander, carrying the orb of the sun with them to the sea, and long-legged birds lift with unexpected grace—as though not built to fly—against the roar of a thousand snow geese.

Death’s crude pluck, as always, stealing the show.

imagination grows in the loneliest of soils, she

Months passed, winter easing gently into place, as southern winters do. The sun, warm as a blanket, wrapped Kya’s shoulders, coaxing her deeper into the marsh. Sometimes she heard night-sounds she didn’t know or jumped from lightning too close, but whenever she stumbled, it was the land that caught her. Until at last, at some unclaimed moment, the heart-pain seeped away like water into sand. Still there, but deep. Kya laid her hand upon the breathing, wet earth, and the marsh became her mother.

Clouds, gaining ground against the sun, moved weighted but silent overhead, pushing the sky and dragging shadows across the clear water.

But being completely alone was a feeling so vast it echoed,

Maybe Ma was never coming home. Maybe some dreams should just fade away.

No longer did she daydream of winging with eagles; perhaps when you have to paw your supper from mud, imagination flattens to that of adulthood.

For days, Tate didn’t return for the reading lessons. Before the feather game, loneliness had become a natural appendage to Kya, like an arm. Now it grew roots inside her and pressed against her chest.

“I wadn’t aware that words could hold so much. I didn’t know a sentence could be so full.”

AT NIGHT, sitting at the kitchen table, she went over the lessons by kerosene lamp, its soft light seeping through the shack windows and touching the lower branches of the oaks. The only light for miles and miles of blackness except for the soft glow of fireflies.

She waited the next day. Each hour warmed until noon, blistered after midday, throbbed past sunset. Later, the moon threw hope across the water, but that died, too. Another sunrise, another white-hot noon. Sunset again. All hope gone to neutral. Her eyes shifted listlessly, and though she listened for Tate’s boat, she was no longer coiled.

There is no one on Earth you can count on.”

She’d always found the muscle and heart to pull herself from the mire, to take the next step, no matter how shaky. But where had all that grit brought her? She drifted in and out of thin sleep.

Trapped inside, Love is a caged beast, Eating its own flesh. Love must be free to wander, To land upon its chosen shore And breathe.

Kya stood and walked into the night, into the creamy light of a three-quarter moon. The marsh’s soft air fell silklike around her shoulders. The moonlight chose an unexpected path through the pines, laying shadows about in rhymes.

She laughed for his sake, something she’d never done. Giving away another piece of herself just to have someone else.

Tired of being weighted down by hope, she threw three days’ worth of biscuits, cold backstrap, and sardines in her knapsack and walked out to the old falling-down log cabin; the “reading cabin,” as she thought of it. Out here, in the real remote, she was free to wander, collect at will, read the words, read the wild. Not waiting for the sounds of someone was a release. And a strength.

Finally the fear came. From a place deeper than the sea. Fear from knowing she would be alone again. Probably always. A life sentence.

If anyone understood loneliness, the moon would. Drifting back to the predictable cycles of tadpoles and the ballet of fireflies, Kya burrowed deeper into the wordless wilderness. Nature seemed the only stone that would not slip midstream.

“Jodie, I’m so sorry you worried about leaving me. Not once did I blame you. We were the victims, not the guilty.”

“I guess some things can’t be explained, only forgiven or not. I don’t know the answer. Maybe there isn’t one.

Let’s face it, a lot of times love doesn’t work out. Yet even when it fails, it connects you to others and, in the end, that is all you have, the connections.

She imagined taking one step after the other into the churning sea, sinking into the stillness beneath the waves, strands of her hair suspending like black watercolor into the pale blue sea, her long fingers and arms drifting up toward the backlit blaze of the surface. Dreams of escape—even through death—always lift toward the light. The dangling, shiny prize of peace just out of grasp until finally her body descends to the bottom and settles in murky quiet. Safe.

Why she hadn’t embraced the comfort he could give her in this place. It seemed that now, Kya being more vulnerable than ever, was reason to trust others even less. Standing in the most fragile place of her life, she turned to the only net she knew—herself.

A loud purr erupted like a current. She closed her eyes at such easy acceptance. A deep pause in a lifetime of longing.

A lesser male needs to shout to be noticed.

TUTORED BY MILLIONS OF MINUTES ALONE, Kya thought she knew lonely.

She whispered a verse by Amanda Hamilton: “You came again, Blinding my eyes Like the shimmer of sun upon the sea. Just as I feel free The moon casts your face upon the sill. Each time I forget you Your eyes haunt my heart and it falls still. And so farewell Until the next time you come, Until at last I do not see you.”