How it opens
You were born in the worst month of the year, in a cottage that leaned away from the sea as if it meant to walk inland.
Your mother called you Paul, after nobody she could name twice, and loved you the way she loved everything, gently and out of order.
Mrs MargraveRing the bell, love. The gentleman comes when the bell rings, and he will bring you a pony.
Choose
Hang the lantern crooked, the sign that the coast is wrong.
Lead the ponies into the marsh fog yourself, slow as a funeral.
Stand on the cliff and sing the old warning, loud as a chapel choir.