The Buried Giant

How will you and your husband prove your love for each other when you can’t remember the past you’ve shared?’

cushioning some pain

nursing some secret pain somewhere.

“We’re widows, knight. There’s little can be hidden from us now.”

Our memories aren’t gone for ever, just mislaid somewhere on account of this wretched mist.

I’m wondering if without our memories, there’s nothing for it but for our love to fade and die.”

It was almost as if, coming across a picture and stepping inside it, they had been compelled to become painted figures in their turn.

Her grey mane, untied and matted, hung stiffly down past her shoulders, but Axl still felt happiness stir within him at this sight of her in the morning light.

The stranger thought it might be God himself had forgotten much from our pasts, events far distant, events of the same day. And if a thing is not in God’s mind, then what chance of it remaining in those of mortal men?”

“That’s true, good lady, but then we boatmen have seen so many over the years it doesn’t take us long to see beyond deceptions. Besides, when travellers speak of their most cherished memories, it’s impossible for them to disguise the truth. A couple may claim to be bonded by love, but we boatmen may see instead resentment, anger, even hatred. Or a great barrenness. Sometimes a fear of loneliness and nothing more. Abiding love that has endured the years — that we see only rarely.