NE TIME in April there was a full moon, and the sea was covered with ice. Sophia woke up and remembered that they had come back to the island and that she had a bed to herself because her mother was dead. The fire was still burning in the stove, and the flames flickered on the ceiling, where the boots were hung up to dry. She climbed down to the floor, which was very cold, and looked out through the window.

The ice was black, and in the middle of the ice she saw the open stove door and the fire—in fact she saw two stove doors, very close together. In the second window, the two fires were burning underground, and through the third window she saw a double reflection of the whole room, trunks and chests and boxes with gaping lids. They were filled with moss and snow and dry grass, all of them open, with bottoms of coal-black shadow. She saw two children out on the rock, and there was a rowan tree growing right through them. The sky behind them was dark blue.

She lay down in her bed and looked at the fire dancing on the ceiling, and all the time the island seemed to be coming closer and closer to the house. They were sleeping by a meadow near the shore, with patches of snow on the covers, and under them the ice darkened and began to glide. A channel opened very slowly in the floor, and all their luggage floated out in the river of moonlight. All the suitcases were open and full of darkness and moss, and none of them ever came back.

Sophia reached out her hand and pulled her grandmother’s braid, very gently. Grandmother woke up instantly.

“Listen,” Sophia whispered. “I saw two fires in the window. Why are there two fires instead of one?”

Her grandmother thought for a moment and said, “It’s because we have double windows.”

After a while Sophia asked, “Are you sure the door is closed?”

“It’s open,” her grandmother said. “It’s always open; you can sleep quite easy.”

Sophia rolled up in the quilt. She let the whole island float out on the ice and on to the horizon. Just before she fell asleep, her father got up and put more wood in the stove.