Sublime

ersatz.

trenchant,

Her public reputation, like Demeter’s daughter, crawls back up from the underworld.

be noticed from afar.

Across the road from where she’s parked, aspens tumble down the basin toward Fish Lake, where five years earlier a Chinese refugee engineer took his three daughters camping on the way to visiting Yellowstone.

Out in the yard, all around the house, the things they’ve planted in years gone by are making significance, making meaning, as easily as they make sugar and wood from nothing, from air, and sun, and rain. But the humans hear nothing.

Unlike most of the village women who embark on careers with foreign men, Noelline is educated, has completed two years at the lycée run by the sugar refinery at Ankazobe. She writes a fair hand in French orthography, can use a computer, and speaks good French and Italian. Besides her intelligence, her undeniable energy, and a reputed genius for sex