An anonymous essay, presented by Nathaniel K. Miller

A heavy wave slams against the hull of the skiff, jolting me to awareness. The sea is black around me, full of looming spirit dangers, of the unknown and the unknowable. In the distance, the island juts from the roiling surface, a ten-mile plateau perched just out of range of the violence below. The sheer cliff walls slope downward from all points, protecting the inhabited surface from wind, weather, and prying eyes cast up from passing boats. I make out the hint of a particularly tall edifice, spiraling skyward like a castle spire. It fades out of view almost as quickly as it appears.

I have been trying to remember with clarity an image from my youth, an image so ubiquitous that I scarcely recall its details. In the picture, Ari Ascher is a young man, and on his lips an almost-smirk is forever frozen below those bright and brilliant eyes. If anything served to burn this particular image into the collective awareness of my world, it was this tentative quality, this absence of completion. For if he was able to resolve his life, he did not do it amongst his countrymen. If his story reached an end, it did so here, on Ascher Island.

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