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Edith Mabel Rowbotham lies contentedly in a lowland meadow in Lancashire County. Partially hidden atop a soft bed of flattened fescue and sedge, sweet vernal grass and cocksfoot, saxifrage and marigold, she and her older sister Honora stare up at the hard blue sky suspended overhead. A small, copper-toned butterfly lands delicately atop a spike of crested dogstail, and a brown hare races close, stops still
and grinds its teeth in startled warning, then makes a quick zigzag
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around their legs to disappear as quickly as it arrived.
She giggles and nudges Honora as the hare bounds away, and then she settles back on the grass. A moment later, not knowing how it is possible with her eyes wide open, Mabel sees herself, perched atop a large boulder, facing water. Sharp, wartlike barnacles encrust the sides of the rock, but its smooth bald top holds the sun´s heat and warms her from below. Salt air mingles with the odours of seaweed and fish, and gulls circle with their anguished child´s cry. Waves—greenish, greyish–roil toward her, and when she turns her back on them the incoming surf roars up behind her as if it means to crush everything in its path. Bits of kelp and floating debris catch in the shoulder of each wave before it crests, and then they smash against an outcropping of rock with such force she wonders why the earth´s surface doesn´t shatter like glass beneath her feet.
She hears each explosion like a cannon shot and sees the resultant spray discharge in all directions. A splash hits her leg, as cold as a bucket of ice water,
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