one tiny portion of one vast arc that might have drenched her from head to foot and sucked her out to sea.
The ocean is powerful in its attack. Rock is equally powerful in its resistance. But for all their fierceness, the waves, momentarily expended, lap the innermost shore like a gentle, healing tongue, so that as each one withdraws, she hears the pleasant rattle of shallow water draining off pebbles.
And then all the tin-plate colours of rock and sea—all the sensory information she can’t possibly know—recede, so that once again she lies motionless in the meadow with Honora. Her sister’s hot, familiar arm encircles and supports her neck and, rising from it, Honora’s faint ocean scent joins forever in her memory with the smell of crushed grass.
“I had another daydream,” she says, breaking the silence. Honora has explained that daydreams are like night dreams but easier to recollect.
“Just now? Was it good?” Honora rises on one arm so her face hovers over Mabel’s.
“There were birds and the sea. It was warm, but the water was cold.”
“Well, you’re the lucky one. I never see anything, even when I want to.”
The yeasty scent of fresh baking lures the two girls inside, into their grandmother’s kitchen, a haphazard space with a low, wood-beamed ceiling, where pastries and pots share workspace with any number of more improbable items—buttons, string, pins. Supplies lie where their grandmother last laid them, rather than where a more orderly person might put the same items. Squat, reflective jars of canned goods sit like colourful lanterns on the floor along one wall. A green towel dries over a chair,
|
|
