winded, and he found it odd that no amount of walking these many days had seemed sufficient to build his endurance for the myriad climbs he was making along the coast. So he paused to catch his breath. He felt a twinge that he recognised as hunger, and he used the minutes of his respite to draw from his rucksack the last of a dried sausage he'd purchased when he'd come to a hamlet along his route. He gnawed it down to nothing, realised that he was also thirsty, and stood to see if anything resembling habitation was nearby: hamlet, fishing cottage, holiday home, or farm.
There was nothing. But thirst was good, he thought with resignation. Thirst was like the sharp stones pressing into the soles of his shoes, like the wind, like the rain. It reminded him, when reminders were needed.
He turned back to the sea. He saw that a lone surfer bobbed there, just beyond the breaking waves. At this time of year, the figure was entirely clothed in black neoprene. It was the only way to enjoy the frigid water.
He knew nothing about surfing, but he knew a fellow cenobite when he saw one. There was no religious meditation involved, but they were both alone in places where they should not have been alone. They were also both alone in conditions that were not suited for what they were attempting. For him, the coming rain - for there could be little doubt that rain was moments away from falling - would make his walk along the coast slippery and dangerous. For the surfer, the exposed reefs onshore demanded an answer to the question that asked why he surfed at all.
He had no answer and little interest in developing one. His inadequate meal finished, he resumed his walk. The cliffs were friable in this part of the coast, unlike the cliffs where he'd begun his walk. There they were largely granite, igneous intrusions into the landscape, forced upon ancient lava, limestone, and slate. Although worn by time, weather, and the restless sea, they were nonetheless solid underfoot, and a walker could venture near the edge and watch the roiling sea or observe the gulls seeking perches among the crags. Here, however, the cliff edge was culm: slate, shale, and sandstone, and cliff bases were marked by mounds of the stony detritus called clitter that fell regularly to the beach below. Venturing near the edge meant a certain fall. A fall meant broken bones or death.
At this section of his walk, the cliff top leveled out for some one hundred yards. The path was well marked, moving away from the cliff 's edge and tracing a line between gorse and thrift on one side and a fenced pasture on the other. Exposed here, he bent into the wind, and moved steadily forward. He became aware that his throat was painfully dry, and his head had begun to fill with a dull ache just behind his eyes. He felt a sudden bout of dizziness as he reached the far end of the cliff top. Lack of water, he thought. He would not be able to go much farther without doing something about it.
A stile marked the edge of the high pasture he'd been following, and he climbed it and paused, waiting for the landscape to stop swimming in front of him long enough for him to find the descent to what would be yet another cove. He'd lost count of the inlets he'd come upon in his walk along the undulating coast. He had no idea what this one was called, any more than he'd been able to name the others.
When the vertigo had passed, he saw that a lone cottage stood at the edge of a wide meadow beneath him, perhaps two hundred yards inland from the beach and along the side of a twisting brook. A cottage meant potable water, so he would make for that. It wasn't a great distance off the path.
He stepped down from the stile just as the first drops of rain fell. He wasn't wearing his hat at the moment, so he shrugged his rucksack from his shoulders and dug it out. He was pulling it low onto his forehead - an old baseball cap of his brother's with ―Mariners" scrolled across it - when he caught sight of a flash of red. He looked in the direction from which it had seemed to come, and he found it at the base of