A Bone From a Dry Sea

Начало книги

Song in flint cottages that lacked it long.

Man haunts what shores he can.

THEN

THE CHILD CLUNG to the rock, letting the broken waves of the bay wash over her, cooling the fierce sunlight. She was not afraid. The sea was her home.

Light dazzled off the water, but she kept her head above the surface and gazed steadily towards the mouth of the bay. She was on shark-watch. Out on the open shore grown males would keep watch, but a submerged rock-shelf barred the entrance to this bay, so it was safe to let the children learn the duty.

She was hungry. For days now the wind had blown hard from the south-east, driving the ocean rollers before it. The tribe used the bay because there were caves in the low cliffs, deep in two of which fresh water trickled down the rock. But food inside the bay was scarce, so normally they would have hunted the rocky inlets beyond for shellfish and shrimps and crabs and the little octopi that hid under boulders.

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