The Grass Tower

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The village was set in a nitch between the cypress-dark hills on one side, and the white, lonely dunes. Beyond the dunes the empty sea stretched, and all was roofed over with the luminous bowl of the sky, which seemed to block out the rest of the world that might exist beyond the village. On a spring day, as now, the sky was high and blue, but it could lay in low, leaden with the weight of clouds, or thick with fog. The village was a cluster of people as tightly packed together as the houses and shops were packed, as if they cowered away from the dark hills and the lonely, empty dunes; all around the village there was the emptiness of hills and dunes, and the sea wind brought the sand over the streets at night as if it would bury the very houses and the three blocks of shops. Bethany loved the dunes and the loneliness.

But now she stood with Colin staring into the old store, the wind whipping her long red hair sharply across her face. A cascade of dry eucalyptus leaves blew scuttling down the street and whirled around her ankles like something alive. She glanced irritably up at Colin —he was completely taken up with what was going on beyond the dirty glass. This store, with its gray, peeling paint, was the only neglected building in the three blocks of neat little shops.

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