her to see how he grinned at that.
“Come on,” he said. “I’ll show you.”
They walked together toward the far end of the beach, where it narrowed. No one ever went that way, for reasons Vida had never questioned.
She knew walking this way with Sal would not have been considered socially acceptable by the old standards of drawing rooms and first-class dining rooms—especially after a young lady was attached, as she now considered herself to be. The whole band of survivors had seen Fitzhugh courting her. Now that he’d kissed her, and implied that they would someday be alone together by a fire in a snowstorm, they were promised to each other. In a sense. All that signified a new level of attachment, surely. Vida knew the rules better than anybody.
But it was early. The world was dark. And Vida thrilled to the idea that she was about to get away with doing something. That bit of mischief that she carried in her heart, and that was always getting her in trouble, drove her now. They crossed the border that Fitzhugh had deemed safe for the general population to inhabit. She followed Sal up the steep and rocky incline at the far end of the beach.
As they walked she understood why no one ever went this way. The little pathway between the trees was narrow and shifting, and stones were scattered underfoot. Then it stopped being much of a path at all. On one side was a steep fall toward crashing waves. On the other side the trees were dense, impassable—their mighty, slippery roots reached beyond the cliff’s edge, dangled like loose yarn in the open air. Several times she had to crouch to steady herself, and she was surprised when she realized how high they had gotten so quickly. Cool fear touched her temples, and she knew that a slip would leave her body bloodied and broken down where whitecaps were eating away the land.
“Don’t worry,” Sal said, as though he had overheard her nervous thoughts. “I won’t let you fall.”
She was about to demand he tell her how he was going to do that, but she was concentrating very hard on the way ahead to keep herself from slipping. All the while Sal went along beside her, at the very limit of the cliff. It was as though he were walking a tightrope at the edge of the world. They did not speak again until they reached the heights.
Then the idea of talking seemed a little stupid.
The new sun was illuminating the world. She forgot to be afraid.
Sal’s eyes were diamantine with wonderment. He sat, his legs dangling over the precipice. Vida stood behind him and watched how the sun broke against the sky, shading everything in an unreal orange and fuchsia. A person only sees light that dramatic if they are awake early. She understood for the first time that a sunrise was different if you saw it by staying up all night. Here it was, a fresh day, so magnificent that you knew your life would never be the same. She and the world were new.
“We won’t go today after all,” Sal said after a while.
“Go where?” Vida had forgotten that there was anywhere but this place. Her eyes followed where Sal pointed and she saw, to the east, the streaked red-and-black clouds where the sun was coming up.
“That’s a storm heading our way.”
“The ocean is like a lake.”
“It’s calm now, but that color down at the horizon, you only see that when the light is coming through dense weather far off. Rough, wet weather. It’ll be here sooner or later.”
“Are you being very mystical? I thought that was an old wives’ tale, that rhyme about sailors taking warning if there was a red sky in the morning.”
“Why would people repeat lies about the weather for a thousand years?”
“You have a point, I suppose.”
“We should go back.”
Vida offered her hand to Sal to help him up. She didn’t want to go back, but she knew that demanding to know why would be quite brazen. She knew the reason why. “Thank you for showing me the best place to see the sunrise,” she said, very formally, instead.
“It is my duty,” he said, but ironically, so that she knew he wouldn’t have done it if it didn’t please him.
The camp was still quiet as they made their way down from the height and she experienced that familiar feeling of satisfaction, of having gotten away with something, as when she