The Edge of the Earth by Christina Schwarz Page A

on Tenth Street, I thought as I got back into bed. Gustina would have hulled strawberries at the sink while my mother set the table with the bone plates and the bird’s-eye napkins embroidered with cherries. She would polish the silver forks with the hem of her apron before she laid them on, too. And then she would put her head into the back staircase—“Felix! Was ist los?”—because always he was slower to come down than she thought he ought to be, and I slower still, except that now I wasn’t there at all. It seemed likely that I would never be there again, when I thought of the ships and trains, the many nights in unfamiliar beds, that intervened between that life and this.
    The sheets, when I pressed my face to them, still smelled like home. Through the wall, I could hear Mr. Johnston calling gibberish in his sleep.
    ∗ ∗ ∗
    “Missus! Missus!” The children were clamoring for me. Was I expected to begin their schooling already?
    The sun must have risen, but the sky remained gray. I scrambled from the blankets and hurried downstairs. All four stood at my door, mussed and grubby, as if it were the end of the day rather than the start. The oldest boy had a rucksack strapped on his back.
    They stared at me. “Were you sleeping?”
    “Yes,” I admitted.
    “But it’s half past seven.”
    “Your milk and eggs have been here for ages.”
    “Did you sleep in your clothes?”
    They were all talking at once, and I didn’t know whom to answer or, in any case, what to say.
    “We’re going to the beach!” Jane said finally.
    “We thought you might like to go with us,” Mary added.
    I hesitated. “Maybe we ought to begin your lessons.”
    “Not today!” the younger boy exclaimed with real dismay in his face. I remembered that his name was Nicholas.
    “I suppose that can wait.” I looked back over my shoulder. “But our house is so dirty. I ought to clean it.”
    To this they said nothing for a moment. Then Nicholas said again, boldly, “Not today!”
    They looked at me, waiting to find out whether I would scold him for impudence and shoo them away. “All right, today I’ll come with you. Why not?”
    As a child, I’d cooled myself on many a hot summer’s day by walking between the rows of heavy, wet sheets on the clothesline behind our house. Moving through the fog that hung around the rock felt much the same, though there was no freshly washed scent and no sun at the end to warm and dry us. The closest building, the workshop, was a dark, indistinct form. Possibly, the denser patch of gray beyond that was the barn. The lighthouse itself, farther down the path, was only a suggestion of something more solid than air. I expected the children to lead me to the little steam-driven platform on which Oskar and I had been carried up the morro the previous afternoon, but instead they launched themselves off the northern edge of the rock, directly into the clouds.
    I shrank back. The descent was shockingly steep, although, perhaps mercifully, the extent of the slope beyond the first ten feet was so heavily shrouded that it was impossible to judge. What ground I could see consisted of sharp-edged brown and black rocks, each surface scored and cracked, as if some giant had attempted and failed to sculpt this matter into some graceful form. Hard and brutish as the materials were, however, the effect overall was not ugly. The rocks were covered with vegetation exotic to my eye. Orange and green lichens spread in a bright, haphazard patchwork, and plants in various greens and grays, even a few with flowers, clung defiantly to the cracks.
    I picked my way cautiously, but at every few steps, my feet failed to find a purchase, and I slid until I could grab enough of the low, brittle plants to stop my fall.
    “Is there a path?” I called into the grayness. “Should I be following a path?”
    “No path.” It was Edward who answered. “Best to zigzag.”
    “Yes, don’t try to go straight down.” That was