The Edge of the Earth by Christina Schwarz Page B

Mary’s voice.
    “You’ll kill yourself!” shouted Nicholas.
    “Wait for me!” demanded Jane. “Ma says you have to wait for me!”
    There was much sliding and scraping and clattering, and from time to time I spotted Jane’s red sweater, but even that very little girl was moving faster than I was. I placed my feet with no notion of where I was going except down, fearing with every step that the ground might disappear entirely. Then, suddenly, the fog thinned. We’d come through the bottom of the cloud. I could see the children, Edward and Mary, sure-footed, in front; Nicholas, accepting the occasional slide on his bottom as the price of not falling behind; and Jane, who just then lost her footing and began sliding fast, rolling onto her stomach, but otherwise abandoning herself to the force of the slope.
    I nearly screamed and let myself slide as fast as I dared without completely losing control, my feet turned sideways to the mountain. The older children looked up and moved to stop the little one’s fall, but in the end, it wasn’t necessary. A dense shrub caught her, and she lay until I could reach her and pull her onto my lap. I let her cry and dabbed at her scrapes with my sleeve.
    “She’s all right,” I called down, but the others had gone on already.
    I sat for a while, the child snuffling in my skirt, and wondered how we would manage to climb up again. Now that I was sitting still and could raise my eyes from the rough ground, and now that the sound of scraping shoes against the crumbling dirt no longer filled my ears, I became aware of the breaking waves. They were more violent today than yesterday, and they hurled themselves toward the rocks that shattered them into a million droplets. The waters I knew, the Great Lake and the Milwaukee River, were gray and stately, green and sluggish, respectively. This was wild, churning stuff, its turquoise color as extravagant as its movements.
    The three older children had shed their shoes and stockings by the time Jane and I reached the bottom. Mary was tucking her skirt into her bloomers. I admired their unself-consciousness and their ease with the rough surf. They ventured in as the sea gathered itself and then ran, shrieking, from the tongues of cold water, like the quick-legged shore birds, although the birds were silent and serious. I followed the children onto an outcropping of rock and watched them squat over a clear saltwater pool, their shadows frightening crabs, which ducked nimbly under rocks. The bottom of the pool was lined with bright orange and brick-red starfish and even one of brilliant blue; small dark shells, whorled into points, like the budding flowers of an apple tree; tiny volcanoes from which waved frondlike tongues; pale green anemones that curled around the children’s insistent poking fingers; columns of black mussels.
    “Look!” Nicholas cried. With a bit of shell, he was teasing a bright pink blob off a rock. “I’ve never seen one like this!”
    The others crowded around, squinting critically.
    “I have,” Edward boasted.
    “You have not!”
    “I have, too.”
    “Don’t touch it!” I cried.
    They all turned to look at me in astonishment.
    “Why not?” Nicholas asked at last.
    “It might bite or sting. It might be poisonous.”
    “It’s not. See?” Nicholas had loosened the animal’s grip on the rock. He plucked it off and held it up. Without its base to support it, it hung limply between his finger and thumb.
    “What is it?” I asked. “Some sort of slug?”
    “It’s not a slug! It’s a nudibranch!” Nicholas said, affronted. “And we’ve never found one this color before.”
    “Nicholas is right, Edward,” Mary said. “I think we ought to keep it.”
    “What’s a . . . what did you call it?” I asked.
    “A nudibranch,” Mary said.
    “Is that a name you made up?”
    “Of course not!” Edward said indignantly. “It’s in the book.”
    “Some Species of the Pacific Coast,” Mary