He watched in silence as the child looked first toward the house, then to the road, and finally turned to look directly toward him. It was as if he were hypnotized, part of the scene, yet somehow separated from it. His eyes never left the child, never glanced to the side or farther out to the house that loomed across the field. Within the forest, hidden by the foliage and the shadows of the trees above, a man sat staring out into the field. Perhaps that was why she began to follow the rabbit. But still, it would be nice to wander in the trees … She knew she shouldn’t She knew the woods were beyond the limits, that there was danger there. She felt an urge to go to the woods, to step in among the trees and ferns and lose herself from the house behind her. For a long time she stared into the wood, almost as though she saw something there, something that was almost within her range of vision, yet hovered just beyond the edge of sight. Her attention changed as a gust of wind hit her, and she turned to face the stand of woods that separated the field from the high bank of the ocean beyond. She wondered what her grandmother would bring. She glanced toward the house a hundred yards away, then toward the road that wound down the hill and out of sight She half expected to see a carriage coming up the hill, and her mother waiting expectantly on the porch. She smiled to herself, then picked up the beetle and put it in her pocket Through the heavy material she could just feel the movement of the struggling insect its snapping sounds were completely muffled. Again it snapped, rose into the air, and fell back to earth. She watched it fall back to earth, and before it could scuttle away into the grass she poked it again. She poked at it with one small finger, then pulled the finger away almost before she heard the tiny snap that signaled the beetle’s ascent into the air. She was a pretty thing, eleven years old, the cornflower blue of her dress matching her eyes, and the blond hair that only children possess cascading down her back and over her shoulders as she bent to examine one of the tiny creatures that shared her world. High above the sea, the same wind that built the waves seemed only to stroke the grass in which the child played.
The surf was high that day, adding a backdrop of sound to the late summer afternoon.
Chapter 28 PROLOGUE One Hundred Years Ago
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