The Cliff That Leans Over You

By the time she has gone far enough down, Polly notices that something strange has happened to the sky. There is less of it. She looks up and finds the cliff hanging out over her head, wider up there than it is down here, so that the town at the top is somewhere behind and above and completely out of sight.

This is what the sea has been doing for a very long time. Waves work at the bottom of a cliff and take the rock away from underneath, and the rock above, having nothing left to stand on, waits. Along this coast the sea has cut whole caves back into the base of the cliffs, wide dark mouths that swallow the swell and give it back with a boom she can feel through the step she is sitting on.

On the ledges below her there are dark green birds standing with their wings held open, drying them in the wind. They are shags, and they nest along these rocks in numbers that matter. Close to half of all the shags breeding in the whole Mediterranean Sea nest around this stretch of coast and the little islands beyond it.

One of them drops off its ledge without warning, folds, and goes into the water so cleanly that it barely makes a splash. Polly waits. It is gone a long time. When it surfaces it is a surprising distance away, and it has a fish.