One more time for one more venture he lifts his bones to be standing and moves them enough to be going and glad he is to be seeing it to its end to be finishing off with such a flourish such a palette full of summer color through fields yarrow-trimmed like lace purfled blue-starred by gentians blooming all around great boulders flushed an ocher pink in the sultry light that lies like glass or golden foil on the dazzling filigree of dancing grasses as through to the cool mixed forest and deep fern glades he goes down through circinate fronds coyly rising along a stream where stones themselves seem to sweat an iron scent of metal earth and mayflies are making the most of their day in the sun over limpid pools gathering brimful and falling softly sounding softly rushing to gather below and fall again as down he goes and on picking midsummer plants to pass the time picking foxglove first the lordly foxglove and then fennel from the nettles splendid fennel and newly fallen walnut catkins and green and supple alder switches and the wild and wrinkled yellow iris picking from here picking from there as he goes down and on a sundry harvest of forest flowers clusters from the elder shrub pink blossoms from the common mallow tight russet crowns of downy mugwort when seeing far below through a gap in the trees a village foundering it seems as if pitched by a wave of forest against the rocky foot of the mountain glimpsed just glimpsed a moment as he goes as he wanders on lashing his bundle of plants with a hemp of bindweed to hang from his neck to swing at his breast before starting another before loading his arm with white bryony torn from its corkscrew tendrils and the lithe gypsywort growing in tall green spears and feverfew the aromatic or so they call it and leaves he plucks from the pedunculate oak and roses wild roses he rifles from a clutch of rocks and finally finally from the ground all around the male fern twice pinnate which once picked pressed and compacted he likewise lashes hangs from his neck and swings to his back as an axe swings somewhere striking solidly sounding hollowly through the forest while voices sonorous voices call calling as the stream falling drowns their fading and stonechats fly unseen to light unheard on branches higher in a place safer beyond the last echo vanishing where echoes vanish as down he goes so far down through thrips or thunder flies a cloud of tiny motes of pesky life that land on his face and hair and enter his ears before he blows them off brushes them out and passes along bound on his way down the steadfast path of paths turning at a forest junction west into a winding lane walled and floored with ancient ageless stones tunneling through the sunless bowers beneath the arches of languorous branches rising with the land falling with the land curving around the foot of the mountain past an orange and lemon orchard up a slope and into the village seen from above far above abandoned long before the tale began and the dream of breakers surging was dreamed across the salt-marsh but no dream now these crows clamoring circling above their pine colonies and the bees humming by on their homeward course looping toward small holes in the stone walls of the first house he encounters a farmhouse of fitted granite blocks and blue windows shut against the elements and stone-colored lizards frozen on the sun-baked stoop where he sits to eat an orange and gaze at the sea the misting surf beyond the trees and drowse drift and drowse as his eyelids drop his shoulders droop and his head falls heavily to one side and again until he sheds his weary sleep rises to his feet and yawning and stretching strolls back down into the shadow of pines and oaks of alders and laurels along the lane past the lasting ruins of a second house past its gutted barn of grassy beams gone to seed and on down over the trickle of hardly a stream below an empty chapel on a rock where he stops looks and finds a steep and stony climb through a yard of nettles and vetch to a house of grand estate sitting close beneath the ledge of a bluff lush with ferns and hanging flowers dripping steady drops down into a pool clear and pure rising from blue subterranean sources where he pauses to drink drink his fill before turning to thread his way back through saplings of all sorts through brambles and bracken through vines weedy vines densely matted like verdant blankets breaking choking bending low the undergrowth creeping up walls crowding onto balconies to be cleared from the door before he pushes in a panel and lifts the latch and enters the gloom and dank of closed rooms the darkness and rot pierced by rays of yellow light sharpened through split shutters reaching the stairs he ascends of eastern ebony treading carefully over crumbling steps sponge soft from the festering damp to a second floor where he opens a door of frosted glass to a hall brightly lit the shutters having fallen given way to muscular trunks of ivy feeding on the old wood fanning out along the walls and ceiling and there at the end of the hall before an open window among the leaves and plaster and droppings of mice fresh as the day stands a cradle silk-lined and set rocking rocking silently by an unknown hand rocking still as he turns away and retraces his steps descends the stairs and crosses the yard to the pool where he spreads the flowers and leaves of his bundles evenly over the still surface drops his clothes on a clump of thistle and eases himself into the cold crystalline water to lie forgetful as long as he can soothed by the spicy infusion an hour or two until the sun has gone down behind the trees and he is obliged to dress without drying and hurry on through the nettles down along the lane past the last two houses of the village and into the narrow corridor of a darkening grove of pines and broom and gorse and grape vines gone wild hearing blackbirds feeding among the figs smelling rosemary and spearmint on the moist evening air as far as the edge of the forest where he finds himself before a final tract of open ground a desolate waste of sea stock and gorse and pale pine seedlings well above the inhabited plain he takes care to avoid keeping as much as he can to the rough contours and rocky soil until he crosses the coastal road and comes down through sandy fields of stunted corn and withered scarecrows salt-spray stained as black-crowned finches tumble on the sea-skimming breeze that bends the blooming spurge along the treeless lane as far down as the rounded stones above the beach where he leaves his shoes and socks to walk barefoot across the cooling sand in the rose and lemon light of cloud and sky listening to the buffet and muffled wash of cuffs of waves breaking against littoral granite combing with white fingers the clefts and kelp then flopping like an afterthought pooling streaming in sleek work of stone-wearing whispers racing sizzling up the sloping sand in broad white fans before retreating with a sigh into the gelid mass of liquid green pulling back folding rolling in upon itself before rearing again for another assault as he drags a pair of timber poles down from a stone shed to slip beneath the stern of a blue and white boat above the reach of tidal wrack and moving around to the other end he sets his shoulder to the crescent keel and pushing pushing pushes the craft down the smooth runners as far down as to touch the lilting tide lifting lightly eagerly at the buoyant stern as he gathers gathers in the anchor and climbs aboard with a firm shove to slide free of the bed of shingle and sand lying just below the hull before turning once twice with a single oar slicing hoary froth from the curling fringe of spitting waves feeling for control as up and down he goes over pitch and roll up and down and out out through a small sargasso out past the last rocks where cormorants huddle like still shadows out and on out into the open bay aligning the prow to the evening star bound as he could only be for the lilac flakes of light riding on the deep green surface of the distant sea