Salt

The end of the West. Here. A fist of land that punches into ocean, atop which men have built a town so big some name it City
This land like no land Lucy has seen before. Fog greets them, curling and obscuring, making of the coast a damp gray dream. Soft and hard all at once. The wildflowers, the wind-bent cypresses¹, the pebbles² underfoot and the gulls³ overhead and the boom that Lucy mistakes, at first, for the roar of a beast—till Sam tells her it’s the sound of waves against the cliffs.
If this land is like no land, then the water is like no water. Sam takes Lucy down to the wet edge. On foot they cross the sand. The ocean is gray. Ugly under its lid of fog. Look hard enough and there’s blue, some green, a spark of distant sunlight. Mostly the water is unconcerned with beauty. Mostly it rages and beats the cliffs till they crumble⁴, plunging⁵ unwary creatures to their deaths. The water eats at the posts of the docks, bends that wood to its knees. The water does not reflect. It is itself, and it spreads to the horizon.
Fog fills Lucy’s mouth. She licks, and licks again: salty
“All this time,” she says to Sam. “All this time, I thought I belonged in Sweetwater.”
Later she’ll learn how hard it is to live at the end of the West. Sometimes the ocean takes a life, sometimes the fog that hides lighthouse beams. Most often it’s the hills themselves that are deadly, seven of them in this city, every few years shaking houses loose as a dog shakes fleas⁷. Later she’ll learn that down within the sea-foam are bones more numerous than the bones of buffalo⁸. Later she’ll learn that when the fog lifts, there comes the hard, clear light.
—
Sam’s gotten only more jittery⁹ as they approached the city. Hurry set them down early—their ship won’t launch till tomorrow morning.

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