The Wind Off the Small Isles

by Mary Stewart

  A kestrel swept across the bay, below eye level, the sun glinting rosy on its back. The air in the patio was still and hot, but a wind had sprung up, and above us the palm-leaves shuffled and clicked like playing cards.

  ‘So that,’ said Mrs Gresham, putting down her glass, ‘really is the end of the story.’

  ‘Not quite,’ said Michael, smiling at me.

  His mother raised her brows, and this time she did open her mouth to say something, but James Blair shot up from his chair with a sudden exclamation that startled us all. ‘No, by God! Look there!’

  It was over in a moment, so quickly that none of us could swear afterwards exactly what we saw.

  Near the edge of the cliff and a short way beyond the crevice, a grove of cactus plants tilted, slid and vanished. Where they had been, a black hole gaped. Then the cliff’s edge slid downwards and outwards in a cloud of dust and ash, and for a moment, no more, the side of the cave-in was exposed.

  Then the wind blew in and tore the ash away in a great plume of russet-grey, and hazily through this, for the fraction of a second, we saw them there, Miguel and Dolores, her head on his heart, his body covering hers as a bird covers its young. Then the white shape fell to nothing, and vanished along the north wind into the open sky.