The Girl with the Roman Coin

      The sea was a glacial green, the atmosphere above it smoking with mist that merged upwards into grey low clouds. The wind, a chill and snappy south easterly, gripped and buffeted all.
Not a raging force 8 or 9 nor a howler wind, storm force 10 or 11, which lifted the hen houses and sheets of corrugated iron, tossing them hither and thither. No, that wind had been last week. Today’s wind was not heroic and violent; it seemed mean and spiteful, relentless. A wind that might have blown off a glacier in the days of the ice age.

      The burn ran swiftly, rippling to the sea, braiding out over the sand. In the channels of peaty water, lay limpet and razor shells, empty and broken by gulls, oyster catchers and the waves.

      By now the sea had retreated far out in the arc of the bay, exposing little clumps of sea weed on the hard rippled sand. In the distance, at the water’s edge, a small gathering of ringed plovers made tiny steps.

      The find at first seemed a common place thing , a disc of metal about the size of a coin, its surface pitted, the edges worn with here and there a golden hue showing through the brown and turquoise patina. She slipped it into the deep pocket of her outdoor jacket beside the shells, bits of sand, worn glass and the pebbles.
She continued onwards along the strand line.

      Here, she knew, was where the sea left what it no longer needed.
The sand here was desert soft, dried out now the tide long gone. Her feet first sank then struggled on the yielding surface as she walked forwards, eyes glued to the thin strip of seaweed and bits of broken shell. Today there

Impressum

Verlag: BookRix GmbH & Co. KG

Texte: alastair macleod
Bildmaterialien: alastair macleod; "coin in the sand, " purchased from Dreamstime royalty free photos
Lektorat: alastair macleod
Übersetzung: cover typeset in timelike
Tag der Veröffentlichung: 13.12.2012
ISBN: 978-3-7309-0689-7

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Widmung:
for Macsen, an island girl