Who had been frightened of a wind out of the light swelling the small country? The piece of a wind in the sun was like the wind in an empty house; it made the corners mountains, and crowded the attics with shadows which broke through the roof; through the country corridors it raced in a hundred voices, each voice larger than the last, until the last voice tumbled down and the house was full of whispers. Where do you come from? she whispered in his ear. She took her arms away but still sat close, one knee between his legs, one hand on his hands. Who had been frightened of a sunburned girl no taller or stranger than the pale girls at home who had babies before they were married? I come from Amman valley, said the boy. I have a sister in Egypt, she said, who lives in a pyramid. She pressed down her knee, and laughed when he drew in his breath. You mustn’t, he said. She mimicked his Mustn’t, you mustn’t, and drew him closer. They’re calling me in for tea, he said. She lifted her frock to her waist If she loves me until I die, said the boy to himself under the seventh tree on the hill that was never the same for three minutes, she will carry me away inside her, run with me rattling inside to a den in a wood, to a hole in a tree where my uncle will never find me. This is the story of a boy being stolen. She has put a knife in my belly and turned my stomach round.

She whispered in his ear: I’ll have a baby on every hill; what’s your name, Amman? The afternoon was dying; lazily, namelessly drifting westward through the insects in the shade; over hill and tree and river and corn and grass to the evening shaping in the sea; blowing away; being blown from Wales in a wind, in the slow, blue grains, like a wind full of dreams and medicines; down the tide of the sun onto the grey and chanting shore where the birds from Noah’s ark glide by with bushes in their mouths, and tomorrow and tomorrow tower over the cracked sand-castles.