Old wood groaned under stomping feet as someone ran upstairs. Brian looked to his wife of seventeen years and gestured towards the clatter in hall.
   ‘What did I say now?’ he widened his eyes.
   She sighed and stared into her tea cup. ‘You know very well.’
   ‘Oh come on!’ Brian shrugged.
   She looked up at him in that special way of hers that always made him feel transparent. ‘You just had to bring it up.’
   ‘For goodness sake - it is a holiday we’re talking about! It is meant to be fun! Lovely snow, fresh mountain air?’
   She shook her head. ‘Don’t push him before he’s ready.’
   Brian placed his hands over his eyes and sat still for a moment. ‘I better go,’ he grabbed his keys and jacket, and stepped out of the house.
   The sky was dull and grey, threatening rain at any minute. Brian took a deep breath. The cool air sank like metal in his lungs. He noticed a crow on the fence across the street, its beady eyes looking directly at him. “And what the hell are you looking at?” he thought.
   The crow continued to watch him as he stepped into his roomy hatchback and drove off. In fact, the feathered menace had been spying on the house for days now, unbeknown to its inhabitants. The bird opened its wings and flew off after the car, riding the currents in a smooth and slow ascent. It glided on the wind like a black kite, observing from the height as the car weaved along the winding road through the rectangles of houses and greens. Once it finally stopped at the hospital car park, the bird circled around it and flew back to the house, sending images of what it saw to its master like a psychic camera.
   Meanwhile, in her princess bedroom across town, Emma wrinkled her nose at the gathering clouds. But it was not going to dampen her mood. She smiled at her reflection as she straightened her long blond hair, dreaming about Robert, his cool blue eyes, warm smile and hot body. She could not believe it. They were finally going out on a date. Thanks to that strange but very nice gypsy. After all, if she did not help Emma, Robert would have missed out on getting to know what a super girlfriend she was going to be. Emma could not wait to take him to the fairground and up on the Ferris wheel, the famous High Fear, and afterwards she would go to the woman and tell her how grateful she was for everything.
   Even if the gypsy could fully read Emma’s thoughts, she would not have appreciated such details as the girl’s gratitude. All the gypsy wanted as she sat in front of the crystal ball was to see if her plan had worked. Her green eyes rolled to the back of her head and she spoke with her mind. She tried not to repeat out loud in case someone overheard and took her for a mental case. Not that it actually mattered for a professional fortune teller.
   Later that afternoon, as the wind scattered the clouds before the sunset, Emma and Robert climbed into their seats on the wheel. She chirped about them pretty lights down below, the beautiful sky, the two of them together. She laughed at the top of her voice. She tossed her hair and gave Robert her best smoldering look. It did not matter that he was quiet and his eyes stared blankly. She had faith. At least the spell worked so far.
   When they got to the top, the wheel stopped. It was time. Emma closed her eyes and leaned over to kiss Robert. Soon he would be truly hers. She gave her best Hollywood kiss that she practiced on her arm.
   ‘Emma? Where are we?’ Robert blinked, as if jolted awake, but still stuck in the middle of a dream. His hands instinctively grabbed the bar as their gondola swung in mid air. The screeching metal parts echoed a sick feeling in his chest. The ground was so far below. His vision blurred and Robert’s brain felt like it spun out of his head.
   The gypsy stood cross armed frowning at the glimmering lights of the wheel. She flinched as she heard the scream from the top.
   ‘Are you happy now? This is the last time, you understand?’ she could see the energy pulsing through the wretched circle as it fed. Its lights twitched and the wheel began to turn again.
   A few minutes later, a crowd gathered at the bottom of High Fear.
   ‘Paramedics. Coming through,’ Brian pushed his way in. His mouth felt numb. A crow cry nearby scratched at his very soul. The dull heaviness which followed him over the last few days almost crushed him even before he saw the most terrifying sight of his life. His son’s limp body, the beautiful young face distorted in an unseeing mask of death as if life was simply jolted out of him.
   It was not until some months after the funeral that one thought consumed Brian entirely. If only he did not take his son on that black run on their first and last skiing trip together.

Seagulls’ cries echo into cosmos as they orbit the bay. One of them shrieks like a cat. The sky is still shaking off the night mist and there is a sting of freshness in the air.
   My work space, anchored by its stone bulk, presides over the shoreline. The hill my goliath desk sits on, like most of the other hills in the bay, still clings on to its patches of dry grass, but it is receding into sandy baldness.
   Below the sea sprawls out its blue and green stirring mass. The waves crush lapping at the shore and roll back swooshing through the stones. The breeze rustles through my papers bringing salty marine smells with it. Ghostly clouds sail along the far side of the ocean. Dawn mixes them with blush.
   An abandoned medieval church perches on top of a rocky mount behind my hill. The whole thing is dusty brown and looks like an old skull with broken windows for eye sockets. To my right I can see ancient Greek ruins. A dozen marble columns, half of them broken, and a stepped platform, which they contour, is all that is left of a temple. A labyrinth of stone walls around it marks out the streets. I imagine people walking through them two and a half thousand years ago. Tunics and urns.
   I open my eyes. The early sun is on my face. I remember that it won’t be long before it gets very hot. When all the sounds melt into a humming din and burnt honey notes of wild flowers intoxicate the air. I will then seek shelter in the shade of my tent. Until the sky turns lilac and first stars come out, when cicadas sing their evening song.