The Quiet Water, page 9 of 15

Pip comes down the tiny worn steps in the deep blue night under a thin crescent moon, the still pool far below him, occupied.

She had said the sea was big, and he had measured it, and the numbers had agreed with her, and the numbers had always been his friends, and he went through them again at night, the sixes and the forties, and they agreed and agreed and agreed, and none of them said anything about her, and he counted the forty-one steps down in the dark and back up in the dark, and there were forty-one, and it did not help.

© 2026 A.J.Sharpe