by Gene Wolfe

Read by Ben Phillips

Originally published in Orbit 7.

Winter comes to water as well as land, though there are no leaves to fall. The waves that were a bright, hard blue yesterday under a fading sky today are green, opaque, and cold. If you are a boy not wanted in the house you walk the beach for hours, feeling the winter that has come in the night; sand blowing across your shoes, spray wetting the legs of your corduroys. You turn your back to the sea, and with the sharp end of a stick found half-buried, write in the wet sand Tackman Babcock.

Then you go home, knowing that behind you the Atlantic is destroying your work.

Rated R: Contains Adult Themes

Check out a podcast a listener did for his High School Senior Project: https://public.me.com/chrisnkris (click on “RatCasts”).