Walls We used to live here, the woman says, taking the boy's hand. I don't remember, says the boy. Were there sheep here then, too? Oh yes, says his mother. They used to bump our bedroom wall at night. We thought they were visitors at first, but when we looked out into the dark, there were only sheep. Were we living in a house? asks the boy. Of course, says his mother. And she picks up a thick ceramic arrowhead. And we ate off these. When they were plates, she adds. And we used to sit See those bumpy lines of rock across the beck? Those are bronze-age fields, and once we slid down them on a tray. That was the morning the sun turned the snow almost blue. Remember? They have walked steep slopes to get here. The boy is tired, spreads his arms wide. His mother picks him up, cradles his head against her shoulder, and soon he's limp. She considers the rubble at her feet now she's alone, but it's as speechless as the heap of stones in the field above, that’s Bombey's barn on the map. Who was Bombey? She doesn't know. And who was she, baby on hip, trudging happily along this path, muddy no matter what the weather? Who was she when her hair smelt of kerosene? She looks across the beck, senses, as if it were her own pulse against her palm, the curled damp of her boy's hair-- and slowly the long days return when what mattered was stones, rough, pitted, the biggest she could find. And she leans backwards, lugs them up-slope to the half-made wall, and drops them one by one like heavy mice, at the feet of the squat man she loves. And the boy murmurs in his sleep, when you had feathers, Mom, when we lived on the cliff, before there were walls, when we used to be a bird.