Once she woke up and heard the faint sound of chopping. Then suddenly the sun was shining through the entrance…and the sleeping bag beside her was empty. There was newly chopped wood by the hearth, so she made a fire, heated water for tea, and pulled off chunks...

     Sitting inside the hut again, she noticed the patch of landscape through the entryway going dusky gray. Though it was clearly too late for her to head back now, he asked courteously, “Would you like to stay to supper?”      She couldn’t help studying him as he...

     For several minutes she stood in the path uncertainly, watching a veil of rain drifting toward her from the distance. She’d said she wanted to stay, so Aaron had drawn her a crude map with a few landmarks, then he and Alana had headed back without her. On...

     One afternoon she emerged from the “heladeria” with a small scoop of pistachio ice cream on a huge, brittle cone and ran directly into Alana and Aaron. They were taking provisions to Eben, they said, and asked if she would like to hike out into the hills with...

She got to the “panaderia” right before it closed and bought a couple of long, skinny loaves of bread for Alana’s supper, then dropped by Jean-Michel’s to take a shower. The water came out in a tepid trickle from an apparatus like a dangling telephone receiver on the...

     To tell the truth, Seely wasn’t as self-sufficient as she tried to appear. She’d all but abandoned her manuscript, her past life having come to seem as irrelevant to her as it was to the parade of passing acquaintances who struck up conversations with her at the...