With the river behind him, he stood at the edge of an open field. He turned slowly, his feet shuffling and spread wide for balance. His second try succeeded, and he found himself wobbly but standing, the ground a pitching deck beneath his feet. On his first attempt to get up, his knees buckled and he sat down hard enough to send a vibration of searing pain through his rib cage. A black tie hung by the flimsiest knot from his collar. He was dressed in black pants and a black jacket with an oxford shirt underneath, the white cotton speckled with blood. Pines grew in clusters along the ledges, and the air was filled with the smell of them and the sweetness of the moving water. Across the river, a cliff swept up for a thousand feet. The water was clear and swift as it flowed between the boulders that jutted out of the channel. The greenest grass he’d ever seen-a forest of long, soft blades-ran down to the bank. His left eye must have been badly swollen, because it seemed like he was staring through a slit. His first deep breath felt like someone driving a steel wedge between the ribs high on his left side, but he groaned through the pain and forced his eyes to open. Sensed the instability of the world long before he opened his eyes, like its axis had been cut loose to teeter. He rolled onto his side and pushed up into a sitting position, tucking his head between his knees. There was a brilliant ache in his optic nerve, and a steady, painless throbbing at the base of his skull-the distant thunder of an approaching migraine.
He came to lying on his back with sunlight pouring down into his face and the murmur of running water close by.
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