we are all completely beside ourselves summary

When she sat in her chair, the back of her neck was always cold her fingers fretted and she couldn’t stay still.īut Maura liked the bits of clues the summer people left behind-a strange spoon in a drawer, a half-eaten jar of jam on a shelf, the ashes of papers in the fireplace. She felt the lingering presence of the summer guests, their sorrows and troubles as chilled spaces she passed through in the halls and doorways. Sometimes she cried and couldn’t say why.Įven when winter came, she was unhappy. She sat for hours at the window watching the sky for the southward migrations, the turn of the season. The inland summers made her pale and thin. Maura’s mother loved their house by the ocean. The landlord said it would happen this once, and they could move right back when the two weeks were over.īut the next year he took it for the entire summer and then for every summer after that. It was just for two weeks and for so much money, he could only say yes. One day the landlord came to tell Maura’s father that he’d rented out their home to a wealthy friend. The coast became fashionable, though nothing could be done about the winds.

Pleasure boats with colored sails filled the fishing berths. A businessman built the hotel and shipped in finer sand.

Then a doctor who lived in the capital began to recommend the sea air to his wealthy patients. Maura could play from morning to night and never see another person, only gulls and dolphins and seals. It was a lonely coast then, a place of rocky cliffs, forests, wild winds, and beaches of coarse sand. Sometimes it’s hard for Maura to remember that this was ever different.īut when she was little, she lived by the sea in all seasons. At night, Maura and her father walk on tired feet back to their rooms. He wears a blue uniform, opens the heavy front door for guests and closes it behind them. Her father works at a big hotel on the point. She does this for many summer visitors, including the ones who live in her house. In the summer, she and her father rent two shabby rooms inland and she walks every morning to the coast, where she spends the day washing and changing bedding, sweeping the sand off the floors, scouring and dusting. It starts with a girl named Maura, which is my name, too. If you were older or he younger, I couldn’t tell it, this story so dangerous that tomorrow, I must forget it entirely and make up another.īut a story never told is also a danger, particularly to the people in it. My father’s too old and deaf to hear and you too young to understand. Let me wrap you in a blanket and my arms, take you to the big chair by the fire, and tell you a story. You’ve never heard these noises before and they are making you cry. Series: The Tales of Gorlen Vizenfirthe.Series: From the Lost Travelers’ Tour Guide.People of Colo(u)r Destroy Science Fiction!.

We are all completely beside ourselves summary