The caretaker watched her go for some time, chuckling softly to himself before going back to his chores.

Instead of going directly back to the Casa, Kara chose a meandering path that took her past several of the farm buildings. All the while, the allure of Port Haven was foremost in her mind, and as though guided by Fate she came upon an open tool shed near the back garden of the Casa and spied something hanging from the back wall behind an old trap piled high with boxes and other junk- an old girl's bicycle with a metal basket affixed to the handlebars. Pleased with this discovery, Kara sidled her way in behind the trap until she reach the bicycle, lifted it from the hooks that secured it to the wall, set it on its wheels and rolled it to an open area, then leaned her weight on it to see if the tyres were still good.

They were.

Elated, she walked the bicycle to the top of the hill, mindful of the watching eyes of old Guiseppe as she did so, and soon reached the path that led downwards to where, in the distance, there seemed to be a road.

Not much used to bicycles, she inexpertly began coasting downhill, keeping her speed down should she go for a toss. There was a moist, cool breeze now, and tall white clouds towered overhead. 'Perhaps I should have brought a sweater,' she mused when the sun was lost momentarily behind a cloud and the air grew chilly. But it soon returned, bringing its warmth and a peculiar washed-out brilliance, and she was soon coasting down the hill once more, her confidence renewed.

The road, when she reached it, turned out not to be a road at all. Instead, it was a bleached-looking, flattened, crumbling rib of rock that stretched for some distance in either direction. What she had assumed to be cultivated land on either side of this she discovered were swaths of tall wild shrubs, and looking about found her view obscured; the descending series of valleys was no longer to be seen.

'I know there is a road around here somewhere,' she told herself determinedly. 'It must be lower down. I shall just have to keep on until I find it.'

She followed the rib of rock to the left where the ground continued to be fairly level. Eventually the rib met a spine of rock running straight down the steepening hill. Momentarily laying the bike down, Kara climbed to the top of a ridge where rib and spine met, and her eyes were met with a steep grassy slope studded with boulders and broken white stone that stuck out of the uneven ground like broken teeth.




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