When we were young, the Cliff was so much bigger. Although that’s only to be expected, really, but as a child I was fascinated with this magical shrinking cliff. It didn’t shrink very fast, of course. It took its time, which I think was the particularly fascinating part of it—that something so very grand and independent and formidable would ever bother with the aspect of patience.

I spent many a summer night waiting under my blankets for the sounds of the house to grow quiet and dark with the lull of sleep. Sometimes it happened fast, like the flip of a switch or the ripping of a band-aid. As though by some silent conductor’s flick of the wrist, all would cease its stir, and I knew I was alone in the night world.

At other times, it was painfully gradual.

I watched eras pass me by; heard mountains crumble, hourglasses shatter. All the land was awake and mocking, as I squirmed and tossed with a fast beat tapping at my ribs. And then finally, when I was sure I could bear the waiting no longer, one member of the orchestra would feel some pity, and strike up a note. Gently, the others would catch on, and at long, long last, night would come.

Night in my old cellar bedroom was glorious. It was furnished modestly—soft beige carpets, a book shelf, an old oak desk at the foot of my bed. But these were simple times in simple places where it did not take much to make a room, and it was not in these splendors that I celebrated. No, my greatest treasure was neither rug nor desk, but glass and wood and screen: the old window, tacked up just at the crease where basement ceiling meets wall. It looks—rather, looked, for it has been many years since I’ve last laid eyes upon the old house by the Valley and I trust much has changed—out into my backyard and beyond, stretching far into the heart of country life. Little green shoots of grass peeking in at the base brought with them the perfume of earth, and there has never yet been a smell much richer than that.

If I was very still and kept my heartbeat soft under my skin, sometimes I could hear the Forestfolk whispering things from between the blades of grass.

Soft things.

Magic things.

It was from them that I first got the idea to visit the Cliff at night. Though in later years the window would become a different kind of escape (for things like midnight parties, and late dates with pretty girls) in the midst of boyhood, it was as good as my very own portal to a world of fantasy.

The window was no more than twenty inches across, and less than that high, but even as a child I was very thin. I suspect despite the few extra pounds age has bestowed upon me, I could still slip through with little heckling on the window’s part, if any. And oh, the miraculous experience of wet grass against bare summer skin! No matter how many nights I found myself squirming through, the same wave of euphoria returned again and again. Freedom.

I don’t really remember ever registering that what I was doing was dangerous. I doubt I once considered the possibility of not returning home. The night erases a lot with her stars and smells—Mom, Dad, our beautiful country house, painted the hue of the rippling fields all around us, my perfect rural breakfasts and impending summer trips to the creek and the orchard and the corner store… all ceased to be. All that existed was already around me, and there was nothing to covet or yearn for or steal. All was still and peaceful as I stood in the damp greenery, simply being and respiring, being and respiring.

It was a long walk to the Cliff by the malady of day. But the cool shawl of evening was magic in itself—shortening the path and quickening my steps. I was never out of breath.

Each day, my bare feet would return home painted in yellow dust.

Each night, I came home far more whole and clean than the evening before. They were healing summer feet.

But I was not alone. Though too many calendars have stolen from my mind the names my fellow nocturnal run-aways, I keep still their faces—youthful and purple under the glow of the indigo sky and moon. No matter whom we were come morning, in the dark and shadows we could be whoever and whatever we wanted. We were more than friends. We were pilgrims of a new land—voyagers of the Cliff by the wheat fields.

I remember the last night I saw them. We were sitting on the edge, four little heads in a row, dangling our peachy, gangly legs quietly in the soft sighs of the Cliff breeze. I remember the way the moonlight caught us—a mesh of skin, glimmering silver-blue and smooth. We swung our feet methodically forward and back, forward and back, like some great leggy Japanese monster. We had been sitting for hours. Our pupils were huge and glittering with stardust. I spoke:

“So I guess I won’t be seein’ you guys around for a while.”

In all actuality, I would be seeing them. But not as pilgrims, no, and neither explorers nor voyagers. Come next day, we would wake to the white hot flicker of a school morning. We would stumble through our early chores, try our best to wipe the lines of fatigue from our faces, and then, with one blank sigh and shudder, we’d wave good-bye to the yellow and hope of summer. Come morning, with the magic of the Cliff fading fast from our feet, we would gaze upon each other as little more than acquaintances. As scholars.

“There’s always school,” said one of them in an unconvincing voice, “we’ll see each other then.” He picked up a dry twig and tossed it laboriously off the rim of the Cliff, watching it fall. It tumbled six or seven feet to the bottom (though in those times the distance between our toes and the water seemed so much more infinite) and rippled conclusively into the flowing creek below the Cliff.

“Yeah,” another replied.

We fell to our backs on the grassy lip, grimy hands spun like webs beneath our scalps. The stars echoed our eyes sadly in the ocean of black overhead. “Next summer?” I murmured sleepily.

“Yeah,” they assured each other, “next summer.”

Time passed. I could not tell you how long that last night was, neither then nor now. I can tell you this, however—we left something there that evening. Something insignificant, maybe, like our jacket or allowance. Or maybe something more.

I don’t know what happened to that “next summer.” We watched it come and go, I suppose, from within the shade and normality of our own homes and better friends. The magic was smothered.

It was a very long time before I went back to the Cliff. To look for what I had lost, I guess. I don’t really know if I found it or not. There was something almost sacrilegious about going back to the Cliff without the innocence of adolescence painted like tokens on my rosy cheeks, and without the pilgrims by my side. The Cliff is not a place for a man or any number of men. It is a secret place, meant only for those who can still feel the silky touch of nightly dew on their tanned flesh and see it as more than a secular escape. Its powers should not be abused—nor can they.

I have employed too many nights to the action of reminiscing. It is here I have learned these things, both of the Cliff and of myself, and it is here that I have uncovered the questions that I now bestow upon you.

Have heart—

Sometimes, I even find the answers.

Other times, I realize how they were always there to begin with, before the questions.

So how long was that last summer night? That answer you know as well as I do.

It never really ends, does it?