Tom Foran Clark

In the morning, at the cap of Finisterra at the end of the world, the four -- Rita, Emery, Pike, and Shepperton -- stood on the rocky, wind-assaulted shore. The gusts struck them fiercely. They cast the ashes of the man, Arlen Townsend, upon the winds and waters. Roger Shepperton said, enigmatically, that his work was done: he'd delivered his message. He advised the others to backtrack from there -- to turn east to Calzada. He shook their hands and then excused himself, saying, "No fanfare, please. I'll find my own way out. Thank you."

Of course Calzada, in La Rioja, was just east from Burgos, where their pilgrimage to St. James had originated. Pike realized now that they'd begun their sojourn at Burgos west of Calzada, which is where, it was now clear, they were supposed to be.

Again, it was time to turn and go. Emery looked down to the jumping, flashing waters. He remembered how -- after Assissi, after Rome -- he and Pike had pitched their tent in the hills high over Naples. Emery had stepped out and almost fallen on the ground. It rushed back upon him now -- the lightness and the weight. He'd felt a sharp pain like a fist gripping his heart, even as he'd floated like a feather in the air. What was it? The vibration....

"Are you all right?" Rita broke his reverie. Emery looked at her and his entire self seemed filled with love. Here at Finisterre, the end of earth. "It was a very extraordinary thing," Rita said softly, "our coming together. You coming up to me on the boat -- you not knowing who I was." Emery looked at her. What were the things themselves?

Rita told him that which had been done to her. Tears streamed down her face; her body trembled. Rita had been brutally raped. "It was just that kid transporting furniture in Molinaseca," Rita said. "Remember? He'd almost lost control, coming around a curve. He'd been drinking. I'd told him we were pilgrims, and could not join him in his truck. This had not sat well with him." Rita said he had not been alone. It had been in the form of a ritual. It was three men. They'd come in, mocking and chattering, taunting and brutalizing this person they did not know -- Rita. One had knelt before her -- then stood and lunged at her like a matador -- then the others. They had gone at her like ravished conquistadors, vanquishing her.

All Emery could think to do now was hold her. His heart seemed torn in two. His breath came in gasps, the air knocked out of him. Emery said he'd slit their throats if he ever found them..

"I believe you," Rita said. "I asked Pike not to tell you. I feared you would go after them."

The silence after that, Emery felt profoundly.

“I’m going back,” she said.

“To Connecticut?”

“To Morocco.”

Rita, Emery, and Pike left Finesterre together -- they went back to Santiago city, turned in their bikes, and headed for the railway station. Pike and Emery put Rita on a southbound train, then the two got on the train to Burgos.