A fishing village of a score of cottages where the Saltway comes down to the sea, every gable turned into the wind. The boats work the shore, the market works what they bring, and the rest goes up the hill.
Saltwick is built along its slope rather than facing it, every cottage gable end to the water and not one of them carrying a window on the seaward side. The walls are rounded shore stone bedded in lime, and the roofs are roped over the ridge and weighted at the ends with boulders. It has stood in the same place long enough that nobody in it can say when it was founded, only that the stone came off this beach.
The work divides cleanly and everyone knows their half of it. The boats go out and come back onto the strand below the houses, the nets are dried and mended on the sand, and what is landed goes straight to the slate slabs in the market. What has not sold by dark goes into the smokehouse and comes out four days later the colour of dark honey.
The village looks to Willowdale for everything it cannot catch, and the way up is a footpath through thorn. It looks to the shore for the rest. Its people work that shore as far as the old wrecks in either direction and no further, and they are not vague about the reason.
