A Story for Halloween

I Shall Not Be Afraid of the Terror that Walketh About in the Night

She knew what they would discuss that night at the meeting. Her husband, dead, after so short a marriage, their child, stillborn a month before its time. She thought of the tiny, perfect body she had delivered, so like John in feature. The child haunted her dreams.

There was gossip of course. There was always gossip. Noverton was built in the wilderness, and the forest pressed close against it. During the bright summer months, this gave the village a sense of protection, but once the glory of autumn was spent, the trees turned to skeletons of themselves, they began to feel trapped by the long, bare branches, the dark shadows, and the impenetrable depth of the forest. The terrors of the Old World could be banished to a small wood, easily traversed. Here they crawled out of the dark, cried from a wilderness no man could plumb, tapped like fingers upon doors and windows.  Night fell early, and the minister thundered atonement. The villagers barred their doors, lit fires to banish fear, as well as chill.

And they talked. And talked.

She pulled on the cloak, newly dyed, to befit her widowhood. Black had never suited her, and now that grief had left its mark, it made her look eldritch. The cupped light caught at the harsh planes of her face. The window gave back the reflection of a hollow-eyed creature. She did not blame her neighbours for their whispering.

"The handsomest man in the settlement, to marry a thing like that, and willingly?"

"It was witchcraft, surely. That's how she got him. He'd not have looked at her, else."

"And the child the price of it, like as not."

She took the turnip lantern into her hands, and straightened herself with a shiver.  She knew what they would discuss tonight, and she only prayed God she'd have the strength to bear it, to live up to John’s pride in her.

John....

She did not blame them for gossiping. She did not know why he had loved her any better than they did. But he had. She went out, brokenhearted.

A cold wind chased faded leaves across the stone path.  Daylight was already failing, the dimness made dimmer still by the fog.  Their home-- the home she had helped John to build—lay hard upon the forest. She paused, halfway between her house and the gate. The trees seemed terribly close, the fog walling her off from the world of living things.

A dry rattling sounded from the bare branches. An ancient raven stared down at her. Ravens perched in the trees to either side of him. She glanced around. There were, indeed, ravens in every tree. Save for the sound that had drawn her attention, they were silent. And watchful.

The wind had died utterly, and there was no sound, no movement of air. What were ravens, after all? Or fog or dark? She had more to fear from her neighbours than these lesser creatures of God. She walked on, ringed by fog, and ravens flitting from tree to tree, so that she was never free of their circling.

And then he was walking towards her, a man in black. He wore John's face and form. He walked with the jaunty step that set John apart, in a way that even the comeliness of his face did not. He spoke her name, and her heart leapt to hear John's voice. But the feeling coming from him was not the feeling that came from John. She crossed herself as if she were as papist as the Irish, though she knew such a thing would scandalise her neighbours. He stopped and they looked at each other.

"They have not been kind to you."

"No." she answered John's voice.

"And they will name you a witch tonight, in spite of your sorrow."

She fully expected that, and met his eyes without flinching.

"Come."

He held out a hand, and light danced from it. She saw John in his shirt sleeves, smiling down at her, their child bouncing upon her hip, smelled sawdust, the smoke of cooking, felt the warmth of her child, the taste of his mouth on hers.

"No."

The light was gone. The twilight world of fog was all that remained, with black ravens circling restlessly, black, bare trees, and this man who was not John.

He touched her mind, and she saw all that he offered--riches beyond count, honour, ease and pleasures such as no man of earth could ever supply. She was stunned by hunger for so many precious things.

"No."

"They will burn you."

"They may. Or they may not. It will be as God wills. But I would die alone, the woman John loves, rather than go with his counterfeit."

Fire leapt into his face then, and he moved towards her. The great, ancient raven gave a cry and the flock flew up with a noise like thunder. Not-John shredded like smoke, before the storm of their wings. She threw the cloak up over her face, while the world flew to pieces around her.

Then all was still and she looked out on world, emptied of its terrors, with stars were just kindling in the evening sky. She went on her way, the ravens wheeling still around her, and she was comforted.

 They did not, after all, bring a charge of witchcraft against her. There were some, afterwards, who swore to an angel beside her, with a sword of fire in his hand. Others said it was not an angel, but John, with the light of blessedness upon his face. None had the courage to speak, nor to accuse.

The meeting ran short, and when it had ended, they scattered to their homes, ashamed, as men who have been judged, and found wanting.

The In Between Time

It is still summer-- at least, by calendar reckoning. August has not quite yet run her course, and Autumn does not officially come until September has nearly gone as well. It is summer by the calendar for nearly another month.

It is still summer according to the thermometer. The mercury marks day time temperatures that still run a bit too warm for my blood. We look to be in for more of the same for some weeks yet.

But neither calendar nor thermometer account for the sweet, slight-edged winds that give lie to the still-lingering heat; nor to the bright, deep-night chill that sets the stars blazing, and makes sleep come easily; nor again, that the northern tracking of the sun has dulled the fierceness of its insistent light. They do not mark the silence of the Marsh, now that the Redwings are gone, and only the Brewer's blackbirds remain, starting up in sudden, dense clouds, to wheel the open places, and dodge like stunt pilots through the rocking pines. We are on the cusp of migration season. Harriers are in the fields now, flying low and bright over willows and meadow grass. Nighthawks have visited us, with their swallow-quick, silent flight-- incongruous in so raptor-like a form. The geese are suddenly active, their voices no longer merely honking complaints. There is an ineffably wistful wildness to their calls, as they muster and V-mark the sky with their wing-loud squadrons. There is a half-hidden yellow in the heart of the aspens, in the neighbourhood rowans, in the willows and alder trees. There is a smell like baking bread, coming up off the meadows, a smell like wine in the wild rose thickets. 

The days are still hot enough, no denying that. It is still beach weather, for those that like that sort of thing. Still the season of picnics and barbecues. It is advisable to keep the fan at the ready, and to leave windows opened wide to the welcome night air. The pines have not started dropping their needles, in that bright, copper rain of true Autumn. There are no whirligigging pine nuts, no sudden storm of aspen leaves in the vagrant wind. It is still summer.

But the gripping heat has gone. The sun no longer shines with near-blinding intensity. The sky has lost its fired-enamel brilliance, and taken to it an all together gentler luminosity. The air is stirring, and wild, sweet smells keep slipping out of hidden places. We are at the in-between time, and I stand on the edge of it, newly in love with the beauty of the world, with the first, mad stirrings of wanderlust, beating against my heart. 

It's the Simple Things in Life you Treasure

There are pine nuts on the ground this week.

There are other signs of summer's waning, of course. There is a freshness to the morning, a coolness to the afternoon breeze – sweet after the heat of the last few weeks - and the subtle, telltale, rain-patter sound of dropping pine needles. But it was the tawny-golden, paper-winged pine nuts that stopped me in my tracks and made me thrill for the coming autumn. 

Because there were no pine nuts last year. Autumn of last year was a long, dry season, coming hard at the end of a long, dry summer, and a year that had no real winter to speak of. There was no ground water. Lawns withered. Wildflowers bloom briefly and faded in the heat. The shallow edge of the Lake turned desolate, drying out with a faint put persistant smell of rotting plants and stagnant water. There were little pockets of sickening pines, turning brown on the hillsides. By the end of the summer, all growing things had the aspect of refugees from a disaster, clinging to life on the edges of a dried-out world. Or perhaps that was just me, projecting my thirst for wet and cold onto the landscape around me...

And there were no pine nuts.

I cannot remember a single other autumn in which this happened. I’m sure that there have been others – perhaps even within my own lifetime – but I do not recall them. That lovely margin season between full summer, and the red-gold, life-scented autumn has always been marked by pine nuts. They come spinning down out of the sky, and land with the faintest little pat of a sound. By the middle of September, the ground is covered with them – neat, brown beads, plumb in their whirligig wings. We used to gather them as children, pulling the papers off gently, keeping the oval bit that grew around them intact; cracking them gently open between our teeth. They taste very little like the pine nuts one gets in the store. These are softer, sweeter – the pine taste both sharper and more subtle. They gleam pearl-white under their delicate aged-gold seed coats. 

Old habits die hard. I still feel the childish enthusiasm for gathering the nuts and eating them as I go for walks, or sit out in my yard. They are a fundamental part of Indian Summer for me – as vital to it as the chilled-red-wine quality of air. The lack of them last year saddened more than the brown dust and brittle clover that had been my yard all the long summer. 

But this year, there are pine nuts. Only a few so far. Summer has not quite let go its grip on us. Yet they are there, with their lovely little wood-bead and gold-paper casings. They still taste as sweetly of pine and the waning year as ever they did – sweeter, perhaps, for the year worth of wanting them. And perhaps for the sense of hope they engender. The drought is not over. Indeed, we may be fated to suffer it for some time more. But there is a promise of greener days in that embryonic life, a promise that with soft sun and gentle rain, they will become trees, and stand in the place of those that died of thirst. A promise that carries with it the sublimity of a Covenant - between Nature and God, and between God and Man: that if we just hold to our course, and be not afraid, He will bring joy and life to us again. 

Rambling From a Distracted Blogger

It is that time of year - almost fall, with an edge to the wind, a smell in the air, a gilding of yellow showing through the the foliage.... Autumn, the time of adventure, the time when I feel that I must take to the hills, fight trolls, slay dragons, bring home pots of gold to donate anonymously to good causes. I love autumn, but it makes me hugely restless. 

So I attempt to placate this restlessness by walks, in which I collect feathers, and bits of glass, and pretty rocks. Sometimes, I get all creative and draw things:

Le Steller's Jay Feather

Sometimes, I get all introspective, and attempt poetry. Mostly, I have not been having much luck with that, though occasionally, I manage to finish something before the wind sends wanderlust rushing through my veins, and I decided that all is straw:

When they, ravening, gather round me

With keen-edged words that cut me sore;

When I, in anger, and alone, 

Hold the the heart they broke in two - 

May I remember Calvary:

The wounds and words which once Thou bore;

Forgive - as Thou, Who died alone - 

Those, who know not what they do.

Mostly, through, I just read. Sometimes, I even find a book that makes me so happy, that for a time I forget all about going adventuring, and just enjoy my book,

The Moving Toyshop is one such book - and idiotic, farcical romp of a mystery. The detective: one Gervase Fen, an Oxford don, who exclaims, "Oh, my fur and whiskers!" when he is deeply stirred. Who freely, and without warning quotes from various works of literature and the Classics, Who drives at breakneck speed, a horrific vehicle, which he calls Lily Christine III. He is slightly mad, hugely well-read, impulsive, and totally unconcerned about the opinions of the world at large. 

The book itself just bowls along from one ridiculous situation to another. It is a very light work, but it contains a huge amount of literary illusion in it. I don't always get the references, but when I do, I snicker, for they are generally very witty. Even if one is not well-read enough to catch all the illusions, there is plenty of humour to be found. Take, for example, this scene, in which our intrepid investigator, hot on the trail of a Person of Interest, has crashed a choir practice, and is attempting to blend in:

Fen's voice, though penetrating, was neither tuneful nor accurate.

"We STAAAAY not," he came in suddenly, "but WAAAANDER." Several of the basses in the front turned round as if someone had struck them in the back. "We grief-laden," Fen pursued unconcernedly, "grieee-EEEF-laden mortals!"

Or this scene, in which Fen felt the need of an alias, whilst laying low at a public house, close to Oxford, and filled to the gills with literary folk, and is summon the the phone my a porter:

“Telephone call for Mr. T. S. Eliot!” he piped. “Mr. T. S. Eliot?”

To everyone’s surprise, Fen said “That’s me,” got up, and went out, pursued by the interested gaze of the other persons in the bar

Or the mad chase scene towards the end, where everyone even remotely connected with the case, joins in pursuit of a suspect - a pursuit on foot, as they have all be drinking rather freely, and the suspect was the only person to come equipped with a wheeled conveyance:

In any event, just as Fen was wasting his breath in chanting (rather inappropriately) "but with unhurried chase and unperturbed pace, deliberate speed, majestic instancy..."  he ran down the lane that leads to Parson's Pleasure, abandoned his bicycle, flung sixpence and the gate-keeper and disappeared inside.

There is even a passing reference during that chase, of the throng passing The Bird and Baby - a reference that made me wildly delighted. The Bird and the Baby is a public house, properly named The Eagle and Child, which was the gathering spot of the Inklings, back in the day. The Moving Toyshop was published in the 40s, which was when Tolkien was labouring over his first drafts of The Lotd of the Rings (Strider was still a hobbit named Trotters at the time.) In my mind, Tolkien and the Lewises were forgathered in the pub while Fen and his cohorts rushed past, but were so busy making the sort of scenes that they always made in public, that they did not notice the ruckus going on outside.

The Moving Toyshop is probably one of the most satisfactory things I have had the pleasure of reading in a long time. I would heartily recommend it to anyone who is in need of a good laugh, and a darned good read

And on that note, I sink back into the ether. Good night, all!

Autumn Is Changeable

My Dear Followers,

I know that you are not robots. I had no idea that Blogger thought it likely that great numbers of robots would be interested in a blog like mine, nor that it had taken it upon itself to sniff out these nefarious beings, and stop them at the door. I have had a stern talk with Blogger about it, and one should now be able to comment without having to prove one's humanity.

To my unspeakable delight I woke up to a world that looked like this today:

I am one of those odd people who absolutely glories in stormy weather. While most people are doing their best not to complain, I go about beaming from ear to ear, tromping about in the rain - I seldom go for walks in warm weather - and generally acting as though I have won the lotto.

The rain stopped for a bit in the afternoon, when a fierce, cold wind began to blow. The sun occasional peeked out from the clouds, and the air was full of dancing, golden leaves. It looked very Tolkien-ish:

If one cannot have storms, then a dramatic setting works nearly as well for keeping one cheery. The fierce, cold wind eventually drove away the sun, and by the time I was ready to come home from work, the world looked like this instead - but with more pine trees:

If there is anything I enjoy more than a good rain storm, it is a good snow, so my cup of joy was nigh to overflowing. It is supposed to keep on like this for the next couple days, which makes me feel very pleased with life at present, even if I am behind on my would count for Nanowrimo. I topped 10,000 words on it, in a fit of inspired determination, but it still lags. (So if the old blog starts looking rather unattended, it will be because I am attempting higher forms of literary abandon.)

The Beauty of the World....

"Sometimes my heart hath shaken with great joy
To see a leaping squirrel in a tree,
Or a red lady-bird upon a stalk,
Or little rabbits in a field at evening,
Lit by a slanting sun...."

I saw something that made those words by the Irish poet, Padraic Pearse, popped in to my head today. No, it wasn't a squirrel, or a ladybug, or a rabbit. It was just a tree and marvelous fall sky.

After a couple weeks of near-record high temperatures, the weather has suddenly turned, and become - well, not quite cold, but definitely chilly. We have had almost of week of rain, and very dramatic rain it has been too. There has been a good deal of lightening, and thunder. For a few days, the rain came down so hard, that it made a lively tattoo on the roof, and shattered itself to bits when it struck the road. There was hail once or twice, and a great deal of wind and commotion. It was delightful.

That particular weather system is being pushed out of the area, and we are supposed to me having somewhat warmer weather, with a good deal more sunshine. Today, however, though the rain had stopped, it was still prodigiously overcast. The sky was grey - that goes without saying - but it was not that flat, unbroken grey that stretches from horizon to horizon without variety. It was a sky jostled with great billows of deep smoke and violet, and a curious colour as close to blue as it is to grey. There were long, calm streaks of paler hues: dove, and cream and pearl. And, in one or two spots the clouds pulled themselves so thin, that ethereal blue pools appeared.

It was against this quintessentially autumn sky that I saw the tree. It was a maple tree, with small, delicate leaves, like bits of lace. It was flanked by two birches, whose branches had been turned into living gold by the cold. They were very beautiful, indeed, but the maple, towering above them, was lovelier still. For it hand not just turned to gold, but into a living flame, full of every shade of fire, from palest yellow to crimson. It burned against the riotous grey sky in singular glory, and at the sight of it, my heart was shaken by great joy, too.

Autumn...

....but the best is autumn. It is mature, reasonable and serious, it glows moderately and not frivolously ... It cools down, clears up, makes you reasonable ..." - Valentin

I couldn't have said it better myself.