Where a pile driver’s chant, fast as the twining rain, left a frangible coil of rope in the open docking floor, the nest of phoenixes and dung scarabs, where the many look through the chinks and knot-holes of the planks, even there did the rhythm of dreaming fords lay the long causeway, ending in the bridge to the pier. The bell in the fractal spire did not answer this, too late to measure the border of the tide of shadow to the brim awaiting depth. The breath of the beam beneath, soaked, sprinkled with saltwater, it answered this, and long before time.

The motherly rake turned up the atmosphere to the jagged and bristling underside, a concatenation with multiple architectures in antiquity, above the mountains higher than can be named; wreathed and came down, even to beneath, to the smell of goats in the morning, taken to the beam, the beams, the binding taken from the coil, freshened in the cameras’ looking. Broken over one monolithic handstave across the tendering mill: this was the breadth of the floor between every chink, in the venerable concatenation, and the voice which spoke:

“Prepare yourself, and pluck the flowers, and bring the tawny flower with the black mark, with what you will find.”

One prepared herself, the young Sardius Tosi, a girl of twelve, with red buttons on her shirt; she plucked the flowers, walking among the weeds, the willowherb, plantain, and tansy, finding and picking the flowers sought. She came to the tawny one, like a low earthen star, with the mark: she bent, and pulled it. Its tiny roots pulled out the earthen plug from a hole, the mouth of a hose, from which leaped a stream of blackish liquid.

She opened her mouth to scream in surprise, but instead of a cry coming out, the stream went directly in, point first and headlong, rushing down her throat, spreading and flowing over and covering her face with the liquid as it swirled into her; swirling over her eyes and she did not blink: she saw through the swarm of suspended grains; rather than splashing, the droplets stretched out and snapped back elastically. It was like clear oil, and full of dark crumbs and bits that were of some organic or animal origin. She could not straighten; staggered, but could not move her head, as though the liquid was running down her throat, up her nostrils, into her tear ducts, with endless running feet, pulling her down as it ran up inside her.

Then the other end came up out of the hole, leaving it dark and empty; at the sudden release she straightened and staggered again, the last of the liquid swinging and writhing like a semi-transparent eel or baby elephant’s trunk, vanishing into her face like a tremendous spaghetti noodle, into her mouth as into a drain, a thin upside-down whirlwind filled with meaningful detritus. Then it was all in her, and dragged her mouth shut with a click behind it. She pushed her hair back, thinking it would be wet, but it was not; she felt her face, and it was dry as paper.

The mystery had filled not only her belly but her veins, her skin, and her heart in her bosom. She put her hand to her bosom, and squeezed with her heart, deliberately pumping with her heart, driving the visitant liquid throughout the thinnest reaches of her form. In her other hand she held the flowers, and the flower. She returned in her preparation and brought all to the brokenness, the breadth of the tendering mill between every chink, in the venerable colossal chain, the voice.

“When the time comes to plant it, my Sar-Sar, and water it with your tears, find its name “Andreas”, which will bear the vital seeds in the due withering time.”

2023/03/01 #DailyWrittenOOM

One Andreas Hawforth, eight years of age, loose fawn hair, wearing a thick jacket of mostly red, was bouncing a yellow golf-sized rubber ball on the slick floor of the hallway. He skipped around it to contain its movement, with solemn and precocious deftness.

Then the ball struck the floor like a heavy globe of lead, rolling slightly rather than bouncing so much as a millimetre. He saw the legs of a man standing before him, in pressed beige trouser legs. As he looked up, he squinted in the breeze, which carried spray or mist. He heard the voice of the man as if on the other side of a tunnel:

“Hello, son.”

It wasn’t his father, just the sort of older man who called boys “son”.

“Hello, Sir,” he replied.

“Do you want power?” the stranger asked.

“Yes.”

“That is good. But what do you want most of all?”

“To be worthy of it.”

It sounded strange in Andreas’ mouth, but it was what he wanted to say, and he had been able to say it. His eyes had turned to glass, so that he could not see; but images came to his imagination without his imagination asking. A face being smeared by many hands or paws, being covered and hidden and masked by mud; he couldn’t tell what kind of face it was, but it seemed young, or that of a girl, or both. A hand reaching through a wall of bricks; a regular net set up as a wall, which, incongruous with its orthogonal structure, consisted of living vines – or roots, as there was no green. This was being climbed by many shapes silhouetted against the paleness of the unknown; he noticed that some of the shapes were human, and some were not.

The stranger handed Andreas his ball, which felt the same as before, and the stranger smiled at him, though the stranger’s eyes were hidden by a dark blindfold.

“What would you do with this power?”

“Um…” he thought for a moment. “I told Ma I would shell some peas, so it could help with that.”

“It might help a little, but it is unlikely.”

“So it isn’t a very useful power?”

“Its uses are as mysterious as its sources, but you will find both in due time.”

The stranger was gone, and only then did Andreas wonder why there had been wind indoors, why there had been mist which had made him damp – the ball in his hand was bedewed with droplets. He was glad he had still been wearing his jacket.

He went on bouncing his ball, not knowing that, unseen under his hair, an intricate symbol in dark lines had appeared.

2023/02/28 #DailyWrittenOOM