back to index or why call a halt?
"Dear Robert", the note began. I
didn't notice it, until Patricia pointed it
out on the side of the rocks by the road we were walking down.
"One of your
friends, I suppose," she said. "Just make sure it gets
removed, there's a dear"
"Dear Robert. What you seek may yet be found. Be careful of
tombstones with
fresh flowers in graveyards with uncut grass."
I took a picture of it, and set about cleaning up the mess. The
letters,
way above head height, were two feet high and etched ten inches
deep into
the granite, shiny new-hewn grey against old, weathered brown.
All in a
gorgeously clean monumental chisel cut that was way beyond
filling, so
while Pat and the boys went on down the valley I called up the
starships.
Whatever they were.
"Can you take the side off this rock to a depth of a
metre?" I asked the
nest of black dots that came to my shout. They weaved in the
afternoon
forest light like a cloud of gnats over an autumn puddle, the
sort you meet
and aren't quite sure whether to plough through or avoid.
There was no fuss. The surface shrank like a deflating balloon,
the letters
in the message thinning to imperceptability; the starships
unperturbed in
their slow swarming. "OK, thanks", I said, and they
were gone. I took
another picture; they'd aged the rock and kept the initial
contours. I
wondered how they'd known what to put in place of the letters;
perhaps
they'd guessed. Only a thin line of brown earth at the base of
the rock
showed that anything had happened, I thought about getting them
back to put
a bit of a slope on the rock, just at the base, to cover that up
too, but
what the hell. Nature would do the job soon enough, and the
family was
almost out of sight.
I soon caught up. "All neat and tidy?" asked Pat.
"Of course. There's a bit
of grass to grow back, but that's yet to worry a camper." I
replied.
"What did it mean, Dad?" asked David, the young one.
"The message? Who knows. Someone from the office playing a
joke."
"I thought you'd said you hadn't told them where you
were." said Pat, more
exasperated than I'dve expected. "There'll be some panic on
tomorrow, and
that's another holiday lost. You promised not to tell them."
"I haven't. I haven't even hinted at what we're doing, let
alone where."
We trudged along, down the gritty half-tarmac, half-pothole road,
pools of
water thinly veiling another world of treetops and small-clouded
sky below
us.
"Anyway, dear, you chose the route and drove us here. Your
surprise,
remember? I haven't even got a phone on me"
"That's true", said Pat, "and if any of your other
buddies have been
playing hide and seek with us..."
"They wouldn't dare," I said, "Honestly, nobody
could know where we are"
"Which means you must have put that message there yourself,
last night. If
you're getting into one of your morbid moods, tell me know and
we'll leave
you to it. I'd rather lose a holiday than what little patience
I've got
left..."
"Nooo, I'm fine. Let's leave it as a mystery. I'll find out
what it means
soon enough."
Patricia looked at me, and I regretted those last words, but she
sighed and
we both kept quiet. It was true, though; I can't claim to have
been waylaid
by many mysterious messages carved into bits of stone, but I've
found that
a lot of strange things make sense, eventually, if you just keep
your eyes
open. Some just get stranger; wish I could tell them apart at the
beginning, it would save so much. Perhaps they're all the same,
and you
just get to die before sorting out the real toughies. Perhaps, I
thought, I
am getting into a morbid jag. Better watch that.
We were soon at the campsite, by the river in the broad, open
valley. It
was one of twelve grounds, in a chain that stretched for miles
across the
county, and at this time of the year they were only busy at
weekends, You
were lucky - depending on your point of view - to meet anyone
midweek, and
this Thursday we were the only ones there.
"Look, Dad!" shouted David as we spread out the tents.
He was pointing at
the sky over the river to the south, towards the sea. "It
looks just like a
dragon!"
"Where?" I asked, peering upwards.
"Oh yes! A dragon! Look, Mum, Dad!" That was Will, and
that was the most
excited I'd seem him this trip. It can't be much fun for a
fifteen year-old
being drafted in as a policeman on this sort of divorce-avoidance
exercise;
had I been that moody when I was his age? Probably.
"I still can't see anything. Can you, Pat?" I said. It
was getting a little
chilly, and I wanted to get the tents up and a fire going.
"Well, the clouds are a funny shape, I suppose. I hope you
kids aren't
getting your father's tendency to see things coming"
"No, it's not really the clouds. Dad, did you get the
starships to put this
on for us? It's great!"
Pat and I exchanged glances. The clouds were spectacular, lit by
the long
sun and half-framed by the wide estuary, but not really
dragon-shaped. Like
the kids said, I realised. I crouched down by David, holding his
shoulders.
"Can you point it out to me?"
"Awww, can't you look, Dad? There!" He waved a pudgy
finger upwards,
outwards, and I looked along it. For a second, I thought I saw --
"It's gone away! Thanks, Dad, Mum!", said David.
"Yeah, that was really worth it.", said Will. Praise
indeed. "It was
great, with the sea in the distance and the clouds behind it, and
all that.
You should've taken a picture."
"Oh, it wouldn'tve come out." I said, confused and
needing, badly, to be
alone. "Treat's over. Now get those tents up, and get some
wood for the
fire. I'm going upstream, see if I can't get some good driftwood
to really
warm us up."
I walked towards the riverbank, aware of Pat wanting to talk,
hoping she'd
know I couldn't. Put it down to my insensitivity, please, Pat;
perhaps I
could explain when I got back, but that was something I'd never
managed
before. At least not sober, and I'd long since burned out the
alternatives.
The river was sluggish but very, very old. I thought about that
as I walked
along the meandering banks; to carve a valley this wide needed
tens,
hundreds of thousands of years. The floor must have silted up
many times;
it was flat, and the river had cut through it in a slow, thick
bend. I was
as close to the other side of the valley as I could be yet the
river was
still fifty yards wide; the walk on my side to the beginning of
the slope
uphill was twice that. I had a sudden, overwhelming awe, a
breathtaking
feeling of being in the presence of a power, impassive, ancient,
alive,
that might destroy me in a second, me the trespasser, me the
atheist at the
invocation.
I sat down in the twilight, in the long reeds, and was
shamelessly, totally
afraid. Nothing had changed; in the dimness a fish jumped,
blackbirds sang
their evensong in the trees across the water, a long, cathedral
echo drawn
out by every sound. I took a deep breath, lay down and closed my
eyes,
trying to remember why I'd come out alone, upstream, and trying
again to
catch a glimpse of what the children saw. I still wanted to get
up and run
back to the camp, busy myself with meals and washing and talking
about
nothing, but I wanted to know what I was running from more. The
feeling
persisted, but slowly I began to recognise parts of it. Going
into a big
church as a small child, alone, looking for my father and calling
his name
into the emptiness; cowering under the blankets afraid of the
night;
walking through the orchard, yelling for God to come and show
himself and
finding nothing but the hum of insects and the smell of the fresh
appleblossom, as it was, as it is, as it ever shall be, world...
There was a brush of wind, whispering the reeds, stroking against
my face,
and I opened my eyes. And stared into the face of the dragon as
it hung in
the night sky, looking down at me, stars as eyes and a mesh of
brilliant
scales that rose from the fiery wisps of sunset and crossed to
the far
horizon. For a gorgeous moment, I gazed at it, then felt the fear
inside
transform to an abject squall of terror. There are times to stick
it out,
and there are times when you get up and run. I got up and ran for
dear
life, following the river by instinct, shouting my head off like
a madman
being chased by ten-foot ants.
"Bad trip, dear?" asked Patricia, sarcastically, as I
sat, shaking, by the
fire. "I notice you didn't get any driftwood." Her tone
softened; I must
have been in a real state. "Oh look, I'm sorry. It's been
hard work keeping
those two amused while you were off gallivanting; I wouldnt've
minded if
you'd told me how long you were going to be. What on earth
happened?"
"I don't know. I don't know. Can you do me a favour, and
look up at the sky
above the river, northwards?"
"If it'll help, sure. It's beautiful; the clouds have gone
and the stars
are out. Hey, remember when you tried to teach me the
constellations, and
showed me the Seven Sisters and Orion's belt? I bet I can still
point out
some of those..."
I looked, and she was right. It was beautiful, a night sky to
write home
about, and no dragons to speak of.
"Why, what did you see?" Patricia asked, "The
dragon? That's right, the
whole thing started when David pointed at the clouds, didn't
it..."
She hugged me. "You and your dreams. Bet you don't even know
you've been
asleep."
"No... what is the time, anyway?"
"Nearly ten. We promised ourselves early nights, you may
recall", she said
with mock seriousness, "but if you want to stay up a little,
that's no
problem. I won't even moan about not getting breakfast in bed.
Again."
Later, when she was asleep, I walked down to the shingle beach by
the pool
at the edge of the campsite, still shaken by the memory of the
dragon. I
skipped a stone across the water, hearing it plop and seeing the
ripples
shake the rug from underneath the stars that lay beneath the
surface. It
was two o'clock in the morning, and I was cold and awake. I
couldn't
remember showing her the stars through my old telescope, but I
must've
done.
I stared up, willing the dragon to appear again. Nothing but
familiar
night. I saw the cold smear of the Pleiades, could even count the
seven
sisters. Perhaps my eyesight wasn't as bad as I thought. I
wondered if the
starships had their home there, somewhere; nobody knew. Nobody
knew what
the hell they were, let alone where they'd come from, if they'd
come from
anywhere. They just were.
"Come here!" I shouted, and they turned up, condensing
into their mist of
dots. At night, there was a faint white glow about them that
spread a
little, giving the appearance of a dandelion seedhead in a gentle
wind. It
was a strange month, the month they first just were, first the
rumours,
then the reports, and then the old girl on TV showing that they'd
come at
the sound of her voice and do things for her. Cut her lawn, she'd
said, as
well as her husband ever could. It didn't take long for everyone
to try,
but only a few of us had the gift, or the curse, or the right
tone of
voice. A few thousand out of ten billion, I thought, that find
ourselves
with fickle firefly servants and the distrust of the rest of the
world.
"Bring back the dragon" I said, in my best magisterial
voice of command.
They hung and darted, but no dragon appeared. I was supposed to
keep a
logbook of everything I tried with them, but I'd long since given
it up. I
made up a few entries every month, when they came for it; god
only knows
what that did to the scientists. Hope it kept them busy.
"Why the message?" I asked, "Was that you? And the
dragon?"
Magician.
The word drenched me, was a bucket of iced water on the hottest
summer's
day. I gasped, shocked, more awake than I've ever been. Above,
the stars
were pinpoint bright.
"Again!" I shouted, not thinking, following raw
instinct.
Magician. Who conjours dragons. Magician.
I felt the aweful fear return as that last word soaked through my
thoughts,
slowing my heart to the edge of stillness.
"Tell me. Everything." Again, the instinct drove,
conscious thought a bare
veneer, a scratch-thick layer, a touch of age on a granite rock
by the side
of the road. Then even that was gone.
It would be wrong to call it lost, the things they told me,
because that
implies we'd been careless. Forgotten, that means we'd muddled
our
thoughts, let things slip, and that wouldn't be true either. More
set
aside, kept for later, as you might a passage in a book that
fascinates but
whose true meaning eludes you. Our starships were nothing more
than
bookmarks.
I went back to the camp, and woke everyone up. We sat and watched
the
dragon catch the dawning sun and fire the river god with life.
There is a time for everything, and it is now.
(c) rg