The sun set like a laser shone through honey, lighting the
tree tops on the
bank behind us against the hazy deep blue sky. We waited on the
shingle beach,
the smell of estuary mud as sluggish as the thick streams of
water that
crawled through tiny valleys across the flats towards the distant
sea.
The causeway was dry at sunset. Nearly time to go. We had four
hours
to walk the mile along the snaking gravel path, raised a foot
above the
dank seaweed and cold pools of the low tide. Already, the heat of
the day
was lost: on the hills, there would be frost by dawn.
The three of us set off, rag canvas and scavenged wire holding
our backpacks
together. Jereth lead the way, dodging the breaks and potholes.
Between me
and Tso, we carried the litter with the food and medicine,
rescued from the
village five miles along. Once, we disturbed a seabird that
cackled and
waddled a little way out into the estuary, unwilling to waste
energy
on dirty brown, featherbare wings. Perhaps it just didn't care to
fly.
We made the halfway point in good time, despite the two-day
fatigue. We
stopped for a moment and rested on the landmark, a broken,
scavenged army
vehicle squatting on bare axles half on the causeway, half in the
mud. It's
satellite dish still pointed at the sky, roughly towards where
Orion would
be when the stars came out.
By the time we reached the island, Jereth was popping the torch
on and off
to warn us of the footfalls in the path. The sites were way off
on the
other side; although we still had half an hour to walk it was as
if we
were already home. As we got nearer, we could hear the murmer of
voices and
the snap of bonfires, occasional bursts of drum and flute. The
reek of
the mud was sharpened with woodsmoke and, more than once, lifted
by the
beautiful smell of cooking.
There must have been five hundred people there, on the great lawn
that
stretched from the old mansion down to the rough sand beach. The
sprinkled
fires and wax torches broke the night, lighting the figures
walking, dancing,
sprawled on the ground. We knew most of them, by face if not by
name, and
were talking and laughing even before taking our supplies to the
treehouse
that overlooked the gathering. Tso and Jereth went deeper into
the woods to
pitch our tent; not we'd need it so soon.
So we sat and chattered through the night, close around the fire,
waiting for
the morning breeze to bring the sun and lift the first kites of
festival.
(c) rg