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| It was a dreamlike day... | |
| By sam_duke | ||||||||||
| 14 July 2007 | ||||||||||
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This is the first part of the second book of a novel whose first passages I've posted on here before (the posts - not the novel - were entitled 'A Day on the Estate', I think). Forgive me for not posting these under the 'Extended' category, but it's only particular passages such as this one that I'm really bothered about at the moment.
It was a dreamlike day. A gentle breeze swept over the dewy grass of the whole park, from its entrance down by the lane all the way up to the high plateau and out eastward to the whole city that was there to be glimpsed in the distance. It was still quiet, as the only ones out were a man walking his dog, one or two more ambling slowly along, and me. It was the first morning of October, the advent of the season of change, when the philosopher’s stone reaches its perfection, when the earthly colours take on a lustrous hue, and when all creation seems at last spectacular. Already the leaves of the trees were beginning to lose their monotonous green and transforming to a burst of vermillion and amber, gilded by the sun’s pale rays shining down from a blue gradient sky. The humble heaps of cloudy white were sailing up there like crafts on the, as if foretelling some pleasance to come. It was cool in the air, but there was a gentle warmth left on the ground from the remains of the summer. But even though something within me was still pining to see all the wonder of the world, that core of hope that never seemed to extinguish, I still couldn’t raise my head or my eyes and marvel at it all. I’d gone out to the moor on the other side of town that Saturday morning just to clear my mind, to try and calm myself down, and just to get away from the house. I didn’t have the strength to do much else any more. Still my every breath came like a sigh. Still my heart felt heavy wherever I wandered. Yet that morning, as the leaves began to turn, flowering for the year’s second spring, and as the winds began to change, something deep down felt somehow different. So I walked on, traversing the length of the park, the vast common with its pitches and its gardens and its lake, all flanked by woodland on either side. It wasn’t long ago, I suddenly thought, that I was laying back on the very same green with Melanie, as we spent our days with all the rest of them, wondering where our futures might take us, what our roles in life were to be. Whenever we spoke, back in the glorious advent of our summer of hope and innocence, our talk always made me believe I could do anything somehow, that I had it within me to change the whole world. But she’d just laugh, or more often tilt her forehead and simper, and then loll back on the grass and fall to sleep as if she never had a care in the world. It was as though Maria felt the way I did too, but she knew well the despair and the emptiness of it all. She knew the scale of the challenge. It was as if she was the one who had shown me the size of the task, who had opened my eyes, and that had made me sick, and torn me to shreds. She still hadn’t called back either. All these thoughts, all these hopes and doubts, they all drifted and darted across my mind like so often before as I ambled along that autumn morning, the first day of that season of change. If someone had to read my mind like a story in a novel, they’d have long since grown bored, for even now everything was just the same as it always was. But still I carried on. I drifted across the grass, suddenly with neither destination nor direction. I could have turned east, and back home. I could have gone somewhere new, and never come back. But for some reason I hiked on instead up the northerly hill I’d never walked toward before, and to whatever else was up there. Where was I going in life? What was my mission to be? I’d asked those questions before. I’d asked those questions of myself, and of everyone else, so by now they were all tired of the questions, just as I was too. But still my answers had to be found. The joggers and the ramblers and the dog-walkers all remained ambling on the heath’s lowly plain. But the further up that mount I climbed, the quieter it became. The incline of the terrain was only slight, but as I stepped upward it all seemed softer and gentler, the pain inside easing away. The birds were flying high and singing their songs, their music wafting with the breeze. But at the top of the knoll, beyond a row of birches and horse chestnuts that seemed to hide away another realm, I peered on through to see what was there. As I looked up, I found a silent vista of perfect green, not a single soul on the entire plateau as far as the clustering trees in the distance that bordered the whole park. And in the middle of the plain, at the very centre of that serene and sheltered world, an English oak stood tall and proud, its stature mature, higher and mightier than anything about. Its leaves were beginning to turn too, and as Nature breathed its branches swayed and a handful fluttered down to the sward pavement. I stood, glanced across the whole, simple scene and smiled. It was so perfect, so untouched, just like new, a space that could be my special place. Slowly I walked further towards the oak, as if drawn that way by the flight of the birds and the sunlight shining down on its leaves to cast a sheltering shadow beneath. With every step I took in the pure and pleasant air, the quietude of this enclosed, fresh patch, this new world that nobody had yet discovered, soothing me within. And then, all of a sudden, there was singing. From somewhere on the plain came a lilting tune sung by a dulcet voice. It wasn’t the birds; they’d stopped playing their music, as if to let that girlish euphony hold dominion over the breadth of the field and the air in the sky. I gazed around, but I couldn’t tell where the song was coming from, the vague words sung harmoniously, beautifully. I’d stopped in my tracks once again, struck by that enchanting sound as though it were taking me into a trance. Where was that song? Where was that girl? But then I saw those birds in the sky once again, half a dozen floating in a perfect formation up by the blue, their wings waving just to keep them suspended in the same spot. They were hanging up in the air above that single, solitary oak tree to which they were flying when I first came up the hill. As soon as I saw them, and as soon as it came to my mind why they were there, they scattered away, each one charting its own separate course as they all prepared to make their way south before the cold set in. And when they fluttered off, in their place the sun’s rays glimmered down from the heavens to bring a glint sent just for the oak. I walked closer, ever closer, and with every step nearer the song became clearer, the words and the tune capturing my mind and my heart. “Somewhere over the rainbow, way up high, in the land that I heard of once in a lullaby…” That voice, a rich yet light mezzo-soprano, sang the simple words, rising up the octave like a voice of hope. Her gentle, plaintive sound was captivating; the promise as much as the sadness blended together in her tone. “Somewhere over the rainbow skies are blue, and the dreams that you dare to dream really do come true.” When I reached the haven oak, that shelter out in the open, I stepped slowly round to set eyes upon the face of the girl to whom the voice belonged. She was enthralling, enchanting, alluring, calling me near with a song of brightness. I treaded gently, careful not to make a sound of the rustling of the grass or by trampling through the few fallen leaves. I leaned my head to peer round the other side of that mighty, majestic tree casting a shadow all around, and for just a moment, as I set eyes upon the girl from whose soul the song had come, my heart fluttered. She was divine. She wore a dress that was heavenly white like snow, furnished with bell sleeves, flounces at the hem, a drawstring neckline and embroidered with floral appliqués, all draped over her tender body from her humble chest to her soft and silken lap. The fabric rested on her petite shoulders and caressed a figure so beautiful but so fragile that with a moment’s force it might well break. She sat there with her legs wrapped underneath her, only a pair of silver sandals gracing both her feet. She was small and slim as a songbird, not much younger than I, and as she perched there on the grass she rested her slight frame against the trunk of the tree and kept her head bowed to one side. Her hair, long and golden as the tresses of an angel, fanned softly with the breeze, hiding her eyes and her face. She still didn’t know anyone was there. “If happy little bluebirds fly above the rainbow, why can’t I?” The girl sang that last line, the rising pitch of the closing bar coming softer and slower until finally the notes were extinguished from the breath through her lips once and for all. She had her eyes shut throughout, and with those final words she sighed, and smiled. In that one instant, my eyes were lost in the sight of her, and my soul in her wonder. The peaceable pleasance may have soothed the air of the atmosphere, the branches of the trees swaying and those same birds flying happy and carefree once again. But deep inside my blood was rushing and my heart was struck, trembling with enchantment. It was as though I was scared, but glad to be scared. So bewitched and so bedazzled, it was only delicately, almost silently, that I could whisper, “That was beautiful.” The girl was taken aback. Her eyes shot to mine like those of a sweet frightened doe. She gasped, awoken to the world of a sudden, and raised a tremulous palm to her chest as she turned her head. “Oh, I’m sorry,” I said, stepping clumsily away, holding up my hands, “I didn’t mean to startle you.” With a slender, delicate hand she brushed the hair from her face, and looked me in the eyes, as though in that single moment deep inside she was asking what my heart and my soul were saying, as though her mind was measuring mine, as though she was wondering what she should make of this boy who’d just come and trampled into her life’s special spot. And she smiled a gentle yet beaming smile, her teeth as white as stars, her lips as tender and beautiful as a loving kiss. “That’s all right,” she gently replied. “You just took me by surprise, that’s all. No one else ever comes up this far.” Her voice was like a melody of its own, refined and elegant, but so quiet and so peaceful too, like none I’d ever heard before. “I heard your singing,” I hurriedly said, starting to see I was standing there a little awkwardly. “You have a very lovely voice.” She shone her smile once again, bright like a candle. It was then, as we gazed into one another’s eyes, I saw at last the beauty of her face. And she was extraordinary. Her eyes were sapphire blue, wide like an infant’s, but deep and dazzling like a lover’s too. The sunlight from above fluttered down from above and danced on the contours of her face, irradiating her skin yet more than the glow that doubtless ever shone on those rosy cheeks, those lips that seemed upturned as if by nature, and that fair, golden crown. The words and the thought flattered the humble, modest girl and made her glance away with a coy, bashful expression, wrinkling her nose and pursing her lips. She raised her eyebrows, coloured slightly darker than her hair, for her locks, though fair, were a dusky, mature tone of their shade. “Thank you,” she said, her speech like the whisper of an angel. “Care to join me?” she asked, brushing the grass beside her with the milky skin of her benevolent hand glowing in the radiance of the heavens above. She shuffled her body, just to sit a little more upright, stretching her legs and pressing her palms against the ground to raise her back. She only had a small oval basket made of wicker with her, close to her side, and an open book bound in leather, its pages facing the grass as though she’d laid it down halfway through some pleasant thought, some beauteous imagining inspired by the words across the sheet.
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