Its been a while since I posted a snippet from the work in progress. Just so you know I dont post spoilers, just in case youre hesitating on whether or not to read. I try to be very considerate about that, as I know many people do not like to read spoilers before the book is out. The photo is mine and was taken in the lanes of Wicklow. :) copyright 2015 Cindy Brandner He had come upon the wood unexpectedly, walking as he was under a waning moon the colour of marigolds. He liked the night walking, liked the empty country lanes and the occasional cottages, inhabitants slumbering under their snug thatched roofs, unaware of the tall, dark stranger that passed by silent as a wolf scenting the turf smoke of their humble hearths. He had taken a turn just out of a small village this night, at a country crossroads. He took the right hand road, a narrow track up a long hill, thickly bordered by hedgerows, their own dwellers asleep in nests and burrows, the last of the blackberries falling overripe from the brambles, to be crushed beneath his booted feet. He stopped and gathered a handful from a branch sticking out into the narrow lane, the last of summer’s sun and soft wind thick upon his tongue with the taste of them. The walk up the narrow lane was long, but so was the night and it was a rare time when his knee wasn’t giving him overmuch grief. The weather was fine, just a soft wind sighing over the hills and through the trees. A man could manage many a mile in such conditions. When he crested the hill, he saw a narrow path that led into long grasses and a small wood. The light was bright enough that he could see to put one foot ahead of the other. Sometimes on such nights, if he walked far enough he felt weightless, as though he might float away, become merely spirit and leave his flesh, battered and scarred, behind and become a part of the night and the wind, the wood and the water and drift upon such currents until he was just a bit of the sky and the smoke-soft stars. Sometimes he thought a man could just walk until there was no longer need in his bones, no longer want in his cells, no longer an ache in his heart for things to which he could put neither name nor form. And so he kept walking as the night rolled like a mother’s comfort over the land. He was aware of the larger wood off to his right, but it was kept somewhat invisible by its own dark nature and his need to keep his eyes to the path which he was on, for his knee couldn’t afford a stumble. Then the path turned sharply to the right and upward, and the land changed to something other, something that did not welcome man. The trees soared into the night and blotted out the face of the weary moon. The silence they held was eerie, like that of a cathedral or a place of worship far older, far wilder, a place for a moon that was as narrow and sharp as the blade of a sickle and the scent of blood was thick upon the ground. He kept walking, despite the jolt that shot from the primal seat at the base of his brain down his spine to settle low in his stomach, leaving a prickling awareness of something behind, always behind, him. Long ago, in another life, he remembered a man telling him that the trees had eyes, and not just those of the birds and animals that dwelt in them, but eyes far older, things that peered out from that other realm, the one that was always a step to the left, or a half-heard whisper away. He felt all those eyes upon him, as though from a strange distance, eyes that assessed and knew the measure of a man in a glance. They would bless or curse, those eyes, at their own whim and in their own time, which was the time of wood and water and the turning of the seasons. He walked through the night, into a dawn that held frost in its heart and a clear, cold consciousness that sharpened his own wits and instincts. He walked into that which he had not understood he was seeking.
Posted on: Mon, 19 Jan 2015 20:34:35 +0000
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