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It was hot, so very hot, on the third day when the Lion legged and legged with heavy pad through the hazy, sunglued air, lagging on long
lowroads which lay between flat, baking fields. Every now and then he would sink into the ovenous shade of some tree, with its thousands
of drooping sunbashed leaves, and suffer the warm suspiry fumes of wild grass to swathe his heated head. Dry seeds tickled his nose while
flies repaired the sheen of their metal on swelt tongues of moistureless leaf.
If he closed his eyes all the sounds of summer, the wise hum of a lone bee, the skirr of tiny flies, the dripped burble of lazy birdsong, frayed
into a sea of silence. Even some rooks far away across a field were distant black wavelets noising round a greencapped rock of discord, s
moothing finally into the hot, silent weave.
Then there's only the fierce despotic sun, commanding its tribute of unquestioning growth.
He would doze, and for a while be lying on a sloping seabed of sand, red and fractured, where a multitude of purposeful crabs tunneled and
poked...would be woken by the hairy fumble of a large bee blundering into his ear and find that the green heat had tightened its grip on every
stalk, that his mane had been colonised by myriad meek aphids and coleopts, that the air towered higher and higher.
Then he would get heavily up and move off again, urged on by he knew not what. A curiosity. A restlessness. Just off to the left a line of
witchy willows was drowning something beneath the surface of a glittery stream. Everywhere, vast quantities burned unseen. The horizon
buckled. The Lion felt sore bothered, tiny, and insolatedly lonely.
He (the Lion) was dragging himself past the bleachbare tangle of some hedge exterior
___the wrong side for shade___
when he heard a sound
that lifted his spirit in a handsome rush. Voices: young, happy to be, as clear and cool as water, they rose and fell from sudden swoops of
laughter to murmurs of pure absorption. They came from the other side of the hedge, calling strongly to him (the Lion), but run as he might
up and down the length he could find no gate
___not even a gap. So determined was he to see what was on the other side that he finally
just lowered his head and highered his shoulders and squirmed and bellied and pushed and parted till there he was, in a rich meadowy
garden, completely surrounded by the tall dense hedge, where two children merrily played.
The girl, who had long fair hair and a pert freckly face, and who wore a white dress with a white pinafore on top, was the first to see the Lion.
___Oh, look! she pointed, her eyes wide with sensation. The boy looked and was puzzled.
___Isn't he beautiful?! breathed the girl.
___He's a fright, replied the boy.
They came toward the Lion, the girl running lightly through meadow flowers in her bare feet, the boy slower and guarded. The girl
skidded to a sit beside the crouching Lion, all her white clothes a-billow. He could smell the tingling creamydown smell of her skin,
the sweet limp scent of the garland of flowers about her neck, and the clean nutty aura of her hair.
___His mane is full of sticks and straws, the girl said. He does look funny!
And she stretched out her hand to begin picking out the matted pieces.
___He might be dangerous, warned the boy, who had remained standing dubiously.
___Don't be silly! Him?
The girl leaned close, her pale, deft fingers buried in the Lion's thick red mane, teasing out bits and burrs, smoothing and
smiling. She instructed the boy to pick more flowers so that they could make a garland for the Lion as well.
___Why should I? demanded the boy.
___Don't, then. I don't care!
But he did, sulkily tearing the petalled heads from their long stems while the girl groomed and stroked the Red Lion, humming a little tune to
herself with mischief between her lips. The boy came back with a double handful of flowers which he dropped in a heap beside the girl
before sitting a little way off to watch silently as she wove them together with stalks of grass. She hummed quietly, continuously, often
allowing her eyes to lock gently with those of the Lion.
After a time the boy said: ___I've seen him before. He's just like the old lion up at the inn.
The girl turned to look at him with an expression of devastating scorn, one hand laid in absent protectiveness on the Lion's forehead.
___This, she solemnly pronounced, is a magic Lion; and I love him.
Her small hand was on the Lion's head but its frank, easy weight touched on every part of his being. He felt an awkward bulk building
within him, while his chest and throat seemed so swollen and choked that only a huge, violent roar could clear them. At the same time,
his vision swam as tears of relief and happiness crowded into his eyes.
With the new garland complete the girl stood up, signaling the Lion to stand too so that she might with greater dignity place it around his
neck. She then said:
___You must come and live with us, so that we can be together always.
The Lion bowed his great head, and with
his wide rough tongue he licked the tops of her tentidy toes, the pink slopes of her feet. He was utterly captured.
When he (the boy) saw how the girl's eyes closed, and that a fierce little smile concentrated about her mouth, his heart sank heavily down.
The girl rewarded the Lion's homage with a gracious kiss, then flung a happy arm around his neck and led him away, chatting merrily of
this and that. The boy followed.
He (the boy) had a huge, unswallowable lump in his throat, and his eyes stung. He felt, obscurely, that he had fallen. His mouth was dry,
his head ached with a dull pressure. The day through which he now dragged his steps was exhausted, stifling, barren, having long
outlived its innocence.
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| 9... MARCH | . . . . . . |
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I am so afraid.
I shouldn't be, it's ridiculous, but I've become hypersensitive to every nuance of Amelia's looks and words. She can make me feel like a god
___a motley-green May-king man___
or she can destroy me. I don't believe she knows how painfully balanced I am, like a gigantic boulder teetering
on a toe; an echo could topple me and send me plummeting into depths of misery if it was at all harsh or critical. She gets irritated because I
am often so slow and lumberous in my responses. I can never explain that for every breath of actuality she creates I have also to contend
with furious inner crosswinds of possibility.
Yesterday was so perfect, today there's this fear. I don't know what it is. It's not even as if we had disagreements or misunderstandings
___we don't. Just sometimes...certain lapses of attention, nothing more...nothing serious.
I love her so much. When she rests her head against my chest the way she does, with a barely audible sigh like that, I feel I'm holding
all the precious beauty in the world.
It wasn't anything I could name, I just get too overwhelmed. we went out into the garden to bring some sheets in off the line because
it was beginning to snow again. She was wearing her sheepskin coat and that white woolly hat of hers, and we went out to get in the
sheets. It was cold, of course, with snow already on the ground and that heavy grey wind, and the sheets flapping like huge tethered
birds. Flap! with that kind of wet, hopeless lunge. No, it was alright; just slightly eerie, because it was late afternoon, with the snow just
coming down, like when you brush something unwanted off a table. It was rather powerful, I suppose. All that whiteness. All that whirling,
shifting whiteness and in the middle of it
___Amelia's face!
I got a real shock, sort of jumped forward. Somehow I had the feeling that I was
going to los_____
that something was changing. The sheets swelling with wind and snow...her white hat...it seemed as though she was
disappearing...just her face, floating in mindless whiteness. I don't know how I sounded, I felt panic-stricken.
___Amelia, I said. This seems just like a dream.
It wasn't even a thousandth part of what I meant, or wanted to say, but I got the feeling that she knew anyway. She looked at me
almost lazily, I thought, with that snow falling on her face from a nonexistent sky, and said back to me:
___It is just a dream.
There was nothing in it. just a light remark, but for some reason this terrible feeling of dread fell against me. I couldn't bear it. I felt
as though all the coldness, the shivering, the lack of definition, all the blank meaninglessness of that moment, was going to go
on for ever, spreading round and round the world like an incurable blight.
That night, after the long heat had staled into a featureless umbra, there spiraled up from the deeply-buried centre of darkness a violent
wind. It drove before it schools and shoals of frightened cloud, packing them into confined regions of moonless sky till not a glimmer
of light was left. Rain-shot was spat from the blackness. Small stones, twigs, anything not firm or fixed, flew through the wild air. Trees
moaned, tiny birds and human babies cried thinly, doors and shutters slatted and banged with manic regularity. The Lion's board was
bombarded as it lurched back and forth, its rusted iron screeching and scraping with comfortless insanity. And when the dawn straggled
brokenly in, the spell
___which had brought such life to life___
was gone.
© B. R. Mitchell 1998 |
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