Episode Nine

Ma was gliding high above the world where the air was thin. She could clearly see mountains with snowy tops, although she felt no chill. She had never been this high before but she knew this place.

She was plunging to earth. Curved lines appeared and disappeared as the white moved past. Far below was a deep blue, reflecting sky. The gentle hill was travelling past, grey-green and treeless, to the plain and the deep blue, sapphire-blue of a body of water with no end. Pass through, and she would pass to the sky on the other side.

  She made a soft landing, felt the briskness of the air, smelt the familiar scent of pine needles. She had allowed herself to float face down upon the grass, arms out, palms flat against the cool dampness. Her whole being drank it up. She stood and walked gently upon the earth. Tender small blades of grass, so delicate that the light shone through, stayed and bent, flattened with each step, then rose up again. Closer to the lake, the ground was wet, marshy, soft, and it sprang back, filled with water in the impression of a bare footprint. At the edge, the lake met the ground and dropped away into the deepest cobalt blue. There, the soft blades of grass were yellow-green. A slight breeze bent and restored each blade. A small beetle, red and black with orange legs finer than the finest human hair, climbed upon the blade and it bent.

            Leading up to a wooden hut was a narrow path, along which some small stones made of a kind of bluish metallic substance, were scattered amongst the grass. There was a light inside shining at the small square window and a wisp of smoke that slid upwards into the blue until it became so fine that it disappeared. A lace curtain blew in at the open window. The door was ajar. A small girl, no more than six or seven, emerged with a basket. She was wearing a dress with an uneven hem, and though the air was cold, her feet were bare. She crouched and picked up some of the little stones along the path, turned them over in the palm of her hand, felt them against her cheek, and dropped them one by one into the basket. They made a faint sound as they dropped onto the material and then as they clinked against one another. Stones were selected. Some were examined, felt and discarded.

            Inside the hut, a fireplace glowed and flickered. Beside the fireplace was a small wooden table covered in heavily embroidered cloth – bluebells, snowdrops, buttercups and twining leaves. A flat, rectangular piece of glass had been placed upon the table in the centre.  There were swirls of gold embedded in the glass. Indentations of varying sizes had formed in the surface, and in some had been placed small objects – the shell of a red and black beetle with orange legs like the finest hair, a dried seed pod, yellow-beige, cracking open at the edge, a spool of black cotton thread. Some of the indentations were waiting to be filled. Some would remain empty.  This plate was made in this place, fired in this fireplace, in a process that had been lost to the child.

            From the small stones the girl had collected in her basket that morning, one would be chosen to rest on the glass plate.

 

Ma remembered. Father had been away for three days and nights. He was hunting again and would need to find enough to survive the storm that was coming.