Like A Lamb To The Slaughter

Felicity rocked from side to side, hugging her arms tight about her shoulders.

“Something is lost, something is found, something is lost, something is found.” She repeated the mantra over and over, exhausted with the enormity of keeping the world in balance.

She stared upwards at the lonely lantern swinging from a wire high above, flickering with its urgent anxiety. She knew there was a message hidden in the tempo of it’s waxing and waning. If only she could slow it down enough to decipher it. People were blind to the secrets all about them, waiting to be interpreted. Didn’t they understand? It was dangerous to ignore them, they were the guardians of humanity. You ignored them at your peril.

When she first heard the voices as a child, she would wake up in the night and her father came and stroked her back, rocking her in his arms just like she rocked herself now. He would try to calm her.

“Shut your eyes and think of somewhere, somewhere cold and caked in snow.” And as she sat in the circle of his security she would feel calm descend. They sat together as the snow in her mind fell slowly, feather soft, and gently muffle all the voices. The ice gradually numbed every thought into oblivion and then she could sleep. 

But that was before her father had been taken ill, before the voices she had ignored for so long took her father and made her listen. 

They had laid him to rest high in the mountains where the birds are keepers of our secrets. The lake lay blue below the hill and time stretched out like elastic along the horizon at dawn, so if she looked close enough, Felicity thought she could see the future.

How she longed to be in that clear air again, to see the curvature of the earth and the crowning of the clouds and the splutter of outraged water being flung against rocks in the stream. Her sister had tired of going with her, of talking her back down the path. Eventually she refused to go, refused to let Harold drive her. 

“I need the car, Felicity, even if I can do without my husband. There’s a place where people go to dance the night away in the neighbouring town, young people like you and I. Come on, come with me. I don’t want to be stuck in the past. He’s gone. You have to let him go.”

She never understood. It was not Father’s voice she had listened to on the wind, in the stream-song, in the creaking of the aspens. Something was lost and needed to be found. The voices were insistent. Once she was unable to go up the mountain she had to retreat into her room, lock herself away, just to hear the voice at all, over the hubbub of the world. 

An intervention, that’s what they had called it. She had not eaten for days and the doctor, seeing her sister’s distress, had decided it was in Felicity’s best interest to stay at the asylum for a spell. She had been sedated and led like a lamb to slaughter. The voices hadn’t told her about that. Or had she just not listened hard enough? 

That was twelve years ago. Her sister didn’t visit now. It was too upsetting. ‘

“For her or you?” one of the voices asked.

“Ssh,” said Felicity. “I’m listening.” And the snowdrops stirred in the frosted earth.

The Nine Month Lie

Ellen sat in the bright hygiene of the hospital ward with its neatly ironed sisters and starched hospital corners. There was no soft spark of comfort here. Iron bedsteads lined the walls like fallen monoliths, jagged teeth in the jaws of healthcare, while the sisterhood of nurses circled and swooped checking temperatures, marking charts.

Ellen was grateful for the stiffness of it all. She could not have born pity or kindness. The propriety protected her, discouraged unlocking the hurt at the heart of her, but it did not stop the sprockets in her mind from turning: cast on, Knit 2 (ten little toes,) knit two pearl two, (blue tinged skin,) four rows, return. The needles blurred as she wondered what colour her baby’s eyes would have been.

            Ed would be here later, his hands deep in his pockets, worrying at the lint hidden deep at their seams. He would stand and make polite enquiry, pointedly not look at the other new fathers on the ward. What else could he do? They have both been rendered impotent by circumstance. They had invested in a  nine month truth, only to be told it had become a lie. They were not to become parents after all.

            You have to hold on to truth, believe in possibility. But when it all unravels and we cannot bear it, then what do we do? We lie to ourselves, lace our conversations with little platitudes that we know make things worse not better.

            “There’s always next time.” Next time? It makes Ellen shudder. Dear God let there not be a next time she prays, I couldn’t bear to go through this again.

            She lies under the glare of strip lights hoping that she will disappear, recede, melt away into the white light and starch. The possibility of being asked to go through this again filled her with a hot terror. It is a double edged knife: a life line, a curse, an expectation, a wolf in sheep's clothing.

            She would at least have Ed at her side. They had each other, to have and to hold, in their fragile papier mâché lives; at least, until it proved to be a lie.

The Western Isles

A penitent sheep falls to his knees in the tufted grass of the meadow. A marmalade bullock slowly chews the cud, his nose green with grass clippings. There is sky, sea, air space. The sea glitters, a reticulated surface constantly stretching and recoiling between the islands, a monster forever on the move. Yet today it is calm, sated by the warmth of sunshine skies.

Near the mouth of the cave a capuccino foam goes in, out. In its indecission it is caught by the breeze and is butterflied upwards into the dark of the mawl. Basalt columns rise from the sea, grey black and shining, thrown by giants. Natural stepping stones lead to the cave where the sea sounds her bass drum, insistant, repeating. The sea turns from lapis to lavender and back again through turquoise, all the shades of the dragonflies wing.

Here, where the heather meets the sea and the thistle reach to be kissed by the sky and gardens burst with perfumed fruitfulness. Both saints of history and angels of nature are present, for why would you ever leave? This is a place of growth: personal, spiritual and vegetable.

Witchcraft

A fierce wind howled about the moor as Morbidezza felt the weight of the spirit bear falcate against the sky. Afflatus had brought the fine aboulia silk as a gift. and what a gift it was: cool in summer, warm in winter, heavy enough to hold back the stem of a blood tide yet light and glosseme enough to dress a wound.

Morbidezza had paid handsomely for it, not to Afflatus, but to the community that now shunned her as a witch. What madness was it to live life in ignorance and darkness. Yet, any woman seeking the light of knowledge was accused of witchcraft. Were alchemist’s also to be questioned and tortured by the inquisition, or was their quest truly divine? Greed, and the search for riches, it seemed, was exempt from moral damnation, yet the search for healing was buskin. Greed is human, pestilance divine! A primping quillet was to be born, a zebeck mutation to be seen as a blessing in disguise. What a crock of nymph!

Morbidezza shuffled from her cot to the table and picked up a scilicet of rainwater. The spirit bear had provided enough lightening water to fuel an army and she was strengthened by its vitality. Her thoughts were rouncy, her muscles ghat, she could face the bishop and all the armies of hell. 

She looked at the twist on the gorse and knew they would not come tonight. She could sleep with enclair dreams, wreathed in smoke and mystical voices. There she could try to  interpret the future of Shallop. The fierce time would soon be upon them, she felt it in her bones. The foozle would spurge the foreign army of Cabon and she would need all the aboulia silk she could lay her hands on. 

She would earn a stay of execution. The king would not wish to burn her yet.

This piece of writing was spawned from an invention exercise. The challenge was writing a short piece to include a number of words whose meanings were unknown. It demonstrates how it is possible to bend words to our own meaning through context and how the context and landscape of our imagination will lend meaning to unknown words.

 For interest I include the actual meanings of the lesser known words incase, like me, you are curious as to their actual meaning.

Aboulia:  (also abulia) absence of will power, inability to act decisively.

Afflatus: A devine creative impulse, inspiration.

Buskin: clothing, sandal, ancient greek open toed sandal with leather or cloth lacing to mid calf. 

Enclair: literally from the french ‘in the clear,’ not obscured. 

Falcate: curved, sickle shaped.

Foozle: bungle, botch, to undertake something clumsily.

Ghat: steps, usually eading down to a river or lake, but also can be through a mountain pass.

Glosseme:  the most basic structural unit of language (from ‘glossa,’ Greek  for language).

Morbidezza: extreme softness and delicacy.

Nymph: from the greek ‘bride’, also spirit/sprite.

Primping: to groom meticulously.

Quillet: to quibble over subtle differences.

Rouncy: term from the middle ages used to refer to a horse of general purpose use (alt: nag).

Scilicet: ‘that is to say’ (from Latin ‘scire licet’ one is permitted to know) introducing word or             meaning to explain away ambiguity.

Shallop: boat/ship used for sailing in shallow waters.

Spurge: herbacious plant more commonly known as euphorbia. The plant is a purgative and the common name is derived from the old french ‘espurgier’ meaning ‘to purge’.
Zebeck: a three masted mediteranian sailing vessel.

I Am An Open Book

Free yourself within a notebook then send me all your thoughts.

Write down your desires, your fantasies, your dreams.

On your marks, set, go! Do not stop.

Do not get distracted, I am hungry for it all.

This ability to write comes from a time of cheap letters, where words cost little but meant so much. 

Secret lemon juice messages revealed in tongues of fire.

Now we can afford the letters but not the stamp. 

Oh, for a real letter, with a real stamp. I would frame your stamp in gold.

Follow me down the blackened shute into darkness, into folklore.

Let’s start a new history.

It’s a smoking gun, cordite and drifting trails. Tales.

Stand well back and read the smoke signal. Our tongues will flame with gossip.

This is my secret notebook to you.

There are no secrets: I am an open book.