A cold wind seemed to push me along the quay, almost urging me to walk faster. Probably just my imagination, after all...................

 

 

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Peering into the water, I feared what I might see.....

 

The boiler man had warned me against coming here, and I should have known to turn back when I met the disembodied head on the road that told me to turn around, but young and foolish, I had continued on. And now, so many years on the road, older, wiser, and now I had finally reached the destination I had sought for so long. Creaking knees lowered me onto a moist rock, and, leaningleaning on the wizen stick that had been my support five years hence, I waited for her to arrive. I wondered if I really wanted to be here, having spent my life seeking this place, this murky pool amidst the trees. But I was, I had committed my every waking moment from the minute I had left the village to be there, and now, an old man and close to death, where else had I to be.

I waited until nightfall. The late autumn dusk was filled with the smell of decaying leavesand the sound of deer moving through the undergrowth. She arrived without a sound and sat opposite me. I knew she was centuries older than I, but she looked so young and very, very fragile. We spoke long into the night, across the pool from one another. She spoke of times past when great ships filled the sky, when buildings rose from the land as tall as mountains and when men travelled to the stars. Then she told me of terrible horrors, battles where millions died at the word of a single man, and men slaughtered each other for the ground they walked upon.

When the sun arose the next morning I left the pool amidst the trees, and returned to the in in which I had stayed the previous night. No one spoke to me, they knew where I had been, and who I had spoken to. And now I knew not what to do with what I had learned. The boiler man told me to go home. And so I did.

(submitted 14/4/2008)

 

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