by Brian Clarke
It was not until the Kazuki Earthshifter 12000 came that his peace was disturbed and its weight and vibrations made his closed world shudder. Then the top of its great, toothed jaws reached over him and the bottom of its great, toothed jaws reached under him and gathered him up, first his femur and then his pelvis and then what remained of his half-gnawed spine.
The remains of his skull, as grey as a flint ball, were lifted with the next bite and joined the half-ton of soil and stones and chalk and the pieces of old wood and the roots and the tufts of grass and the clover and the meadow buttercup and the half-oyster shell that had somehow got there and the thirty-seven snail shells and the bit of the sheep’s shoulder blade and the adder that had been basking amid the luxury of it all.
Even as he was being dropped into the back of a lorry that looked like a gigantic skip on wheels, the power was being tested in the new Cogent Electronics building and the Top Oil complex was having the control panel installed and the long, low building to be occupied by Ethical Pharmaceuticals was being painted as white as a doctor’s coat.
Beyond them the refrigerator factory was starting production and the flat-pack furniture company was making its first shipment and Sumi Cameras were showing the Mayor of Farley and his group the recently completed assembly line.
Even as the man in the deer pelt who had given the perfectly round stone to the girl whose smile had been like the sun coming out was being automatically vibrated and jostled in the back of the lorry so that he could be settled deeper into it and make more room, the new cranes and storage facilities were being assembled on Farley Docks.
As the man in the deer pelt was being driven away through the haze and dust and the blue smoke of engines, the man in the suit who had been made redundant by Hamptons, the one who had been so worried because his young wife was pregnant, was being offered work on the development at the first time of asking, like many of his unemployed colleagues.
Year 3, September
the law of continuing had drawn up the plan for the Baetis flies as carefully as it had drawn up the plans for everything else. Though it had decreed that Baetis flies should look quite like mayflies and should even be able to make their hazed wings become clear when they were ready to mate in the same way that mayflies could make their own wings clear when they were ready for mating, the law of continuing had written in some differences. One difference was that Baetis flies should be far smaller than mayflies, even to the extent that three Baetis flies could stand side by side on the old man’s little-finger nail while one mayfly would not have looked small even in the palm of the old man’s hand. Another difference was in the way the two flies would be required to lay their eggs. The law of continuing had written that Baetis flies should lay their eggs deep under water and not on the surface where the mayflies laid theirs. It had given the Baetis flies a way of doing it that made the old man marvel.
Each fly had been instructed that when she was ready to lay her eggs she should seek out something sticking up from the water and walk down it. Each fly had been told that when she had walked so far down whatever it was she had chosen and was almost touching the water, the law of continuing would move upon her and touch her. The moment the touch came to a fly, that fly would feel a tension. Then the law of continuing would press her high wings down and fold them along her back so that a bubble of air could be trapped between her wings and her body as if held in a cellophane sleeve. She would be able to haul this air deep into the water and it would be adequate for her needs as long as she stayed beneath the surface.
That was why, on the day the last of the tree-climbers were being brought out from the Hangers, the stems of the rushes and the roots of the alders and the pieces of planking that had fallen into the water from the wooden hut and the supports of the two bridges and the three posts that reached up from the stream bed opposite the swans’ nest all had Baetis flies walking down them, looking for places to lay their eggs.
The Baetis fly that hatched near the top of the island and that had received the same message as all the others, was fortunate to live long enough to lay. She had nearly drowned when she hatched and one of her wings stuck to the surface. She had just managed to cling to the feather that was drifting by and to haul herself aboard.
The feather had drifted a little way past the mouth of the Oak Stream when it was swept close to the bank and in under the long grasses that trailed over the water. The fly on the feather drifted a long way through the vaulted tunnel that the arching grasses made, while the sun flickered and stabbed through them and her wet wings dried.
The fly was carried along the bank that reared beside her high as a cliff. She was carried past the place where the first vole was nibbling the bright green shoot and past the place where the mink had found the second vole and left the blood on the stone and past the place where the duck and the drake were edging softly upstream and speaking in low syllables.
The Baetis fly survived the shoot and slide at the edge of the falls and escaped the attentions of the swallows carving spaces in the air. She was not seen when the feather drifted as delicately as a mayfly around the high bank where the martins nested. She was seen but not injured when the water shrew scrambling above her sent an avalanche of dried earth crashing all about.
The little fish lying far out towards the middle where the water was deeper saw the feather but not the fly and the trout with the scar saw the fly but not the feather. The swans that cloned themselves in the calm water behind the fallen willow and the grass snake that was swimming thinly through the reflections of clouds there, were not interested.
By the time the feather was passing the first of the three posts that reached into the air as dry and grey as old bones, the Baetis fly was opening and testing her wings. At the second of the posts opposite the swans’ nest she made an attempt to fly. Near the third post she found an accommodation with the air and lifted and flew downstream to Bottom Bend.
She settled on the ash tree there. The Baetis fly clung to the underside of the leaf that already had two other Baetis flies hiding on it and, when it was time, moulted for the last time and made her wings clear as the plan required. Then she flew up among the males and was taken.
The sun was still touching the water when she flew back to the wooden posts and began to walk down the first one she reached.
The surface of the stream lay like an upturned sky before her and the light winking up at her seemed to beckon and draw. The Baetis fly did not see the deadness of the wood under her feet or the dryness of the spiked moss forest sticking up all around her. She did not see the lifelessness of the eggs that had once been below water but that now lay in the crevices, wrinkled and dry. She could not hear beyond the drowned music of the water or see beyond the washes of light that filled her with purpose. She knew nothing of the other flies that were walking down all around her, or of the way so many feet groped and traced the way her own feet groped and traced, or of all the other legs straining the way her legs were straining or of the light reflecting from every other tilting wing the way it reflected from her own.
When she was only a little above the water’s surface, no further than the length of her own body from it, the Baetis fly that had almost drowned when she hatched prepared to enter the water again. The odours of the stream overwhelmed her and the halls of drowned music sang. As the light winked and tilted and lit her sides and highlighted the delicacy of her legs and reached up even to the tips of her two drawn tails, a long beam caught her eyes and held them. Then the law of continuing that had been with her every instant, breathed on her and blessed her and gave her final understanding. The touch she had awaited, arrived.
The law of continuing took the two veined wings she had held high so long and pressed them back and down. The Baetis fly felt them being pressed back and down and felt her skin being drawn tight as though pulled with levers. Then she moved forward with her bubble of air clasped tightly along her back and stepped through the surface. The drowned music fell instantl
y silent and the echoing halls of the stream were gone. There were only gravels and stones and places far beneath her and a low, brown hum growing louder in her head.
The Baetis fly struggled and groped her way down the post while the current rummaged about her like a heavy wind and the weight of the bubble she was carrying tried to pull her back.
At the bottom of the post the Baetis fly that had once nearly drowned at the surface gripped the stone on the stream bed she had chosen. She paused there for a moment, as though waiting for a last perfecting spasm to pass; and then she dragged the weight of the bubble that wanted to lift her upwards, down towards the stone’s underside. There, on the clean part scoured by the eddy at the base of the post and not on the part sheltered from the current where the chokeweed cells were beginning to lengthen and divide and abut end to end, she laid her eggs in rows side by side, abutting end to end. She laid them while the brown hum rose and rose in her head and vibrated and shook her until she was spent.
When the noise inside her faded and a cold light had come and washed all purpose away, the Baetis fly that had once before nearly drowned felt the stone she had clung to pull itself from her feet and the bubble begin to lift her and her wings begin to loosen and spread so that the trapped air was released and wobbled up. When she reached the surface and was held between the light that had beckoned her so long as a nymph and the halls of drowned music now silent below, the Baetis fly that had once before nearly drowned turned inert in the water with her clear wings outstretched. A little downstream she was caught in the vortex that a stone there created.
And then the fly that had enjoyed so little use of her wings soared around and around with her wings outstretched, planing ever more steeply over as the vortex coiled around her and drank her down.
Even before the young salmon could sip her in as she passed the shingle banks, the cells of chokeweed on the other side of the stone on which she had laid her eggs in rows side by side and abutted end to end, were dividing side by side and abutting end to end as if to mimic her efforts.
Year 3, October
there had been no wind since the day it was realised that Cogent Electronics would need more water for its production line than originally thought. Even when it rained the air had been so still that the drops had fallen as straight as plumb lines and the drizzle had seeped down like weighted mist.
And so, when the first breath came and when the feather that had hung motionless so long turned slowly on its thread and lifted, it seemed an unnatural thing. The sparrowhawk was half-deceived by the movement and jinked. The spider that had been crouching by the web, started out.
The sparrowhawk had hardly brought down the robin before the next breath came. Before he had killed and half-eaten the robin the soft impressions the air made on his cheek and neck had built so smoothly and quickly into one another that the breeze might always have blown.
When the heron lifted it was as if all the heaviness so long about him, all the still weight and drag of summer, had gone. When he was near the falls the heron banked as though for the joy of it, arching his wings over the air as though gathering it all to him and began a glide. The rooks rose like black ashes from the trees on the skyline. The sedges near the swan’s nest began to whisper and nod.
The wind that whipped up so quickly and blew so furiously ravaged the valley until nightfall and then dropped with a suddenness that made everything alert. The silence made prickling sounds in the ears of the rabbits under The Close and the badger dozing under Farfield opened one eye. The lights in the farm that had gone out, came on.
The moon was up and flat clouds were skimming when the wind swept back. It roared over the valley like a breaking wave. It punched holes into the woods and razed the beeches in The Close. It flattened the alders on the island and the ash trees on Longate. It ravished the old yew on Hinters and cast her aside. The row of poplars behind the farm collapsed like a fan.
By the time the wild-eyed heifers had stopped bellowing and skidding and the mares had stopped rearing and clattering in their stalls, it was almost over. The branch of the chestnut where the kestrel often perched was hanging and hinging like a broken wing. The pike was lying dead under the roots of the fallen willow where the bank that had held them, collapsed.
Before dawn had come and the wind had eased, the roof of the cow shed was rocking on its back like an upturned turtle and the door of the old stable was on the other side of the yard.
By the time the old man and his son had collapsed with fatigue, the wind had died and a silence had fallen.
In no time, the feather that had signalled the start of it all was turning on its thread again as though nothing had happened and the soft airs that touched it might have been innocent and bemused.
Year 3, November
it did not take long once the young man who had run all night amid the flying roofs and falling branches and who had managed to drag all the animals to safety, had walked the land and seen the great trees toppled like mushrooms with their roots exposed.
It did not take long after the young man and the old man who tried to help him had sat again at the table strewn with papers and the young man had said the storm had done them a favour in felling the trees and that the land was drained dry beyond remembering anyway.
It did not take long after the young man had raised his voice and said that he knew full well the land was ancient and unspoiled and had been in the family a long time but that it would also be taken by the bank unless the old man faced reality and had it permanently drained and prepared in the new way and unless the new crops were planted right now.
It seemed scarcely a moment after the old man had dozed in his chair and woken again to sit thinking of the young man’s finger tracing the boundaries of the small fields that he said needed clearing and the ditches that he said needed digging deeper and the places where he said the drainage pipes would have to be laid.
It seemed but a blink after the old man had agreed in principle but said it was too late to start this year and the young man had said it was now or never and that a company he had been talking to could begin work straight away.
It seemed no time at all before the wind that had made the decision so bitterly disputed, seem no decision at all.
Year 3, December
the gulls and the crows had a high time while the trees that had been blown down were being cut up and dragged in chains to the fires and the remaining trees were felled so that scarcely an alder or a willow or a beech or an oak or an ash stood in any of the fields or on the banks of the stream.
The gulls and crows and magpies and rats had a high time while the oak where the barn owl had reared her broods was being dismembered and while the meadow where she had hawked in the dusk and taken voles and mice with a suddenness that was like a leaden pillow falling was being crossed with ditches and drained with pipes.
The ridge along Five Acre where the bank voles had nested and where the badgers from Farfield used to gambol, was soon levelled. The elder bush where the mayfly had rested in the mellow fastness until the law of continuing had lifted her towards heaven on the beam of light, was dragged out in no time.
The rushed bank where the warblers used to give their springs to the cuckoos was razed so easily that the machines did not notice and the roots of the ash tree where the Baetis fly had rested, resisted hardly at all.
The ground where the lapwing had wheeled year after year and where her eggs were always laid in the exact same spot, proved no problem. Nor did the tussocked place that the cock pheasants had used for their strutting and fighting and where the feathers they shed lay like bird-shavings in the grass.
The bulldozer had no difficulty upending the mole that drowned in the flood. The same high blade shattered the perfectly round stone that the man in the deer pelt had given to the girl whose smile had been like the sun coming out. The same blade an instant afterwards dishevelled the fingers that had held the stone so close and scattered the little still left of her as ano
nymously as grey flints.
A house-high wheel crushed the shells of the eggs that the skylark had picked up one by one and had carried far away from her nest so that the white reflecting from the insides would not gleam and attract danger.
A saw-toothed bucket pulled a tide of earth over the place where the cinnabar moth often settled and over the nettlebed where the red admirals had meandered on their pathways through the air and the same bucket mangled the brambles where the harvest mouse once feasted. The low rise where the shrew had dragged her pink, blind young one by one to safety in the flood, might not have existed.
The land was worked from dawn until dark so that no irregularity in it and no useless thing that lived on it should be missed. The kingcup roots were sliced and the yellow flag roots were shredded and the roots of the purple loosestrife were flailed to a pulp. Even the eyebright that the dock plant had been hiding above Top Bend and the ragged robin that had grown at Middle Bend and the large bed of primroses near the bridge on Longate were ploughed in.
By the time the weather had become cold and dull again and the chokeweed was dying back as it always did when the cold weather came, Barrows and Oak Meadow and Picket Close had been pushed together. By the time the dead chokeweed was lying in the margins brown and stinking and the cock salmon near the falls was feeling the pressure of his milt but could find no mate to relieve him of it, the boundaries between Farfield and Five Acre and Homefield had been removed and most of the ground there had been prepared in the new way and sown.
By the time the cock salmon near the falls had given up waiting for a mate and had swum back down the stream again to the river, Cress and East Street and Longate were joined and Hinters and Penny Furlong and Aftdown were united and The Close and Upper Down were one.
