The Shifting Pools

by The Shifting Pools (epub)

  “That is completely normal. You are from elements more open than this. You can rest here, but to feel truly alive you need to feel the sky or the sea – and it’s been a while since we’ve done that. We camped here longer than we normally do, because I needed the time to recover, but we will be back to moving on every few days from now on. With the forces of the Shadow Beast at large in the land now, It is too risky to stay in one place for too long.”

  “But I do feel at home in these woods, so I don’t know why I’m feeling like this.”

  “You can feel at home anywhere. One day I hope you really feel that – not know it, but feel it. Not like you are masquerading somewhere, but that you are fully alive, in each place. And that will happen if you let it. As long as you have a balance; do enough of what you need to feel alive.”

  Dream

  The Sea Holds Dreams

  I watched as the sea stroked the wet shore, over and over. As I looked more closely, I saw things that had been washed up in the strandline, left in that place between sea and land. Strange things: an old photograph, a doll, sheet music, a ring. I couldn’t understand. From a distance I hadn’t seen them – but here, up close, there were items all along the beach. Things I knew, from somewhere far off.

  The sea holds our dreams, and washes our shoreline with them.

  I came like Water, and like Wind I go.

  Omar Khayyam

  Enanti: the present

  Meeting the wind and taking flight

  It was only two days later that we moved on, reaching another stretch of coast, and set up camp in the forest nearby. I dragged in great breaths of salty air, and something in the dancing of the wind here made me feel more vital and alive. My walks out to the clifftops each morning became something of a ritual.

  Raul found me lying in the long grasses up on the cliffs one morning, watching the field buntings flitting and darting through the stems.

  “I love watching them,” I smiled up to him as he came to sit beside me, and I pulled myself up to sit in tandem.

  “You’re no songbird you know, Eve. You’ve got far more of the predator in you than that.”

  I was surprised at his words. Did he know? Did he know that I wanted to identify more with these tiny little delicate birds that hummed with life and business – wanted to believe that my song, one day, could rival theirs? I didn’t want to give voice to the growing feeling within me that I had far more in common with the predatory raptors that swept down on these little creatures. I had always felt it, had always been drawn to the look of otherness in their alien gaze, but I hadn’t wanted it. Now, I was beginning to feel more of the savagery within me every day; the songbird was morphing into the hunter.

  “Not morphing; it was what you always were.” Raul spoke quietly.

  I looked at him fiercely, not needing to say anything, not having anything to say in rebuke this time. Instead I turned and watched the seagulls dipping up above the cliff-line, then diving back down out of sight. That was the sort of bird I felt I was – alive and free in the wind, not in a pretty hedgerow.

  “We are all predatory in our own ways – some of us more than others. That doesn’t make us evil, Eve; it just makes us more aware of our true natures. You are starting to see yours. Come with me.” Raul extended his hand, and I took it.

  He led me down to where the rough grass and scrub gave way to boulders and smooth pebbles on the beach. We crunched over them together, right to the water’s edge. It felt wonderful, fresh and invigorating. I beamed up at him, elated.

  “I want you to meet someone – if I can call it that,” he said.

  “Who?”

  ‘You’ll see. I’m going to head back now. Take as long as you need. You’ll be safe here.”

  I watched, puzzled, as Raul strode back up the rocks towards the tree line. Then I turned to face the view. The sea was mesmerising – glowing in the low sun’s light, luminous and alive. I drank in the sight of the surface, and then I allowed my eyes to focus down into the water, to see fish in vast numbers move as one, their metallic sides flashing as they moved, to forests of seaweed rocking ceaselessly in the unseen currents of the deep. I wanted to dive down into the depths there and immerse myself in the dark water.

  “You can do that whenever you fancy. That is your world, too – down there in the depths. But for a moment, stay with me.”

  I glanced urgently about, having seen no one else on this desolate stretch. The voice had seemed to reverberate around me, coming from every direction at once. A voice carried in on the wind.

  “Almost,” laughed the voice, pure as a breeze. “I am the Wind. I know you Eve. And you know me.”

  ‘Yes,” was all that I could manage.

  I knew it was true. I felt it deep inside – absurd as that seemed. And so many things were not as I had thought them to be, now that I was less closed off to these possibilities.

  “You did it, Eve – you flew, for a moment. I was there as you did it; I cradled you. You may not have felt me, but I am a part of the air, and so I am everywhere.”

  “I felt you,” I whispered, remembering the slight push I had felt under my shoulders as I had stepped off the cliffs to try to fly. Just a nudge, but enough to help me to half believe I could leave the ground.

  “You always will. You are also part of me, part of everything. Whenever you step into me as yourself, you can be the one that enables yourself to leave the ground and start to fly. You will be within me, I will be within you, because there is no separation.

  “You can inhabit all these parts, because you are of the elements – as are all things. You are life. Do not be encumbered by what you think. Learn how to live free by what you feel. You can soar to the highest clouds, you can dive down to the unimagined depths of the ocean, you can flow down the mountainside in the river, you can tremble with budding life within the soil and you can blaze within the fire. And you will feel it all. Don’t shy away from that feeling; it is what gives you life.

  “You are not them, they are not you, you are parts of them all, and you live among them.”

  I quivered with the power that the words evoked in me. They landed in the core of me.

  My wings, which I had not yet learned to stow away, arched into life on my back. I stretched them and flexed my shoulder muscles. So dark and quiet on my back, they blazed as the refracted light from the sea bounced off them. They shone with colour, dark cyan, cerulean, aquamarine, indigo, teal and turquoise – all tipped with deep eagle green. They beat the air, and I rose without any effort at all, feeling the power flood through me. It was an incredible rush. I could feel what the Wind had been saying, living out the truth of it as I took to the air, feeling it lift me from the ground. I felt no separation, no disconnect from the element around me, as I rose higher and higher. And as I looked down at the sea glittering far below me, I knew just as clearly that if I dived into those depths, I would also be at one there – I wouldn’t need air to sustain me. I was already of the air; I would be taking in what I needed with me. The giddying rush of flight would never leave me, I knew. I belonged here, savouring the feeling of the air around me, under me, giving me lift.

  I flew all the way back to the temporary camp that had taken shape while I was gone. I saw Raul to one edge of the camp, standing with several of his men as they chopped some wood for the fire. I glided in and landed near them. As I landed I smiled over at Raul, and he smiled back, a satisfied glow lighting up his beautiful face. He didn’t say a word.

  ***

  I didn’t look back from that point. I went often with Lara up to the hills nearby, where the forest cover gave way to the higher ground. A few trees clung on up the slopes, but fell away to reveal rough grassy uplands dotted with dog violets, buttercups and eyebright. The wind here was uncontained, rushing with delight over the open spaces. It was here we came to practise my flying.

 
Now that I had decided that I wanted to be here, be a part of it, I didn’t want to let anyone down. I knew that some of my new friends had big hopes for my potential. With the gifts they felt I had, locked down somewhere inside me, I started to believe I could make a difference here. Raul wanted me up in the air, scouting, and collecting information well in advance of any risk to our group.

  The wind was so untrammelled here, so free, that I couldn’t really fail to fly. I was picked up bodily and held in the air currents. I’m not sure that I really had anything to do with it at first. I whooped with delight and Lara grinned back. As my confidence grew, I started to experiment more, exploring this new element that I could move in. I knew I was only able to do it because of the wind lifting me, but I delighted in it all the same. I felt the enormous shift that a tiny angle change on a wing tip could produce, the heady uplift that could be ridden with wings stretched frank and wide. It was unfettered here, and I gloried in the sensation.

  And I got it then; I understood that sense of unbounded joy that could come from being in the right place – feeling a synergy with everything around you. To revel in this freedom while you could. I knew why we flew, we ran, we swam – because summer doesn’t last forever. What beautiful joy in drinking in those moments when we know we only have a moment in the sun – what ecstasy in that impending loss. You are snatching something from the void. I think for many years I had been yearning to fly, but never doing it. And one day I would have wanted to try, and realised that that time had gone.

  Dream

  Breathing in the sea

  I fell into the water – it was deep and cold. My legs would not kick hard enough to keep me at the surface and I gradually sank lower and lower, the water closing over my head. My body was alive with panic. I struggled strongly, kicking wildly in the water; still I sank lower. With my lungs burning, I eventually opened my mouth to instinctively drag in a breath, but in rushed the water, being sucked down to the depths of me, racing inside me to fill every void. I gagged and choked, and still the water came in, filling me until there was no space left. I could feel it reaching every single point of my body as I slowly drowned. But then I felt a tingle – something like a distant memory on the edges of my consciousness – a little ripple through my limbs. Like a tiny electrical pulse, I could suddenly feel the very extremities of myself, alive and buzzing. I looked around under the water. I was still alive. How was that even possible? And I wasn’t choking anymore; the liquid was pulsing in and out of my mouth as I breathed easily. The crisis had passed. I was back in the sea.

  Enanti: the present

  This sensory world

  The next days were like entering another world. Having accepted that I could do things I hadn’t believed before, I gloried in sampling them over and over, honing my senses and feeling the full force of sensory life.

  I remembered back to the dread I had felt when I first came, to being out in the open like this. It had been so alien to me, living outside, being under the stars, having no walls between me and the night. Now, I often chose to lie out at night for a while and look up at the stars. I enjoyed hearing the sounds in the darkness around me, as the nocturnal creatures took their place in the great play. I loved hearing the growing crescendo of the birds in the morning, shouting out their defiance to the dawn; their vitality, their reason for being. I felt more tuned in to what was going on around me in the forest; I had learned the signs of warning that the forest could give, I could read the goings on with a degree more accuracy than I could a few weeks before – not yet in the same way as Raul and the others, but then that wasn’t surprising; they had breathed this forest from birth.

  Some nights we did sleep out in the open; we would ring ourselves around the campfire for warmth, and drift off. The pressure of all that darkness at my back had lessened, and I often now slept with my back to the fire, facing out into the blanket of night.

  When I thought back to my flat in London, I actually wondered whether I could go back into that box. It felt airless to me now; hemmed in. I had liked the height of it, the wonderful view over the city. But now it felt aloof somehow, looking down on everything from a safe distance. Here, in the forest, you had to be right in it, and I liked the simplicity of that. Something profound had changed for me here.

  In my explorations, with the wind giving me lift, I flew down one morning from the cliffs to the sea, seeking an affinity with all my elements. The sea that holds our dreams and washes the shore with them. Every so often it nudges you, there on the shore, leaving you little clues in the strand line.

  I waded in, up to my thighs. It was deliciously cool; my legs tingled with the sensation. My fingertips stroked the surface, pushing through the almost imperceptible layer of pressure that was there to test their resolve. This meniscus was the only barrier marking the transition from one element to another. Once one part of my body had gone through, the rest was almost sucked in.

  I continued to walk out, pushing through the water with my legs, until only my upper chest and head were dry. Closing my eyes, I took a deep breath and slowly sank in. After a hanging moment, I kicked forward, seeking the deeper spaces. I felt my hair being tugged gently by invisible hands, strands being splayed out and brought to life. There was an energy here – an element totally different to the one in which I lived. Everything moved differently; I moved differently. Different parts of my body were animated, brought to life.

  When my breath ran out, I didn’t panic. I knew I would have to breathe in – breathe in the water – and that it would sustain me. Even so, opening my mouth to suck in liquid felt profoundly bizarre, against everything I knew. As I sucked the water in, I gagged and choked for a few seconds, feeling the flame of my resolve flicker and dip. But I kept swallowing it down, and then it was over. I could breathe again.

  I opened my eyes.

  It was dark here, and nebulous shapes moved around me, flashing momentarily into view, and then ducking back into the murk. Some fish skittered closer, curious. They hung in a constellation of tiny stars around me, suspended in space. A larger fish appeared and orbited me lazily. I seemed to be of little interest to him, and he soon peeled off from my atmosphere and bounced back into vastness.

  I hung there, and watched this secret world. I saw the kelp fronds beneath me, waving gently back and forth in the watery wind. As I watched their graceful dance, I knew that their movement would be gone as soon as they were dragged from this life. On the beach they would be sad, bedraggled heaps, with no suggestion of the beauty of their dancing. People would walk over them, oblivious to them, oblivious to what they could truly be.

  My hair would respond in the same way if I was dragged from this place, I knew. Plastered down against my cheeks, the vitality snatched away. And what of me? I knew the same had been happening to me for years.

  ***

  The next day, I stood alone in the forest, as it hummed with life all around me. I dragged in a deep breath, pulling in the earthiness of the damp soil, the freshness on the wind, the slight salty tang just discernible on my tongue. I quickened, instinctively feeling that animal rush of response to the senses. The wet ground allowed all the flavours and richness there to infuse into the air, percolating back down in to me. So many messages – I could almost feel the growth of the plants around me, sense their roots pushing deeper into the soil, seeking sustenance, seeking life. I could feel the rabbits sniffing the breeze, tasting for danger, the wolves doing the same, tasting for the hunt; fully alive. This hunger for life was sucked into my body. I felt alert, alive.

  The stump I had been resting on had a wonderful moist ‘give’ to it, a bit like crumbling clods of soft soil. As I broke little pieces off, enjoying the feel of it, I saw insects scurrying off to find new dark places. I thought back to that old dead oak tree that I loved. My tree must be like this too, full of life, hosting a whole new community of vitality. It thrilled me, actually. Life had transformed in
this tree, and it was still a part of everything, a perfect component of this forest habitat. Still necessary, still with a role to play. And there, low to the ground, just a few centimetres from the base of the old tree, a small shoot was thrusting exuberantly up towards the light, alive with rising sap and vigour. I stroked down the delicate twig. It was tiny, but full of spring and bounce, unaware of its minute size in this vast forest. It had attitude, and I loved it for that.

  I refocused my eyes, and allowed them to travel across to the far horizon. The miles in front of me stretched away. I could see everything. I could see a falcon take flight from a hedge line over a mile off, I could zoom into a distant glade where a shy deer was testing the air before venturing into the open. I quivered – realising that I could hear all the noises of the forest, too – could choose to zone in on one and then another, hearing them as if they were standing next to me.

  Even my fingers in the breeze, and my feet on the sodden ground, were telling me things –speaking of changes in the wind, tremors that announced the movement of animals not far off down the valley.

  The sensory impact was overwhelming. Like a tidal wave, it crashed over me, and then receded a little while I absorbed it. I was engulfed, consumed, invaded. It was around me and in me, all at once. It was everywhere; it was everything. The currents of it sucked me from my feet, my mind shifting as I lost balance and tumbled in this strange space. And when I was placed back down, the world had changed to me. The flood had broken some barrier in me, something that I had built many years before, that hadn’t been sophisticated enough to discern which parts of the flood needed to be repelled. It had blocked everything. These defences had been relics from another age. They had worked well for what I had needed at the time, but their cost to me was high.