A Rising Fall
Page 36
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As the darkest hour faded into the faintest light, the small matted dog curled up with the young boy on the side of the road, still trespassing through expectation, waiting for the boy’s father to come walking up from the horizon so the two could lift themselves from their stiff frozen slumber and start their voyage unto wherever it was that the love in their hearts could take them.
Ruff lifted his head; his eyes were still glued shut but his ears pricked backwards and his nose starting working away at the shift in the air picking up a scent that caused him to marry with instinctual concern. A low growl became a natural way to rouse the young boy from his state of vulnerability. The boy pushed the dog and continued with his dreaming.
In his mind, he stood lost inside a garden maze. He could hear his father breathing somewhere through the mesh of trees that wrapped around one another and blinded the contours in their shifting direction.
The greens of the trees flowed like a river; shadows of dark green floating across the constant of its lighter part; like the journey of a wave through the open sea, skipping over colliding currents riding the birth of a rising swell.
The shades of green ran over and through one another, taking with them, the shape of the trees until before his sight and about his reach, every turn that had once been, closed its path to the young boy who still sat idle, in a shrinking maze. The sound of his father calling fell dimmer until there was nothing except for a girl’s whisper. He thought at first that it might be his sister.
A shadow formed at the end of the green block where he was imprisoned. The shadow came closer moving with its head low, its hair hanging to the ground. It wasn’t his sister. He paced backwards, looking over his shoulder for what escape he had behind him or how far had had until there was nowhere to go.
He backed against the wall; the thorns digging into his skin; all the flowers that bloomed about him, withering in his immediate sight; everything was turning black. The shadow continued and the whispering worsened; settling in the recess of the weakest part of his being; the part that cared. The shadow stood at him now and reached out its hand resting on his shoulder. He screamed, but his voice was lost in the gentleness of the shadow’s shushing.
“It’s time to go,” said the shadow leaning into his ear, pushing its way into his mind.
“Go,” it said again.
Everything quickly reduced to nothing; a canvas of black, then the nothing divided; a tear in the void where a scrap of light shone through. Donal rushed towards the light and dove inwards.