Arse over elbow and a mouthful of river. Which she couldn’t spit out. Which soaked in and weighed her down until she was steeped in silt and water, like old tea. But where was her arse anyway, where was her elbow? There was nothing but water as far as she could tell. A stew of water and leaves and small stones and herself all mixed up in it – a strange grey grit. Scattered, then dragged under again, everything teeming, and not sure which way was up or down. Light and dark, light and dark, like a door opening and closing.
Pearl flailed, grabbed at the water, but with what? Nothing to grab with but somehow she was back on the surface, dipping and whirling and strewn about. Bits of grey dust here, bits of grey dust there – almost impossible to recognise herself. Everything sodden and spreading out, couldn’t keep herself together; she was floating in a widening circle, dispersing like seeds kicked out of a tree. A godawful sloshing, and Christ, that wind. That was almost the worst of it, blowing over the water, flinging her about. So that some of her skittered off downriver and some snagged on a raft of sticks and leaves and the rest was trapped in the current and reeling.
She floated, the water pulling and sucking at her. Hard to gather her thoughts, which drifted and wedged into the riverbank. Which had never been much use. Where was she again? It was hard to keep track of it. Washing over stones, circling around stones, lodged underneath a stone. Stones bloody everywhere and a rivery smell, like fresh air and mud and something green dying. Shadows and copper glints. Heaps of silt. And cold – the sort of cold she couldn’t abide, the kind that bit right in.
There was a bend up ahead, where the water started to slow and turn in a wide circle and a nest of stuff had built up. The current took her towards it, turning sluggish, slackening, and for God’s sake now she was getting caught up in it: sticks and weeds and feathers. Wet leaves. Roots. An old gatepost. Horrible yellow scum washed off the fields. Everything bumping up against everything else. Everything tangling.
Some of her sank. Some of her tangled in. She tried to speak but nothing came out except the river’s drum and babble. She felt like grit, like small stones. The water turned a slow circle. Where was she again? She tried to dredge something up but her thoughts were brimful with river. A root wrapped around itself over and over. The water pushed her against the bank, unceremoniously, into a mush of leaves and foam. A fetid reek, as if something had given up. Branches weaving together, something unspeakable brushing the surface of the water. A ridiculous place. Leaves circling and tilting like sinking boats.
She struggled, tried to untangle herself but the water weighed her down, made her sodden and slow. Everything murky and swimming with silt. Leaves came down like raindrops. The wind turned the river into peaks and humps, which jostled her, which slopped her about; she couldn’t keep a hold of anything: now washing against the bank, now trapped among leaves, now caught under a rotting branch. She dipped, sank, took on another huge gulp of water. Tangled deeper in. The river getting into everything. Impossible to get away from it. Her thoughts soaking, everything full of stones. And who even knew where this was, exactly?
Typical – now sideways rain, billowing in on the wind like sails, drenching everything, churning the river, turning it brown and squally, dragging her back under into the dim, where there was no sound except the river thrumming.