It is such a hot day when I leave the forest, sweat rolling from my limbs, my need for this place rolling away with it. My body is escaping me. No one can mend me now.
Death is waiting, crouched on a branch. He grins fit to burst, stretching out scabby arms to carry me off into His kingdom. But as His talons brush me, they crumble; as do His hands, wrists, elbows: the whole rattlebag shivers into dust. I spent my whole life running and it was from a bogey, a scarecrow, a raw-head-and-bloody-bones tale I told to scare myself.
But there is no time to ponder the mystery. Laughing at this great joke, I make my way through the trees or, rather, upon them: by some marvellous agency I hop to the topmost branches without so much as snagging my sleeve on a twig. I dance upon the leaves, bending them less than does a squirrel, skipping west past the patchwork of the Great Field, the dull spread of the marshes, the humped dunes. Even the sea looks small, it is so far below.
There is a heavy sound, of a gate banging in the wind. I pause, look back and see a woman, wringing her hands and weeping. She starts to follow, but I tell her she cannot come where I am going.
‘I will wait for you at the threshold,’ I cry.
I lean earthwards to kiss her on the mouth one last time, but am barely able to brush her lips, I am being swept along so fast. Above my head, the sky is falling in the shape of vast snowflakes, tumbling thicker with each step until my vision blurs and I think all the angels in heaven must be shedding their feathers.
I shout, ‘My love!’ but my voice is lost in this gentle blizzard.
It is time to go. I set my eyes forwards and slip over the threshold of the world. The sky is muffled in gathering whiteness and I am going faster and faster until I am running so swiftly my feet leave the treetops and I fly into the snowstorm.