Turning In

Her house used to be a farmer’s.  It was at the end of a tree-lined road now overrun with long grass stems, except for two deep tracks where the tyres of cars kept the stone below exposed.  Above, branches interlinked and formed a leafy roof, a semipermeable membrane, and either side the gaps between the trunks reminded me of walking up the carriages of great trains that once had moved and now had settled into that heavy slumber of seized machinery and oxidising metals.

We walked in seperate furrows and she lead, always a few paces ahead.  A bright moon was behind cloud but through the trees I could see swaying fields of barley, silver and blue.  I let my eyes follow the treeline at the back of these fields and scanned slowly until I was again looking forward to the road and to the house which was now in view at the end of the tunnel.  The trees opened out as we approached the front of the house, darkened windows and door so black it looked like an empty frame.

“What is it?”  She asked softly, wide eyed.
“Can you hear anything over the trees?”
“The whispering, the sighing, no.”

I smiled, and she turned back to the walk.  The moon had been easing out of cover and shone through the canopy of leaves in thin beams that we passed through without event; leaves sifting through light and light sifting through us, letting our dark hearts pass through to the dark house.

The house cast a shadow that extended out five or so meters from the wall and she paused at the edge, staying within the light, as if this blackness was not shadow but the ground having fallen away, the house remaining somehow suspended on top of the void.

Her dress was saturated with moonlight, her eyes glimmering like coins at the bottom of a well, and one hand she reached out to me, palm downward facing.  She lead me to the shadow and stood enough back from me, with her hand in mine, so that I could see her face illuminated, ghostly, a thin smile forming.

She was once beautiful, was many times beautiful, would many times more be beautiful, and sad.  And so I took her from the light and we ascended the steps to the doorway, so dark she jabbed the key at it four times before finding the key hole; I pictured a ring of dents and chipped paint around it- like a sinkhole into which the shadows poured and waited until the night, rising like a tidal marsh.  And with a heavy sliding clunk the lock relented and the small wrists straightened and returned the key to the bag she had drawn it from.

We poured in and up the stairs and to the first room on the right leaving a trail of clothes going cold behind us.  From outside, the house looked unchanged and empty as ever.  The moon, obscured, revealed, obscured again until the early hours of the morning.  Dark blue, dark green, black and all the hiding colours of the night.