Giving away one copy of 'THE ABSURD SECRET DIARY OF AN UNBORN BABY' to first reader who knows who leaves a message on my website link in guest book.
GARDENER LUYTEN’S
UNUSED HOUR
Gardener Luyten was asleep. He couldn’t help but snore beneath the paling afternoon sun, as autumn fields rolled down off distant hills, where the mere ghosts of summer corn had once swayed. Overhead, after the mornings hard rain had fallen and hit the ground, clouds drifted lazily on the wind and against the blue, their floating skins of silver as a painter would desire.
An incoming breeze swept dramatically off the furrowed fields, a breeze that shimmered and whispered, that lifted up and over the half broken roof tops of the low lying barns. Maybe it ruffled the tail feathers of the garden’s old weathercock that spun faster with every blink of the eye, before flicking a tuft of white hair off gardener Luyten’s shallow brow.
Unaware, as he snored in the solitude of his dreams, Luyten would not have sensed the shimmering of air, or the confusion of tongues nearby, even the rustling of dead leaves where a cry came from behind a pile of rotting vegetation.
Carpeted with green leafy mould, the garden’s ancient ramparts were breached by the gnarled old oaks that shadow the garden, boughs overhanging like old men’s arms, the prodigious horse chestnuts with prickly husks of billeted chestnuts ripening.
The Swiss clanking clock inside the house touched against the fifth hour, it’s lazy resonance now solemn and strangely deliberate, unlike the moment just before. When the fifth stroke passed, there was silence.
In the garden, there are two walls that meet at a right angle, where a pile of yellow leaves lie decaying, and a place where a black cat often slinks between shade and sunlight, it is here that a young girl sits perched on a stone behind her easel. She paints gardener Luyten, her long playful fingers flicking swiftly, one clasped by a ring of gold. Occasionally she will speak in strange tones; so beautiful it could probably make blind men weep.
After outlining Luyten’s aged and motionless face, the young, apple-fresh, cheeked girl, fills her wondrous canvas with living colour. His wispy white hair and droopy-wired spectacles, she leaves until last, the whole appearing so lifelike.
Her mouth suddenly curls into a simple smile, her eyes bright and wild. There is mischief in the air. Her smile becomes exaggerated, her skirt resting high above the knees in a green mantle of cloth inlaid with wild flowers, tunic and blouse adorned with hanging silver bobs of silk.
Somewhere in the garden there came a muted cry quickly followed by the air’s molecules cracking open as hot chestnuts roasted on a fire and burst from their shells.
The concentration on the young girl’s face was broken. Her green and fiery, lynx-like eyes, flicked angrily at her younger brother, Cathel. He was dressed in a green pair of pantaloons, vest and tunic, his cheeks red with heat. Having just throttled a cat, he had hurled its broken body into the fire.
Slung across his shoulder was a quiver of adder slough and a small pouch of hide containing the potent liquor of honey wine. A dozen arrows made from the pipes of reeds looked skywards, heads of white flint having been dipped into the dew of recently picked hemlock, each possessing the power of detachment when penetrating an animal, the bow made from the rib of man.
‘Cathel, behave or you’ll get what is due to you’, his sister shouted, her pointed ears twitching irritably. He turned and looked forlornly at her.
‘But Willow‘, Cathel pleaded, ‘Luyten is asleep and we have an hour of play’.
Willow nodded and returned to her easel, filling in her canvas of gardener Luyten, noting a crisp, brown and broken leaf falling upon his head. A sprightly dragonfly circled, it’s droning wings of gossamer nudging quizzically at Lutyen’s nose before settling on an ear in a veil of green and vivid blue.
Willow’s boots were black and pointed, each with a silver buckle sewn; her sylph-like legs crossed as she painted, then rain fell. It could have spoiled the canvas but miraculously didn’t.
Under the shadow of a nearby tree, was a chaotic mass of tangled weed covering a large mound. Never, as far as I remember, did Luyten ever cultivate that plot of garden. As a child, I risked punishment if I went anywhere near that mysterious mound.
Broken, shifting grey clouds began moving in from the west, the light growing steadily poor as fine droplets of rain created delicate patterns on the windowpanes.
For just an instance, I thought, yes, beyond Luyten, beneath the rustling canopy of that old, hollow tree, a fracture of light began intensifying between the blink of eyelids, haemorrhaging wedge-like until a hole gaped within the ancient mound.
A wretched little creature scrambled out with the look of fear, it’s skin wrinkled, intensely red with large faded blue eyes rattling in oblate sockets, uncontrolled and exaggerated.
Wheeling sideways in a desperate attempt to escape, the creature slipped, its legs a scrambling mass of panic stricken limbs. A hand appeared from the hole, grabbing brutishly at the creatures whipping tail. The wretched animal squealed before disappearing back into the hole, having no doubt, sniffed its first air of freedom.
Molecules of air cracked again, but not before forks of lightening stretched across the sky. From the entrance on the mound, a statuesque woman appeared, her hair the unstable colour of brimstone, green in her eyes flickering, a cross of gold hung around her neck, shining profoundly in the dimness.
The woman’s face, once fine and impassive, now contorted. ‘Follow me children. May every hole be closed and every mound be flat’, she commanded.
Inside the hole, sulphuric light created from within. Colours interchanged. Sulphur to dirty brown, dull orange and finally a brightening green. This woman stood no more than twenty high. Softly, she called out down the hole.
‘Merlin’. Her nose twitched once, then again, but probably not because of an itch. ‘Merlin’, she called out again.
By means unknown to me, the chair I had been standing on, suddenly collapsed. With curtains ruffling, I lost my balance and fell off the chair onto the bed. Again I climbed the chair, and again I parted the curtains. Cold sweat had replaced the nervous flick of the viper’s tongue let loose inside my stomach. A deadly hand had thrust its vice like grip deep within my chest cavity.
Fierce, lynx-like eyes pierced the glumness, beholding the knowledge of where I hid, that I’d observed their playful pranks known solely to their kind, kept from the observations of all others.
Time became bankrupt as the small, mischievous life forms, became motionless, exaggerated even! I cowered like a frightened child, but again curiosity would play its part. I just had to look one more time!
One…two… Five o’clock struck yet again! I stared past Luyten. Only a small gap between curtain and window was required. I watched in disbelief as the three mysterious figures sacrificed themselves of colour, their dwarf-like outlines escaping and dissolving with the grey confusion of late afternoon, lost on the breeze forever.
There appeared little reasoning for a child of eight to be accepted for his word on the strength of having set eyes on …what exactly?
The clock had completed its fifth strike, and now, through the branches flashed the spears of sunlight spraying and playing amongst the endless waves of breeze that hustled the trees, sunshine that drenched the garden and cottage in turn. Through the windowpane it shot, brightening the wall to either side where I now stood in delirious sweat.
Not too long after the fifth strike, Gardener Luyten yawned out of his deep sleep, head still heavy in a drowsy stupor. This was followed by the rough rub of an eye and a quick brush off of a leaf.
At last, the sun kissed the horizon like a boiled, split tomato. Red it was, red it blinked and slipped beyond the horizon until tomorrow.
The years have faded and the garden now lies empty, the mysterious mound long gone, but my memories are still strong, even if my mind is now ailing. The room where I write is warm and the clock says five, so I stare into the large old mirror before me. I’m looking at myself, an old man yawning.
I still remember quite distinctly those early years of childhood, where on that very lazy afternoon, I witnessed such unworldly happenings that were never to be repeated. I wish I was twenty high like them, and then just maybe, the garden would once more come alive with the sounds of those cracking chestnuts.
There is an old long mirror in the bedroom, and I watch myself pushing the finished scroll of past memories to one side as I sit at my writing desk.
I picked up the silver boot buckle I had unearthed in the garden and kept all these years, then examined its mysterious markings one final time before returning it back into the dusty box. This was my proof and just enough to swear by.
I rested my old, silver-tipped pencil onto the desk, before scratching and rubbing a pointed ear. My eyes feel heavy and my heart is slowing. Maybe now, I will finally sleep for the very last time.
THE END
