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104 Draycott I stood, caught in the chill grasp of grief in that place, clasping my hands there, seized by the grip on my heart of longing and loss. Though reason told me I should be still, I mourned for my poor imprisoned pearl with all the fury and force of a quarrel: the comfort of Christ called out to me but still I wrestled in wilful sorrow. The power and perfume of those flowers now filled my head and felled me, slipped me into sudden sleep on the spot where she lay beneath me. My girl. 2 In a while my spirit left the place where my body slept and dreamed below and by the grace of God began its journey to a landscape of marvels. Who knows where in the world it was, but I know there were cliffs that cleavered the sky and facing me a forest, studded with stones and rocks that seemed to the eye to be loaded with light, of a brightness beyond belief, a glitter like nothing I’d ever encountered – no human hand ever made a fabric half so finely arrayed.
page 111
Draycott All the hillsides around were adorned with cliffs formed from crystal, clear as morning, which towered over trees with trunks of a blue that was deeper and bluer than indigo, trees thick with shivering foliage that slid and shifted like high-polished silver or ice – as sunlight fell through partings of cloud they shone and flared like shimmering foil. On the ground the gravel that peppered the paths was all precious pearls from the orient: even the sun seemed grey and spent beside such glittering adornment. At the sight of those hills arrayed in light the weight of grief lifted from me like air. A delicate fragrance of fruit drifted toward me, renewed me, filled me like food. In the forest, birds with feathers the colour of flame flew together – the woodland rang with the beating wind-rush of their wings, and sweet-sounding harmony of their song. No instrument could imitate the miraculous music that they made: no one could ask for more who’d heard it, or seen the adornment of those birds. 105

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104

Draycott

I stood, caught in the chill grasp of grief in that place, clasping my hands there, seized by the grip on my heart of longing and loss. Though reason told me I should be still, I mourned for my poor imprisoned pearl with all the fury and force of a quarrel: the comfort of Christ called out to me but still I wrestled in wilful sorrow. The power and perfume of those flowers now filled my head and felled me, slipped me into sudden sleep on the spot where she lay beneath me. My girl.

2

In a while my spirit left the place where my body slept and dreamed below and by the grace of God began its journey to a landscape of marvels. Who knows where in the world it was, but I know there were cliffs that cleavered the sky and facing me a forest, studded with stones and rocks that seemed to the eye to be loaded with light, of a brightness beyond belief, a glitter like nothing I’d ever encountered – no human hand ever made a fabric half so finely arrayed.

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