| |
|
The woman was on her knees in the wet dirt and snow, and it soaked her and teased out the first twinges of arthritis. Behind, the woods were leafless: a trick of bareness, because they still hid with their numbers the same range they'd hidden with their green coats months before.
Out in front, the estuary was in frightening contrast: wide, open. When the shingle shore halted there was nothing but white, strained through with grey and brown pebbles, until the shivering view reached the opposite bank where the forest sprung up again, wiry against the white sky.
She swallowed, took two hoary breaths, swallowed again. Her pupils were tiny dots that swung left and right like young mosquitoes jerking in a mirror. They fixed on things only for a few seconds, latching without comprehension on a twig, a log, or a slab of slate. The snow began to fall again, anonymously, peppering the branches and drifting on her eyebrows and cranium, the turned collar of her dress, piling against her legs with cold method. She remained in position, and didn't move anything except her eyes.
The footsteps came, swift, crunching on gravel and snow, and he turned his head as if straining to twist the trunk of a tree. There were three, no, four, maybe six sets of them; and the sound of their movement swam through the trees and thudded in her chest. She peered between the wooden pillars, trying to discern shadows and wind from form and direction.
“You can't cross the ice”, the heavy voice said, breaking from the trees, heralding that bronze kingmask of a face, heavy and thick with muscle and entirely free from emotion. For a second, the Oxhead was half in and half out of the broiling limbs, and then the winter sun hit him full on, a heavy rectangle of intent. The leer he wore rode up his cheeks into a cruel vee slit.
She stood. She'd been running the park for a day now. She could feel the oppressive weight of his presence, knew it nistinctively, had known it when it lunged with piston footsteps through the open snowy grass. She'd seen it shatter the wooden gazebo to matchsticks. He was a real man, the Oxhead- that's what Father said- a real husband- though Father had no money. Money was good wherever it came from, whatever services it payed for. The chase was all the Oxhead asked.
She turned and looked at the Oxhead, and then looked away, and then began to run, again, feeling the incredible ache in her thin-stretched muscle as her ffet began to pad the ground. The Oxhead again began to lollop after, his brogue hoot filling the air- “You can't cross the ice!” Her feet left the stones, smacked against the cold, frozen water, skidded, she slipped, grasped, dragged herself along, and all the while knew he was just behind her.
Then there was a sudden nightmare crack, the sound from when she broke her Mother's mirror as a girl; she peered behind her to see the Oxhead flail for a second between harsh slices of ice, the water reaching up and drenching him. His roar was like a lion. He had followed her onto the ice. She laughed, even through the stitch, let herself laugh, as the pursuer sank howling into the water. |
|
|
