Chapter 2
Swirling colours, light and sound as a single sensation. Floating, falling, with tiny fibrils of awareness beginning to coalesce. Then something solid emerging from the confusion: a woman, a boy, and a yellow-haired girl. They are watching him, unsmiling. A tendril of anxiety grows, undulating at the base of his consciousness.
The tendril is a plant, a sea plant, swaying gently in the deep blue water. Then the plant grows a bud and the bud bursts into an orange flower, a bright orange flower that gets bigger and bigger, filling the sea.
Orange-red brightness, completely amorphous. He can't see anything else – why can't he see anything else? Then suddenly the orangeness condenses, becoming a reticular pattern of black against dazzling brilliance. He has opened his eyes.
He looks up at the branches and the leaves swaying above him, scattering the brightness of the sun. Slowly, the gentle rocking lulls him and the flickering brightness seeps into him, filling the hollow cavities of his mind with rolling light and warmth. The tendril dissolves into nothingness and his breath flows quietly like the evening tide. Then, though at first imperceptibly, it changes. The swaying becomes slow and deliberate and the dazzling pattern of silhouettes presses down on him, threatening to suffocate, to crush. He sits up quickly, blinking.
He is surrounded by trees, their huge trunks crowding in on him like menacing strangers. He shrinks back, cowering and afraid. Something is missing. The woman and the two children, where are they? He looks around quickly, but he cannot see them. Panic flares, though it is fast dulled by confusion. Were they ever really here, or was they just part of a dream? He tries to picture them in his mind, to bring them back – but sees only shadows. And now the memory of the dream is fading and he can feel them slipping away, sliding out of his mind like sand through a sieve. He sinks back into himself; he is aware that he has lost something, but he doesn't know what.
He hears a voice, a laugh, light and happy like music, spilling and tumbling through the viscous air. Sitting up again and he looks around. He is on a patch of grass, brilliant green, each blade blazing with luminosity. Directly ahead of him, on a road leading out of the trees, there is a girl, small and pretty, barefoot and dressed in white. She turns to him, waves farewell, and then is away into the brilliant sunlight.
Her smile fills him with a sudden warmth, melting his fear. The trees are friendly now and pull back, giving him space. He feels the spongy grass under his body and the cool dampness on his hands. The green light shines up through him as if he were transparent, made of soft glass. The girl is his friend, and he knows she likes him. But who is she? The question plops into his mind, hovers expectantly for a few moments in the translucent jelly of his awareness, then fades to nothing, leaving no trace of an answer.
After this he closes his eyes and an image of the girl is all around him, bathing him in golden light. It is a delightful memory, fuzzy and warm, though also insubstantial, shimmering in his mind like a mirage. He tries to focus, but everything is fluid and slippery, each thought sliding away as he reaches for it, like fish in a turbid pool. The girl is there, blurred and confused, and also what could be a woman and a child, or possibly two children. But he can't see them at all now, they are too indistinct. Perhaps they were nothing after all, phantasms and no more than that. There are other images, but far away out of reach and already sliding into the blur: a neat red house and something dying, something he knows is his.
Suddenly he is aware of a sensation, a cold wetness on his skin, and he opens his eyes. A slug, a black slug as big as a man's foot, is crawling over the back of his hand. He can feel the muscular waves that ripple along its belly as it propels itself over his skin on a bed of slime. He watches, fascinated, as the sunlight glistens on the slime-covered body, encasing it with rainbow coloured jewels. Its eye stalks move slowly to and fro and its breathing hole is a vast dark cavern in the side of its shining carapace. Eventually it slides onto the grass, leaving a sheet of shining wet diamond across his skin. The spell breaks and he sees that there are more of the giant molluscs, scattered around him on the grass. Indeed he is surrounded by them, a broken circle, all moving slowly away from him back into the woods, their shining trails radiating out from where he is sitting like shimmering silver spokes of a rimless wheel.
Standing, he teeters slightly, unsure of his feet. There is a looseness around his waist: his belt is undone and his jeans are open. He feels suddenly guilty, like a criminal, and another tendril of anxiety begins to undulate quietly at the base of his awareness. With fumbling sausage fingers, he pulls up the zip and buckles the belt.
He looks around at the swaying trees, their grey trunks flowing and swirling like molten plastic, at the dark green undergrowth with its tendrils of briar twisting and coiling into a filigree of gothic intricacy, and at the grass at his feet, the blades curling and flowing in waves like the cilia on a protozoan membrane. All is moving – and at the same time perfectly still, as if embedded in clear resin.
He notices some discarded clothing scattered about his feet: a ludicrous blue hat with a little red man embroidered into it, a purple scarf, and a dark blue jersey with patches of smooth cloth on the shoulders and elbows. There is also a black coat with a dark red lining. Of leather, the back and sleeves are shiny, like the slugs, though the front is smooth suede; he can feel the texture of this in his mind, like a girl's skin, soft and subtle. Smiling at the thought, he looks up the road. His own girl is now far away, a shimmering patch of white in the bright daylight. He feels suddenly alone – the trees close in menacingly – and he doesn't want to lose her.
The clothes might be his, they might not. But either way, he doesn't want them, clinging and stifling on this bright warm day. Except for the coat, that is: for he likes the coat, with its slug-shiny sleeves and its girl-skin front. It is amazingly heavy and clings desperately to the ground as he picks it up. When he puts it on the lining material grips the bare skin of his arms, squeezing him affectionately. Then, uncertainly, he steps out of the widening circle of great molluscs and follows the girl up the road.