Our Dance Across the Plains

Our Dance Across the Plains

T Weber

AuthorHouse™ UK

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Bloomington, IN 47403 USA

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Phone: 0800.197.4150

©

2015 T Weber. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 12/09/2015

ISBN: 978-1-5049-9550-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5049-9549-8 (e)

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Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

The poem: Glastonbury Be

Is produced with the kind permission of

Tom Quinton

Chapter 1

Crow looked to the future as she surveyed the landscape around her. Having blown his pocket money on alcohol and idiocy, the pawn, Nim, waited. He appeared helpless, lying down sideways off the back of the board.

If he’s hoping that a winning (but somewhat misguided) blind player will mistakenly take him to be a sleeping queen or bishop and thus bring him back into the game, he’s in for quite a wait. Crow’s thoughts and gaze moved on to the spirited movement across in the meadowland, the lacy hem skirting the ankles of the southern hills of the city of Baleyard rising above. She took flight, her steady wing beat purposefully cutting a path, her eyes remaining focused on the unfolding scene before her.

The arrival of ‘Rainy’, the red rainbow queen, created uproar on set. A free party was in full flow well off the beaten track without a single uniform or traffic cone to blight the revelry. Many fun-filled folk played and danced in and out of the up-cycled geo-domes that kept the song-makers and fluorescent sandpits dry. Rainy may well trip over a pawn’s drunken dream if the party spills out in that direction… but yet will the strength of her resolve fire their dance together for many moons, Crow cawed out loud, pausing only briefly before her curiosity drew her further on, up into the city’s jurisdiction.

The sign read:

‘Dance, Play and All Associated Forms of Happiness -PROHIBITED’

It hung at an angle on one door but was plain for all to see within a one hundred and ten yard radius around the square. Here Crow chose to make her landing. Strutting past the other doors, she saw the tattered evidence and coloured remnants—the only remains of numerous leaflets torn and taken down. It is just as Rainy’s message told it, that many would try to deny the life and existence of the leaflets, but that her mission was to dance in direct defiance of its message and its maker.

Crow carefully picked her way seeking a safe haven to site her nest. Attention to detail was the step in front as she adjusted her gait to avoid trails of dark rat droppings leading in and out of many residences.

Bristling instinctively, she sensed distractions of deception, lines of misfortune and heartache crisscrossing as if mapped out on a giant hand.

Oh well, here we are, Coyote; we’ve followed your trail, now to build a nest weaving in our dreams to match. For a community to receive so much attention from such a gregarious rodent fraternity, there must be a reason. She brushed away a cluster of the stray droppings. If no one has any objections… Crow dropped her bundle of twigs down onto a meagre patch of grass beneath a characterful oak tree at the edge of the undulating parkland. Tapping her beak on his trunk before cawing her intent to the wind, she flew up to take in her new surroundings.

Flying high above the buildings, beak-led by an acrid stench wafting in from the city’s northern extremities, she saw how steaming dung heaps of enormous proportions marked out the road system below, punctuating every viable entrance or exit to Baleyard. From the sky, Crow perceived how each one sat equidistant from the city centre’s tower blocks. A modern henge of odorous intent in the making? She brushed that thought away as she flew further out towards the northern hills and soothing colours of the moorland beyond. Lady Balaré glistened, running light and fast in the valley overlooked by a stand of stone outcrops.

Coyote, Coyote! Crow called out in greeting, seeking the friend who had influenced her journey and arrival in the north. It had been Coyote, an erratic traveller of the heart, who, a season earlier had spent a diceful of days relentlessly limping southwards clutching in his paw a host of unhappy messages from this bleak urban landscape.

***

Pausing only to take sips of brackish water from neglected fishponds en route, Coyote had finally arrived. Throwing himself down on a rare sandy bank of heather protected by a grove of gorse bushes, he could remain hidden while overlooking his destination. The diligent guardian of the cupped contents belonging to his melancholy compatriots relaxed his paw gingerly. Allowing a mere hour’s rest to compose his demeanour, he jumped back up garnering a nonchalant air ready to complete his task.

Unfurling his paw, he scattered the sweaty clutch of seeds of discontent onto the warm lawn beneath the pair of birch trees then housing Crow and her family. Not wishing to be seen as the bearer of bad tidings, he furtively loped on without a word or a wave.

***

The sweet coconut aroma of the gorse blossoms alerted Crow to Coyote’s arrival close by. She kept watch to greet her friend, looking forward to sharing stories and enjoying his obtuse sense of fun and laughter. Seeing him run past with his head down, she waited expectantly for his return. The peaceful silence turned oppressive over the coming days and weeks, as no word or further sighting of the wayward emissary could be found.

The seeds germinated in the soft rain and warm breeze of the southeast creating an updraught of disquiet murmuring in the birches’ boughs. Crow cocked her head as she chewed through the grains’ tough strands. Rainy’s call for daring dancers and caring crows to hear the soft whispers, the heartfelt concerns of hummingbirds, beavers and all manner of gentle creatures from their city’s wastelands made a thought-filled repast. She silently digested the subject matter that had been cunningly wrapped and delivered via the meandering wild dog.

Crow turned to her remaining offspring, two fledglings. After making her nest in a crook of one of the birches, those eggs had hatched producing two disgruntled, stubborn, dark chicks. Much later, one turned into a beautiful and intelligent female flier. The other, a dumpy, ragged-looking creature, indeed sooner developed his shape-shifting abilities drawn by Lizard’s dreams way over the great divide. Right now, however, they just glared out at her from underneath their pronounced fluffy foreheads.

When? and whatever were their immediate responses to the idea of moving far from their slow-paced quietude to an unknown cityscape. Taking their curt words as cues nearest to consensus a parent could ask for, Crow prepared for their departure.

The turning of the seasons was soon upon them and, sure enough, winter storms followed, sending Crow, her family and an armful of twigs way out of their comfort zones. To cold landscapes of the north, three dark specks flew high towards new horizons, to share city life with friends in need.

Chapter 2

It was revealed in ’77, but was actually in ’76, when Crow had first been bitten by a snake in the grass. An adder, having probably decided that desert life had finally arrived, engaged in a blistering mid-summer skin-shedding ceremony during the long drought. So one can perhaps imagine how pissed off he was to discover that it was to be a short-lived paradise. The brilliant, multi-hued, wet autumnal leaves that too soon followed made life very difficult for a snake on the move.

So he may have thought that any beings with a penchant for revelling in the rain in bare feet surely deserved to get it in the ankle? Crow tried deciphering the past as it ran in mercurial rivers through mazes deep cut in mountain clefts in her world. She shuffled uncomfortably from one leg to the other. After all was said and done, what was her complaint? How many others did she know who could maintain an alliance with an all-powerful electric eel, whom they themselves had hatched by mere chance? Then again, who would know that under all those fantastic red rainbow clothes there lurked an amazing electric eel?

But what now? Sends me a hard seed to swallow along with her playmates and is now off dancing—and no one else to be found. Crow walked on, silence and swirling debris her only companions in this forlorn concreted corner.

Like many others daring to be born in times of an overbearing intransigent society, an abundance of time for thought was oft her lot. Isolation, due to imposed divisions by the governing society of the day or self-inflicted exile of spirit when repelled by those vagaries, lead to her ownership of a clutter of buckets brimming over with repetitive soul searching and self-improvement techniques.

While Dewey and Kolb remained inner heroes of myriads of individuals, she had discovered that Maslow was dissimilarly fated. His foundation stones had been commandeered, chiselled into shape as chic swear words by a dense strata of wealth seekers.

Maslow, my foot! could be heard in up-market watering holes heralded as a complementary exclamation of delight when viewing over-priced designer footwear. Whereas the more cumbersome phrase: ‘is my dog a pedigree? Is his name Maslow or what?’ had been coined by a team of radio-immunologists at one of their annual seminars. Adopted like a rash by the wider academic branch of this elite, it swung cradled between their credit cards and retailer tills when they were admiring anything ostentatiously superfluous. The gutsy, three-worded: ‘the dog’s bollocks’ derailed, head-butted aside by a regiment of raised eyebrow lovers. Seized upon by a mob of frowns, ‘the dogs bollocks’ were dragged into parliament and strung up to replace the ‘No’s’ signage, and the division bell promptly rung. Branding ruled the day, coming to power as everyone strutted along in absurd new footwear through the division lobbies into the ‘aye’s’ quarter.

Crow knew that the bishop harboured a secret habit of wearing designer shoes beneath his cassock. She had glimpsed them as he raised his arms when overseeing the incongruous spawning of that particular eel. But he was also pissed off—and, shortly after this female baby elver’s hatching ceremony, he did in fact go.

Muttering, Maslow, marmalade and meringues under his breath, he signed up on the long list of all those desirous of boy children and promptly shot away with a Shih Tzu tucked under his arm. Onward to acquire a position in the ever increasing yet thinning edges of the extreme southwest, my faithful friend! The bishop blazed his trail.

Crow recalled her most recent flight to those warm coastal cliffs seeking an update on the plight of her red-billed cousins. Families of choughs displaced by a recent influx of insensitive two-legged tourists with sprawling habits, were hard to overlook in a crow’s world. She also noticed the area being bolstered together by strategic positioning of two giant plastic upturned wine glasses. Considering this an unfortunate scheme devised by two inebriated rooks—scholars from the school of Deep Tank Logic—she shook her head wearily.

Listening to their vocal range across the airways mingling with the chimes of a municipal cash register they cheekily kept their beaks hooked into, it jarred her sensibilities. How those two jokers pulled off that stunt, Crow couldn’t tell, but it was widely known that the cash register had been acquired at the same time as the extra-large wine glasses…

Crow enquired further by visiting a row of rock doves perched on a length of cracked guttering in a nearby quaint seaside venue. They showed her the exact spot where they’d looked down as the dirty deal favouring the rooks had been struck with an alley of fat cats, who presided over and milked an ancient community of hardworking ants.

The two rooks, scholars and raucous storytellers both, regularly posed for regional rags flaunting multiple strings of golden numbers and matching jewel-encrusted £ signs around their fat feathered necks. An additional eight-page review displayed a list of their financial demands in apple chancery font. The literary equivalent of fluttering eyelashes sprang to Crow’s mind. Each item, further adorned with its own exotic flower symbol bullet point, preceded the detailing of their whimsical proposals for community funding of their hobbyist lifestyles.

Crow leaned over the open pages of her copy and noisily spat an indigestible cornhusk into the gutter, her ears picking up snippets of conversations rising from the milling courtyard below.

Sand castles and champagne at high tide aren’t dangerous or anything like Nero’s musical soiree, one of the rooks commented ‘off the record’ during the drinks ceremony they were generously funding.

Not at all, he played at night and cited that chimenea far too close to the oil lamps for comfort, the other rook elaborated.

Yes, not at all like us. We go about our multiple dealings in broad daylight. It’s amazing how modern society has progressed with our safety in mind; I feel quite reassured when I look out to sea at the prison ships bobbing up and down.

Clinking their glasses together, the two rooks sauntered into the hubbub of the gathering.

Bravo, Why not? and Sour grapes! were the calls greeting and welcoming them into the sumptuous revelling fold. The rooks’ brittle laughter was soon indistinguishable from their fellow party goers’ own various nasal offerings.

Outside, Crow took flight with an ear to the shore beyond. Hunza, a lone crab fisherman, could just be heard. He was crying into his frying pan of radioactive mackerel sprats: Who knows or cares the source of the apricot crumble? These words were to remain stubbornly hanging in the fetid air for many a long year to come.

Chapter 3

If anyone thinks that I’m going to write anything of semblance to read through, like a page of simple sums for six year olds, they would be very much mistaken, Crow cawed over her wobbly, damaged typewriter. This ancient piece of early technology balanced precariously on an uneven branch, threatening to go to its ghost if this grumpy-throated, black-feathered creature dared ask it to remember any more of the mixed gathering of letters, numbers, signs or symbols that it was being requested to utter at any hour of the day or night, as it suited this indefatigable, yet rarely moody player.

And, she added more gently to the gathering night air, if any reader struggles, finding the content too quirky, jumpy or skippy to be read easily, this is a reflection of how some of us struggle, juggling to retain our individuality, hoop-jumping for a pittance to live by whilst trying to clear up after the ruling materialistic overlords—and I make no apology for that. But please note that this moving style is also a personal homage to those who bear the burden of illnesses, such as Huntington’s chorea or Multiple sclerosis, lest it be forgotten that we carry all who wish to travel with us. Crow tucked her head into her breast feathers taking a moment for reflection. Her initial warm thoughts of personal friends extended into a deeper encompassing prayer of universal oneness, temporarily transporting her away from the daily tasks in front of her.

She was compiling a book, a record of current times told through stories— the journeys of friends danced, seen or sung. Crow witnessed much on her travels and, upon her return to the nest, she would find an assortment of letters, notes, pictures, even torn scraps of scratched leaves left by others for inclusion in the book. She had woven an in-basket for this purpose and lodged it securely into her nest weave to ensure that none of the incoming stories went astray.

Reading a complaint regarding collective nouns that had been placed in her basket earlier that day by a maligned lapwing, one of Crow’s rare moods gathered, rippling its way through her feathers.

And with good cause, I’ve met many a lapwing and not any with an ounce of deceitfulness between them, she muttered to herself. I get fed up living under the mantle of ‘a murder’ when more than one of us dare to be seen together. The Ravens have got off more lightly, I see, their healing ways only being slurred somewhat inappropriately with ‘an unkindness of.’ And the Rooks, well, they easily survive through their propensity to gather and live in large numbers in organised sky-rise communities. But murder—can we help our own natures being born with the innate ability to see the past, future and present simultaneously—a gift allegedly? Yet I find it is also actually the formula for headaches, she mused on ruefully. Picking bones and our own shadows being other unfortunate customs of the Corvus corone, doesn’t help either…

Crow paused to dislodge a stray pine needle and seek a more balancing thought from her wing. She knew full well that the ungrounded unknowing words of other species were a very small price to pay for the shape-shifting feathered cloak that she, as a young crow, had developed over many moons—either on her flights or by listening carefully to a song at midnight with a shrewd ear to the words of the ancestors, who ride the winds of change.

Communing with the ancestors was a regular habit on a daily basis for Raven in her circular turret situated at the back of the game board. Crow, a welcomed guest of this home bird, saw and learned much of their differing natures during her visits.

You’ve chosen well, high above the murky water levels, not even the stench can reach you, Crow commented.

No, the views are quite breath-taking up here, we really are fortunate and thankful for our lot, Crow. I have no immediate or long term desire to move unless anyone rustles the feathers of my young chicks. Raven was clearly her own epitome, exquisitely beautiful both within and without. Crow looked down at her own dull ragged-edged garb. Oh well, silk and sackcloth each have their specific purposes. She pecked at a sprig of moorland heather snagged in her rough feathers.

And, of course, your lucky heather exists in the form of a wolf. She laughed. Residing in your adjoining annex, many futile wishes of others are surely dashed on your doorstep? I don’t know of any so daring as to ruffle that grey fur coat by your side. Crow and Raven stood together at the east window.

Yes, Wolf is a knowledgeable and wonderful teacher; his innate sense of balance between individualism and family loyalties is invaluable. Raven was known to call upon his wisdom during debates on philosophical issues. As well, he was a useful ally, providing protection at her healing circles where he enabled all those with honest intent to be able to enter and leave safely.

And that narrow walkway, Crow pointed down to the left of the building, leads out to stables, you say?

Yes, with an enclosed paddock. Belongs to a white stallion, as does this turret. He likes to winter here, but often stays for the summer grazing too. Nothing is ever too much trouble for him, an extremely generous neighbour and landlord to have, I must admit. Raven nodded precisely twice, as was her way.

Crow noted this in the same vein, as she had witnessed the goings on a little further down the valley but situated at the opposing edge of this spectrum.

Unlike the humming birds at number 44? Requisitioned by compulsory purchase? She broached the subject ruffling up her throat feathers. Number 44 had previously been a finely drawn square full of prisms of light where fragile hummingbirds freely lived and played, but they were now, sadly gone. Their delicate natures all but destroyed by the arrival of concrete aisles stretching, mile upon mile, for sure, Crow held no doubt.

Too true, Crow. I offered them open house here with us, but, sadly, they declined. One voiced that the turret was too dark and enclosed for them to maintain their livelihoods here. But the feathers on each shone iridescent with their tears. It was the mark of a bittersweet day watching them leave. No word yet; their fortune or fate remains unknown.

And now those hard runways have been construed, and badly, by renegade sepoys and their neighbours. This defiled area is being trampled by interlopers—gate-crashers full of their own devices. So grotesquely burlesque are all the drumming-turd disguises encroaching upon this once fine area that it is either a travesty or a parody, depending upon which way one perceives it. Crow shook her head at the paradox. She found the unfolding scenes unsettling, necessitating much thought. She voiced her concerns to Raven.

I am acutely aware that there is always a case to be considered as to whether one is taking oneself too seriously or whether mountains and molehills can be compared in a more light-hearted manner? And this wouldn’t be the first time, by any means, that I am berated for standing seriously askew at a negative slant. However, the wilful destruction of a local urban environment, causing pain and suffering to the gentle creatures living therein, is weighing heavily in my nest, the hapless crow confided.

Drawn to the plight by a metaphorical prod in the wings from a mischievous coyote, Crow had come seeking solace and advice from the wise raven. One also armed with a personal bodyguard and benevolent benefactor, her heart felt lighter. She closed her eyes, unaware of Raven’s scrutiny of the buffeted feathers barely covering her scrawny form.

First things second in this case; healing prayers are definitely on the menu, but we need to sit together with my hook of fresh hung mice first, for sure, Raven concluded, reaching without further delay into a well-stocked recessed cupboard.

***

News travelled fast in the tight-knit northern community. Immediately upon moving in, Crow found herself busy receiving visitors every day. She hosted at home, though her eye often strayed over the rim of her nest, catching sight of the droppings littering the pavements. Many of her guests brought their stories of illness and misfortune, so it was not surprising that the white-coated rats were so active and attentive in the neighbourhood. But somehow, Crow found it unsettling.

A courtesy cold-call by a loose-limbed, off-duty rat with strikingly similar philosophies in life to a crow—it didn’t sit well, but this particular rodent, Flanders, was popular in the locality. His range and depth of knowledge in the humanities matched Crow’s, so he soon carved a niche as a frequent houseguest. He displayed avid interest in modern birdsong alongside his professed love of drum and bass, gaining seamless entry into the world of the local mixed flock of young crows and magpies as well.

With Flander’s ability to engage freely in the livelihoods of others, Crow found few opportunities to learn of his career in any depth.

Of his family life, he spilled out an elaborate story describing how his parents had ‘gone down’ trying to bail