Liquid and Magical - alastair macleod (read a book TXT) 📗

LIQUID AND MAGICAL


She stopped the car and got out. The moonlight glinted on the metalled road. Around her the still night of the glen in summer, the low dark hills clearly visible. She took a deep breath. The air was fresh, soft, the smell of damp heather and bracken sharpened with a tang of willow.
As the sound and vibration of the engine ebbed away from her body, she found the silence recede as the night sounds crept in. A tawny owl woo wooed, then off to her right the mournful crushed cry of a fox in the pinewoods.
What was that? In the background steadily murmuring. Of course, a river, down to the left in the valley bottom. She imagined it dark and rippling over smooth boulders. The sound and taste of hill water were things she missed most in the city.
She shivered a little in her duffle coat. As she turned to open the car door she froze as she saw on the silvery ribbon of the road three dark shapes close, and for a moment, menacing like grown men with their hands held up. Then they shifted position and she saw the sheen of the moon on their flanks and the antlers, branch like, against the sky. Red deer stags, cautious, stopping to check her out as they crossed the road. One of them coughed. Their hooves clicking delicate steps they moved off slowly, a faint swishing of the undergrowth marking their progress.
What was it like to be them at night, stepping dainty on hooves through this landscape, nostrils keenly alert, ears vibrating to the slightest nuance of sound?
She stood by the car, the door unopened. Why was it nature could do this, reach into your very soul and fill you with awe and wonder. It was almost too much to take, like a grief memory deeply buried bubbling to the surface overwhelming you with feeling.
Did we live a day-to-day life in a desensitised zone? Had there been an earlier life when people walked like the deer in the landscape, feeling it, hearing it, smelling it so intensely they were one with it. Yes, that was it, she thought, the feeling of oneness – our modern sense of individuality is so strong we avoid, resist, deny that oneness, that merging with the greater whole, glimpsing it only fleetingly when we are alone, when we are gripped by intense feeling, in love, grief or joy, or when we are very small and the boundaries between ourselves and the world are still liquid and magical.

Text: alastair macleod
Images: alastair macleod; "red deer stags" purchased from dreamstime royalty free photos
Editing: alastair macleod
Translation: title typeset in amienne
Publication Date: 12-22-2012

All Rights Reserved

Dedication:
first published 2005 in the short story collection "Strip of Light"