Beyond the Setting Sun

Detroit, Michigan

Sleep took me away: an escape from the world that hummed around me.  Dreams came thick and fast as my mind tried to make sense of all that I had been through.  In the world of the dream I was back in the small house where I had been born.  I was about five years old and it was dark.  I stood at the top of the old wooden stairs, which were covered in loose green carpet.  I started down the stairs, but tripped.  My heart lurched and my head swung downward as my feet slipped away.  In that split second I waited for my head to hit the hard wooden steps... but I took a quick breath.  I didn't fall.  Time stood still.  My body hung in mid-air.  I took another breath and rose clear of the stairs.  A clock on the mantle-piece had stopped ticking and sat lifeless.  Another breath and I moved downward, barely skimming over the stairs and gliding towards an open window.  Inside the house it was hot.

I stopped at the window and looked out on a world of moonlit shadows, all grey and black.  My body couldn't leave the house... but I knew that I could.  My hands gripped the windowsill and my body stood straight.  But I gazed out of the window, took a breath... and floated free.  The house was hot, but outside a cool breeze stirred.  I moved out through the open window and rose skyward, between close-packed houses.

I moved to the right, following an alleyway... still following familiar routes.  The alleyway looked much different in the moonlit night, with dark shadows that could hide anything.  I felt my heartbeat grow faster and I began to sink to the ground.  Another deep breath made me rise and I moved to the end of the alleyway.  Something waited there in the dark.

I stopped.  A cat came out of the shadows.  It looked towards me and raised its tail.  I looked into its eyes, which showed as two pools of moonlight ringed with purest black.  I moved closer, still looking into those eyes.  And closer.  The two eyes filled my thoughts and still I moved, each breath bringing me nearer.  I no longer looked at those eyes, but through them.

The night was there, but now much brighter.  And scents shifted on the air.  A heart that wasn't mine beat fast.  Padding on soft feet I moved through the darkened alleyway and out on to the street.  Muscles rippled and the breeze played through fur.

Ahead was a darkened barn, in a field beyond the houses.  The scents were of horses and the overpowering smell of mice.  A gap in the side of the barn allowed easy entry.  In the dark nothing could be seen, but the sounds of scurrying and the scent of fear were clear.  And yet, something else was in the barn.  I looked up into the dark.  I couldn't see it, but there was anothere scent there.  I rose up from the ground and moved to the rafters.

Below, the cat lay on the floor, waiting for its prey.  I moved towards a small pale shape that sat above.  Feathers, claws, beak and eyes and the sense of waiting; I thought of those things and moved towards them.  All that mattered were these things... feathers, claws, eyes, ears, and a world of sound in the dark: crickets, the scurrying of tiny feet below and something gnawing on wood.  It was time to meet the night.

Swooping down from the rafters, air rushed over me and I glided straight out of the barn.  Wind ruffled over feathers, the air moved fast and the world was full of sound.

Below, the trees and fields became small.  The wind and night air were much colder.  The town, with its strange hum of power, was gone.  Below, the subtle currents of woods and the intertwined strands of all that lived wrapped around my senses.

Rushing fast through wind-rustled trees and skimming the tops of thick undergrowth... the memory of a clearing called clear and strong.  There, past the white elder tree that was grey in the night, was the small thatched house.  And there was the open window.

I glided lower and came to rest on the sill of the window and looked inside.  Candles lit the room, and at its centre an old woman was weaving.  She was dressed in flowing green clothes and had long silver hair that cascaded to the ground.  Her face was older than time, but barely wrinkled.  The patterns she wove were of streams, woods and hills, mountains and sky... and all the creatures that dwelt there.  Beneath her hands she wove the world and all that was there.