Barcelona Days by Daniel Riley

Author:Daniel Riley [Riley, Daniel]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780316362160
Google: reC0DwAAQBAJ
Amazon: 0316362166
Publisher: Hachette UK
Published: 2020-06-22T23:00:00+00:00

Ljósmyndari

The photographer arrived by boat with four fishermen. The docks were burned badly and the harbor was filled with new rock. They anchored offshore and dinghied in. He dragged his hand in the water. The sea was cool again. As they reached the black beach, they could see the rivulets of basalt that had burned their way into the surf. He poked some with a stick. When it pressed back firmly, he smelled the end of his poker and it smelled like rotten eggs.

They tied down the boat and the fishermen set off on foot for the village. The photographer trained his eyes skyward, to the flowering of black clouds above Holudjöfulsins. The air was still warm and dense with particulate. When he waved his stick, a fine ash swirled around him. He uncapped his water bottle and took a swig. He pulled a piece of wintergreen gum from his vest. He had two cameras with him, and he pointed the first one up.

He shot for an hour. He shot the volcano and the ashcloud and the burned-up homes and livestock. The lava had descended the mountain in spokes that carved the valley floor into ribbons of fortune and misfortune. This home had been turned to ash, but the neighbor’s stood unscathed. He took pictures of good luck and bad luck.

The cloud illumed every now and then, crackling from its center, a weather system all its own. Against the protests of the fishermen, he set off up the slopes of the volcano for a closer look. He climbed for half an hour, pausing only when the rumblings beneath his feet froze him in his boots. The cloud was an impenetrable trap, a light-suck composed, he imagined, of every element in the periodic table. It was black, but marbled. It was so outsize in scale that it was like its very own idea—a tropospheric mass he’d heard was now the size of a continent. It was less than a week old. Astonishing.

He shot from the slopes for an amount of time that was impossible to measure. There were none of the typical reference points. It was an alien landscape at alien altitude, the up swirling imperceptibly with the down. It was a place of pure science, of chemistry and physics, of solids that looked like gases and gases that looked like solids. It was a place he was convinced must be devoid of life altogether. He felt himself moving closer to the cloud. He felt his body lifting from his boots and rising toward the mass above him, as though in the tractor beam of an alien ship. He felt light and he felt small and he felt he would never worry too hard about anything ever again now that he had had his perspective shifted, now that he had come face to face with the ashcloud.

He was returned to his body when he heard the clamor in the valley. The fishermen were whistling at him. They were waving their arms. They were a mile away, but the sound carried up the slopes.

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