The Book of Dirt by Gretchen Heffernan

Author:Gretchen Heffernan [Heffernan, Gretchen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: fantasy, supernatural, youngadultcrossover, magicalrealism, poetry, literaryfiction, readinggroups, noir, England, Sussex, complicatedlove, epicfantasy
Publisher: SCB Distributors
Published: 2000-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

29.

If you could call it a village. It wasn’t always this small. It had been shaped by a succession of hurricanes and floods. All that was left now was a winding High Street from which a few roads twisted like tentacles towards the castle. The grey floodwater came right up the castle. The harbour was around the corner and its waters covered most of the old town.

For a while, when the tide was low, you could see the drowned rooftops and the mists rolling over it looked like smoking chimneys. It was quite unsettling, but eventually everything rotted away and was forgotten. The sea could claim anything, even memories.

The uncontaminated field looked empty, but all the same, she kept at its edge to avoid being seen. You never knew who was lurking about and Jude had the propensity to turn up at inopportune moments.

It was strange that Jude had decided to lodge Ansley. She didn’t completely understand it as he often talked about the risk of contamination and obviously the Keepers were wary. He constantly warned them about the need to keep the population pure and unpolluted, so Ansley’s acceptance seemed to contradict Jude’s own philosophy and from that angle, she could understand the Keepers’ point of view. There was no question that his presence could be disconcerting and even she had had her reservations at first. Would she have befriended him without the pearl’s influence? She wondered.

He was unattractive by all conventional standards, but he compelled looking and considering. In that way, he was quite stunning, plus he had an exquisite mind. His poems were beautiful and frighteningly powerful. It was as if he had a secret knowledge that he drip-fed the world through his words. He was still largely a mystery to her and she often thought of him as a white mummy that she alone had exhumed and was unravelling. But to reach the end of the undoing and live with the human beneath, could she cope with that?

Every time she entered the woodland she felt as though it were enchanted and tonight was no exception, like a single living creature, the colour was visceral, the colour grabbed her by the breath and pulled, but it was not hostile. It was smelling her, judging her like a dog recognizes a friend or foe. The crows announced her to all.

In her pocket she carried the trowel. She walked to the beech tree and gasped when she saw how much the pool of water had grown. She knelt down. The pearl greeted her, rose and bobbed to the surface of the water like a white ball. She picked it up and it felt slick and cool in her hands.

She laid the pearl in the centre of her palm; it rooted down into her hand and felt Jude’s scale inside her like a sickness. The pearl mourned her loss of innocence, but understood that there could be no other way, for in order to receive great power she mustn’t be entirely void of the dark world.

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