Swans! cries el. Swans! like dada made! look! look!
Swans have come. i look bak up hill. father is smilin. all of us still then as they pass over. we watch until they are gone in settin of Sun.
el she looks around then, as if for first time.
where is dada? she says.
/ k
I felt I should explain to the girl. To El. Somehow, being here, I felt I should speak to her. I was responsible. When we are working, when we are helping these people to ascend – then, the process is greater than us. It is all about the process. I am a technician, a servant of Wayland and thus a servant of humanity. My job is to release these people, to usher them into better lives. What they are here – what these lives contain and mean to them – until very recently, I did not give it any serious thought.
I see it better now. I see how they stick to everything, especially to each other. This was her father. He came to me and I failed him.
Or, Wayland failed him. This is my forbidden thought. Can Wayland even hear my thoughts any more?
We have both been abandoned, El and I. We have both been left. I feel it now. I can feel what she lacks.
I am sorry, I said to her. I failed him. We were sitting on the grass behind the stone tower, away from the others. Tears clouded her eyes. I have never apologised before.
I do not know what happened, I said. Everything is … so unusual.
She kept sobbing, quietly. Then she put out her hand to me, like her mother does. I did not know what to do. I took it in mine. It was comfort. Now I see comfort for what it is.
He wanted to be with you, I said. He thought you were gone forever. He told me he could not live with failing you. He spoke of his love for you. He spoke of it a lot.
I am to blame, she said. I should not have gone.
You are human, I said. You cannot see what will arise from your actions. For me, it has always been one of the saddest things about you people. You act, but the results of your actions are never clear until they cannot be reversed. You can only do what seems correct to you in the moment. This is what you did. It was not wrong. How could you know?
All is changing, she said, the tears still coming. I miss Dada. I miss him so. He so wanted to see Swans.
All is changing, I said, her hand still in mine. Yes, it is. All is changing, much is lost. It is hard to hold on to, is it not? It is hard. I never knew.
She looked up at me then. I think she tried to smile.
BLAK MOON
/ father
we waited until Sky was darkest. until it hung in gap where roof was, hung in torr over us. then i lit fyr. lit fyr and standin in torr, all of us. standin around fyr, watchin, waitin. smoke risin up to great disk in Sky, cloudin it, dancin with it. smoke, still air, Moon, torr. it was like time was not movin. wite light come down, red light movin up. we five in ring around fyr waitin.
no body speakin then. all lookin down in to flames at what dances there.
then came sound.
it was like bell rang. sound was like bell ringin, but from no direction. sound was in all things. as it was when Waters began risin, sound comin from Land it self, from Sky, from Sea, from all places and none. bell rang but no where could it be heard.
then came voice with no sound, tone with no form, heard in all parts and from none. all of us hearin it, deep in stone, in Clay, in body.
i am
it is you
i am
Wayland
yes
how do you speak to us?
matter is mostly empty space
i step into it when i choose
this is how you watch us?
i do not watch
i am
why do you come now?
i come at your call
we did not call you
your kind called
kind?
i have always been with you
you have always sensed it
you sewed me into your stories
you built kingdoms from my warnings
i passed on the wings of your mythologies
you made machines from the patterns i gave you
then you called me
and i came
who called you?
Earth lives
you know this
she lives and sings
if she is in pain she calls in distress
like any creature
her call was the trigger
when she called i came
why do you speak to us this night?
i have spoken with you many times, father
i have followed your line over centuries
i have spoken with your people in the old woods
i have called to them on the high moors
i have come in many shapes
a heron a skylark a low cloud a black cat
a firebird a goldsmith a trick of your mind
yours is the line of the white stag
brothers to the birds
granted the seeing and broken by it
through time you have danced the same dance
struggling seeking returning to the fire
each new birth repeating the pattern
what is this pattern?
if you could see what i see
you would know what time is
a plain not an arrow
across it walk your ancestors
all life that has been and will be
sometimes its angles intersect
ages bleed into others
then your world cracks and you see shades
then you glimpse truth but cannot hold it
what are you?
i am the dance at the heart of the particle
i am the step between the universes
i am the seven planes and the nine worlds
the pattern of the Way is the beat of my heart
i am the land’s dreaming and the song
i am what you called and what you needed
i know why you have come now
you are dyin, you and your work
Alexandria is fallin
Birds have told us
Lady has told us
Swans have returned
all is broke
yes
Alexandria is broke
yes
and all within it
there was always a risk
even a probability
i thought it could be overcome
i was wrong
this is in the nature of things
what nature?
you know the world is minded
the universe is minded also
all we know is a great mind, a giant thought
when any conscious creature dies
its mind shifts to another part of the whole
mind is an energy which must circle
all of your small minds are part of the great thought
cells in the thinking body of the whole
by locking human minds away
i denied the great thought its fuel
i broke the cycle
the flow blocked, the balance skewed
Alexandria was a dam
blocking the great river
and so it is dyin
it is not dying
it is dead
it has fallen?
in sorrow and in gentleness
i have broken the dam that sickened the river
and lorenso? nzil? jame?
all who ascended?
eons of those who believed you?
the Way is greater than all things
i have done what i could
there is no more
change, chaos, dispersal
the coming together, the dance across time
it is the only rule and path
matter is dispersed now
the cycle may continue
Waters rose when matt
er was released
when you destroyed city
the cycle must continue
there is no more to do
water will find its own level
then Birds spoke True
yrvidian spoke True
all we have said has always been True
no mind without body
no body without Earth
it was all True
and now you are done
you and all your works
not only me
what do you say?
you also are broken, father
your people are gone, your work ended
and you four the last
there may be others, in other parts
people may return to Erth
i know things you do not know
i have sung the world’s song
you have only listened
now there are new balances
Earth has learned as all life does
things have changed and are changing
it will never be as it was
this planet is moving beyond you
we will return, live again. we will be free
you will never be free
no Wayland, no Alexandria
we will live on Erth again
what shall be shall be
but now there is work for you
work?
there is a pattern that loops through time
you hold the thread that binds it
what pattern?
the pattern of your people
your work over time
in all of your seeking
you too have dammed a river
now you too can break the dam
how?
let go of your story
i tell no story
all you think is a story
all the patterns you make of the world
all you have told and believed here
Alexandria was a story
the Order was a story
you are a story
we are not broken
all stories are broken on the rock of the Way
no tale is real
no image will save you
all makings of the mind are false
what you have heard
i have heard also
to cross wall
abandon maps
abandon maps
break the dam
if dam is broke we all drown
and shall be swept out to sea
and shall we be released then?
we shall
released
we are all at an end now, father
but there is no end
no end
only formless turning
countless beginnings from each drop of rain
a million directions from every still point
only doing until doing is done
and is it done?
it is done
we are done
the city has fallen and the waters rise
moon has come to sun
mother to father
balance is restored
we will dissolve like smoke
and from our blessings new worlds grow
and old song always sung
always sung
always
/ sfia
voice faded then, though no voice had been heard. no time had passed, and all saw meanin.
Moon comin down on us still, fyr dyin now. and through door way of torr, some strange glow. i walk then, out on to summit of hill. others followin.
below us, Waters have come over crowns of last Trees.
all round us, rafts still bobbin. circle of lights all around hill. they wait, still, but closer now.
now over line of hills to north is some strange light. some strange glow, risin now. red light, risin all around.
father takin me hand then. i take mothers. el and mother join hands also. el now takin Ks hand. we stand under Moon in ring, stand on hill by torr, watchin.
northern light growin. fyr in torr dyin bak. red light every where. on all horizons, all is light now.
look, i say. father holdin me hand tighter then.
wait, he says. wait now.
now comes some strange sound. some old sound risin from Waters, risin in to all things. sound and light in all things. ringin from them and risin.
we stand joined now. joined in light and Waters all around.
i look at mother, el, at father, at K. all are smilin. sound and light. all are smilin.
we are all smilin now.
Acknowledgements
Thanks are due to Lee Brackstone, Alex Bowler, Emmie Francis, Claire Gatzen and all at Faber & Faber; to Jessica Woollard; to all of my friends and family who read and offered comments on early versions of these pages; and to all of my teachers, human and otherwise, whose work has fed into this writing.
The two opening quotes are taken from Robert Bringhurst’s A Story as Sharp as a Knife and from King Alfred’s translation of Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy. Gratitude is offered to both scholar and king.
PAUL KINGSNORTH is the author of Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist and Other Essays, Beast, and The Wake, which won the 2014 Gordon Burn Prize; was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, the Folio Prize, and the Desmond Elliott Prize; and was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize. He is cofounder of the Dark Mountain Project, a global network of writers, artists, and thinkers in search of new stories for a world on the brink.
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