Landscape with Figures 47 – Fraser · Verses Across
Literature · Science Fiction & Fantasy
Landscape with Figures 47Chapter 46
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Literature · Science Fiction & Fantasy
Landscape with Figures 47
Chapter 46
FraserEnglish
Ambrose gave a pull with his paddle and drove his canoe head-on into the grey and misty margin of an islet. He shivered, for the cold of daybreak was still on the water. He had meant to stop here, at the bend of the Lake, and look finally at the valley and the island, to reflect on the march of time, taste for a due moment an emotion nobler than sadness, as the beloved valley and the rich experience of the summer faded from bright now into dim past. But valley and rock had vanished in morning vapour. There was nothing but an islet glimpsed in a sepia mist, a blur of willow, a crag high overhead in the vapour, a dejected heron brooding on one leg in the shallows.
Idle for a moment, he let his craft drift out from the reeds. Even the Lake itself, he reflected, some current in it, was bearing him away towards the river, towards the hidden Dragon Gorge. He dipped a blade, and paddled slowly across the water, past islets of reed and bamboo that stood out of the mist, looking for some place where a lane in the mist might give him a glimpse of the Valley. Once, indeed, there was a rift, a view of what seemed some part of the Rock. He was like a man seeking in his memory for something familiar and forgotten.
Silently over the water came Lychnis in her white dress, paddling alone, looking steadfastly in front of her. Their boats rasped.
“I am sorry,” he said quietly. “I did not mean to intercept you.”
“It seems to be fated that our paths in life should drift together.” She spoke very coldly, and he admitted to himself that something was gone from their relationship. He cleared his mind—opened it to the possible implications of that change. They came to him.
“The mist is lifting,” he said, and they both looked back over the islet-studded water. The distant Rock, the shore of the Lake with their own mooring-raft of bamboo, a deep grey blur, came into sight like a dream remembered at morning when sleep cannot be regained.
She turned her head steadily away, and the mists closed again, blotting out lake and islet and crag. A voice came from her. “One had pleasant days there.” The blade of her paddle hung, and the voice came from her again: “It is not the same, only remembering.”
She sped her canoe, and he watched her become a blot of white and pale brown, vanishing in grey vapour.
