Dear T,
Our journey continues. You were right (again), the weather holds. Seems I’ll be a little poorer when next we meet.
My companion’s hands heal well; she’s remarkably resilient. The wounds have become a constellation of interest for her. There’s beauty in everything, I suppose.
We went south along the river to the old walled city today, stopping off at Bramow to deliver your package to the porter at the marina. He remembers you fondly as “The man that always walked”, whatever that should mean. He gave me something in exchange, which I had to sign for. I’ll deliver it to you when we return.
The dining establishment whose staff are “most charming” was full when we arrived and we were turned away. Most unfortunate. But no matter, we had your list. We set off for the next. It was closed. That is to say, no longer there: tables, chairs, and staff long since vacated. Long, T. I’d say a slip on your part if I didn’t know better.
We therefore were compelled to walk the Altstadt once again, arriving back where we started. My companion thought we should give it another try. Lo and behold, a table was free. Several, in fact. It seems they’d had a sudden, unexpected flood of office workers visit. “We’re normally not so busy!” (Yes, T: A walk to whet the appetite or Were you not so early. I put to you coincidence.)
We browsed a local bookstore after eating and gave to charity: a young man approached us collection for the deaf and blind, himself seemingly afflicted by the former. Soon after, we came to suspect that he was a charlatan, and that we’d unwittingly given to a charity of a wholly different sort. A disciple of yours, I suspect. (I will not let you turn me into a cynic, T.)
That night I dreamt the white lighthouse cast a baleful glow over the shore. As it swept across the houses, it revealed the dead, stood at their windows, watching. Watching the sea. Watching me.
My companion and I had supped late and spoken of you and your stories. Digestion, in body and mind, were no doubt at work as I slept.
We set off east the next day by bicycle, into the Rostocker Heide. Crane song, T! Two white birds wading the shallows of a peat lake. Deeper and deeper into that vast landscape we went, until we happened upon the village of Graal Müritz. (I’m reliably informed that Kafka once spent a summer here, frequenting the rhododendron gardens.)
We became enamoured of the many thatched houses, their eaves capped with carved wooden horses. (I thought this an odd choice of animal for a village by the sea, but then I recalled Manannán mac Lir and Poseidon, both gods of the sea who had an affinity with horses.) We found a café, also thatched, whose gardens were dotted with beach chairs. Quaint. We settled in one, ate well, and left for the Großes Riebnitzer Moor.
That place churns with life in a manner different from the heath- and woodland. The creatures there are bolder. They watch. A young red squirrel sat in our path near the entrance, undeterred. We were almost upon it before it calmly leapt aside. Farther in, we saw the earth beside the tracks was torn and tusk-churned. Ferns as large as cattle roamed, and light stepped carefully through the rowan and willow. We came upon a ranger’s post that had been claimed, a green wave crashed upon its side. We both concurred it may have taken mere moments in this place; if it so willed, the moor could move in savage surge.
We read in the soft earth the passing of much traffic. Tracks of all sizes and gaits, some quite unfamiliar. Voices called and sang; were we unwelcome? No sooner had I posed this thought than I was offered sign. Glowing red amongst the green, unseen before, a fly agaric. It had a captivating aspect. (I hesitate to say bewitching.) We stooped to look, to see the world from a low, fruiting eye. When we stood, the sun had shifted by degrees.
We passed a lake black as peat and still as stone. The moor was mirrored perfectly upon its face.
Deep in discussion of the place and whether we (in the greater sense of folk) were somehow trespassing, we noted a dead tree shaped like a catchpole. Well.
Needless to say that when we encountered a hand rising from the ground, our minds, given flight, alighted on the fantastical.
We left, past the giantess, despite a welling desire to stay. Time necessitated it — we’d far to cycle back and little light.
That night, another dream. I moved amongst the soft- and slender rushes of the moor, past broad-leafed docks that reached my shoulder; browsed the pennywort. But I was not I: I was altered. My senses were alive in ways I can’t describe, nor would wish to if I could, so deep and personal were the sensations. So real.
I awoke with purple moor-grass under my nails. This was your aim all along, wasn’t it? What lay behind your offer of accommodation? Unable to persuade me of your twilight word through words, you resort to actions wholly more maleficent. Truly I’ve a trickster-witch for friend (who would be fiend).
I go to bathe.
With sincerity,
C
