Chapter 10
Moving along the trail at a gentle pace, clouds darkening the sky and Drum's whinny of memory or anticipation... . A turn to the left, and uphill... . The ground is brown, yellow, back to brown again... . The trees squat down, draw apart... . Grasses wave between them in the cool and rising breeze... . A quick fire in the sky... . A rumble shakes loose raindrops... .
Steep and rocky now... . The wind tugs at my cloak... . Up... . Up to where the rocks are streaked with silver and the trees have drawn their line... . The grasses, green fires, die down in the rain... . Up, to the craggy, sparkling, rain-washed heights, where the clouds rush and boil like a mud-gorged river at flood crest... . The rain stings like buckshot and the wind clears its throat to sing... . We rise and rise and the crest comes into view, like the head of a startled bull, horns guarding the trail... . Lightnings twist about their tips, dance between them... . The smell of ozone as we reach that place and rush on through, the rain suddenly blocked, the wind shunted away... .
Emerging on the farther side... . There is no rain, the air is still, the sky smoothed and darkened to a proper star-filled black... . Meteors cut and burn, cut and burn, cauterizing to afterimage scars, fading, fading... . Moons, cast like a handful of coins... . Three bright dimes, a dull quarter, a pair of pennies, one of them tarnished and scarred... . Down then, that long, winding way... . Hoof clops clear and metallic in the night air... . Somewhere, a catlike cough... . A dark shape crossing a lesser moon, ragged and swift... .
Downward... . The land drops away at either hand... . Darkness below... . Moving along the top of an infinitely high, curved wall, the way itself bright with moonlight... . The trail buckles, folds, grows transparent... . Soon it drifts, gauzy, filamentous, stars beneath as well as above... . Stars below on either side... . There is no land... . There is only the night, night and the thin, translucent trail I had to try to ride, to learn how it felt, against some future use... .
It is absolutely silent now, and the illusion of slowness attaches to every movement... . Shortly, the trail falls away, and we move as if swimming underwater at some enormous depth, the stars bright fish... . It is freedom, it is the power of the hellride that brings an elation, like yet unlike the recklessness that sometimes comes in battle, the boldness of a risky feat well learned, the rush of rightness following the finding of the poem's proper word... . It is these and the prospect itself, riding, riding, riding, from nowhere to nowhere perhaps, across and among the minerals and fires of the void, free of earth and air and water... .
We race a great meteor, we touch upon its bulk... . Speeding across its pitted surface, down, around, then up again... . It stretches into a great plain, it lightens, it yellows... .
It is sand, sand now beneath our movement... . The stars fade out as the darkness is diluted to a morning full of sunrise... . Swaths of shade ahead, desert trees within them... . Ride for the dark... . Crashing through... . Bright birds burst forth, complain, resettle... .
Among the thickening trees... . Darker the ground, narrower the way... . Palm fronds shrink to hand size, barks darken... . A twist to the right, a widening of the way... . Our hoofs striking sparks from cobblestones... . The lane enlarges, becomes a tree-lined street... . Tiny row houses flash by... . Bright shutters, marble steps, painted screens, set back beyond flagged walks... . Passing, a horse-drawn cart, loaded with fresh vegetables... . Human pedestrians turning to stare... . A small buzz of voices... .
On... . Passing beneath a bridge... . Coursing the stream till it widens to river, taking it down to the sea....
Thudding along the beach beneath a lemon sky, blue clouds scudding... . The salt, the wrack, the shells, the smooth anatomy of driftwood... . White…
