[Fragment 5: ‘A new fence; a new bed; a new danger’]
The dark, frosty, chills of winter swept in on the wings of November’s old age and the birch woods of Pishwanton shivered, stark and silver. These trees are young but wear an ancient atmosphere on boughs cast desperately upward away from the earth. Pishwanton, once the throne-camp of the old Pict bear-kings, possesses an uncanny air that only thickens as the nights draw longer and brings dreams of troubled depths.
In the early hours of Sunday morning, however, Frances la Vache experienced no dreams of any kind. That is not to say that she was deep in dreamless sleep but, instead, that she was quite awake. Lying in her shelter, legs folded under her, Frances was unable to find a comfortable position on the cold, hard, mud. “If only there was something softer on the floor in here”, she thought to herself, “still, nothing to be done, I might as well make use of this time now that I have it”. Giving first a brief harumpf, Frances brought up some warm cud to chew and, staring hard into the darkness, returned to the thinking that she had been doing on the subject of quantum gravitation earlier in the day.
A chorus of human voices disturbed Frances from her ruminations late in the morning. This was, in her mind, somewhat of a travesty given that she had been approaching a theoretical breakthrough. “A pox upon these simple-stomached bipedal barbarians”, she lowed. The people in question were unaware of what they had done and were busy listening to instructions being given by their overseers for the day: Toffee the dog and his human assistant, Margaret. In addition to Toffee being given uninterrupted love and attention, trees were to be felled, felled trees were to be cut into logs, logs were to be sharpened into stakes, stakes were to be pounded into the ground, and a fence was to be woven around these stakes. This sounded like a lot of potential clamour to Frances and so she got to her feet and walked, stately and serene, out of the shelter and toward quieter ground. Several of the humans gasped “lawks! what a big cow!”. Frances rolled her eyes, “wait until they see the form I am yet to assume”, she thought.
The workforce, assembled from the tribe Dirty Weekenders, soon got to work wielding their saws, hatchets, hammers, and bare hands. Cries of ‘timber!’ rang through the cold air, and felled trees were dragged over to the fence. The wyrd energy of Pishwanton caused the some issues at the start, skewing senses of scale and perception: a 5’ log became a 6’ log that in turn became a stony-faced goblin chanting dirty blues lyrics by Bull Moose Jackson. A twisted staff that had been seasoned for two years in only westerly winds and the tears of ravens was brought into play by Overseer Margaret to counter these difficulties with some success. Work continued and, a safe distance away, Frances sat slowly composing an epic poem in complex meter.
After a couple of hours, the rumbling of stomachs demanded a break for victuals. Heading back to the main building in Pishwanton, the Dirties reconvened with several other of their number who had been hard at work clearing bracken from another area of the site. Munching on sandwiches, they were observed by a group of seemingly identical cats. One cat sought to curry favour with the humans, rubbing himself against their legs, whilst the others watched from a distance and slowly advanced. The seemingly affectionate cat was not popular with his brothers and sisters. “Little Woogle will ruin our hunting”, transmitted Silent Womble Shufflepots to Scentless Wumple Shufflepots, “he is drawing attention to us”. “Patience, Silent Womble”, Scentless Wumple responded sagely as she crept a little further forward, “their attention is limited and we are crafty: we will prevail”.
The family Shufflepots did not, however, prevail, as the Dirties were drawn back to their labours before they could meet a particularly feline fate. Bracken-clearers resumed their wrenching and up in the woods more stakes were sharped as an impressively-woven fence took shape. Pishwanton wood is not so easily mastered, though, and, as dusk descended and tools were put away, mishap was but narrowly avoided. Martha, one of the prime fence-weavers, had started to fall under the power of the sweet-smelling and pliant birch and was forgetting the world beyond; as she continued to work, the wood between her fingers seemed to intone “join us, join us, become the fence, become the woods, join us”. Projects Coordinator Will, aided by the wandering spirit of Toffee, acted swiftly, grabbing Martha’s shoulders and shouting a counter-incantation of sorts before she could incorporate herself too far into the fence. The troupe then made their way back down to the bus and Frances was finally able to return to her hut. It came as a pleasant surprise to Frances to find that the humans had placed a large quantity of comfortable bracken there for her.
As the sun disappeared and a mist descended, the Dirties headed back to the lights of city. Progress of the minibus was impeded for a while by the curiously slow and erratic driving of a car in front. As Nina eventually managed to overtake the troublesome vehicle there was discord in the car. The Shufflepots stared angrily at the taillights disappearing into the distance. “I told you to press the accelerator harder, Little Woogle” snapped Silent Womble, “now we’ve lost them”. From down by the pedals Little Woogle defended himself, “perhaps if you’d work the gears better it would be easier”. “Stop bickering and have patience, you mewling imbeciles”, said Scentless Wumple as she manipulated the steering wheel with her front paws, “we know their ways now: we will prevail”.
Amos Abrahams