Endsong

This is the first half of the first paragraph. This person who has no idea how or why she ended up in trouble, so I am aiming for a sense of an unremarkable ordinary person walking obliviously, and somewhat dreamily through a precarious world as well as posing some questions. Is it too clunky? I am also introducing the 2 main characters. Are they obvious? Does it hold your interest? What about the title? What does it suggest? thanks.

Rhea woke up with a start. It was dark.

The silence was only broken by the sound of her own breathing.

She couldn’t move. She tried, but her body just didn’t want to respond. Somewhere in her mind, she knew she was injured.

She was in bed. Even without moving or looking, she knew it didn’t feel familiar. She could make no sense of how she got to this bed, or where this bed was. But she had to make sense of it or panic would take over.

She forced herself to think back. just a few days ago, life had been safe, ordinary, and the only problem she’d had, was trying to explain to her friend Laura why she was following up her innocent little aspiration. Had she missed something? She must have.

The Previous few days

“You know when you walk down the same street you've always done, but you suddenly notice all this wonderful stuff that’s always been there, but you just didn’t see?” Rhea said, struggling to find the words to justify her latest wildlife interest to her baffled friend.

She searched her friend’s face for understanding, but it didn’t come. Instead, she saw Laura Watson sitting on her bargain leather sofa, (just paid off), in the tiny living room of her housing association flat, (which she hoped some day to buy a share of), in front of her latest acquisition of which she was hugely proud, (a large flat screen T.V.) and felt maybe just a little crazy for not doing the same.

“Naah, that’s you all over. Notice nowt me…too busy workin and keepin this place goin for me an little Colin.” Laura said cheerily, getting up to usher Rhea out. “Anyway, I thought bird watchin was for blokes.”

Rhea laughed, more at ease, now she could give Laura facts.

“Naa. It’s not just birds, its…well… a conservation club, you know, nature study things. Anyway, Jack likes all this stuff, so it means she doesn’t think her mum is a complete dunce.”

Laura opened the door, her face as kindly as ever,

“Yeah, but save some energy for Saturday night, There’s goin to be a good crowd in and that George likes you.” she said grinning, giving Rhea an affectionate nudge.

Rhea just managed to grin in a semblance of delighted response, covering both the sinking feeling she’d got at the prospect of a night with the handsome but slurring George, and the surprise she'd felt at her own reaction.

As she hurried down the road towards the conservation site, she wondered what was wrong with her. She didn’t notice the heaviness in the air that caused the birds to chitter nervously. She didn't notice the be suited young men with identical old fashioned haircuts, and demurely dressed young women, all with their frighteningly identical shiny eyed smiles, filing into the evening service of the church. She didn’t notice the fiery eyed young men dressed in the tribal garb of a foreign land that they saw as their future, but which she thought of as “in the long gone prehistoric past.” She didn't notice, as they huddled together at the door of their meeting hall, and like their shiny eyed counterparts, talked earnestly of a disturbingly archaic tribal version of righteousness. She didn’t notice that a faint shudder of the earth beneath her feet had a different quality from the rumble the underground trains or passing traffic usually caused. She didn’t notice the news headlines declaring “Climate change a myth? No to terrorism.” And “increase in illness despite wealth. New pandemic feared this winter.”

It wasn’t that she was particularly preoccupied, it was simply that she never took much notice. No one did. It was none of their business, unless they were specialists, such as politicians or police officers. These things were for the news, to be tutted at of an evening as a kind of entertainment. They were what made up the backdrop to life in the suburbs of a modern city.

What she did notice, with relief, was that it wasn’t raining. Then she continued her personal appraisal.

‘Okay, it’s true, George is sort of a catch, as Laura keeps reminding me.’ she thought grudgingly. He liked Jack and Jack liked him. He was good looking and there was no harm in him. But, he wasn’t for her.

She knew Laura meant well, she was a kind hearted soul. Just all this matchmaking made her realise she was feeling increasingly awkward in Laura’s company. She sighed with more than a touch of regret.

She and Laura had met at the school gates while waiting to pick up their respective offspring. They’d seen each other through many of the crises that can befall single mothers. They were both young divorcees. She was divorced. Laura had finally owned up to never having been officially married. Not that it concerned Rhea at all.

A flashback of her short and damaging marriage made her shudder.

Something in Rhea finally rebelled.

‘Yeah, George is a catch, if you want to fossilise down at the local pub that is!’ she thought.

There was a whole world out there, things were happening, and she wanted to know about it. George had said there was nothing you could do about it so you might as well ignore it, enjoy yourself and have another drink.

‘You do that George, I’m off.’ she thought, as she anticipated her evening’s eccentric solitary pleasure.

She smiled up at the still light, clear blue evening sky, and felt that same thrill of excitement she’d felt when she had played truant from school in order to go daydreaming in Mrs Johnson’s overgrown garden. It was a beautiful evening and it was all hers.

She had been due to team up with someone else to do a survey of wildlife on the derelict land around the old lorry park by the railway. The conservation club had a rule about going around in pairs for safety’s sake, especially in the evening. But nerdy shy Paul, the one person she'd have felt at ease with, wasn't available that night, and anyway,she hadn’t fancied sharing her secret garden with anyone.

She did like them, the conservation club folk. Admired them really, but she knew she wasn’t one of them. They were all confident middle class types, bright as buttons, and right on with their green politics.

She would listen with awe as they discussed, eyes shining with zeal, the coming end of the world as they knew it, and how the blame had to be laid at the door of their own society’s misguided ways, as it used up and polluted this green paradise to support their profligate lifestyle.

They were more than ready to spread the word, but first, they had to collect the data and save the innocent bats, badgers and foxes. Though Rhea didn’t enquire too closely about what they did privately to the rats, mice, spiders or beetles which attempted to invade their homes. She did, however, wonder what the moral thing to do was, concerning the above.

The club members were kind to her, especially when they discovered how good she was at keeping the paperwork straight.

Rhea sat on a log in her little would be wood, letting out a sigh of contentment. She sank gratefully into contemplation of her surrounds in the gathering dusk of an early summer's evening. It wasn’t a place of orthodox beauty. It was just a piece of rough ground really. Once it had been an optimistic scheme of workshops and factories, but the buildings had been abandoned years ago and finally collapsed, exhausted from holding their stiff straight lines. The bushes and trees had danced their exuberant dance of life through the broken fences and tumbled walls, till all artifice was hidden, taken back into this tiny patch of would be ancient woodland. For nature, it was that easy.

Now, this was a secret sanctuary for birds, beetles, bright fairy like butterflies, mice, bats, maybe a rabbit or two and even a fox. It was a little island of the wild, joined to the causeway of green verge fringing the road side that reached out through a treacherous city sea of concrete and tarmac, to the countryside beyond, to the real land. Rhea wanted to believe it would always be here, for all those ordinary city people of the future who liked to daydream in green surrounds just like her.

As she gazed about, she noticed a vaguely man shaped shadow had formed from the shade of a young sycamore. She smiled, pulling a face of mock guilt, playfully addressing it,

“Oh, don’t stand there watching me like that. I’m going to do my homework, alright?” Then she pulled out her notebook, clipboard and pen.

After happily ticking a few boxes, she spoke to the shadow again.

“It’s amazing how good for the nerves this bird watching business is.” she explained, watching a solitary bat flitter by in jagged chevrons above her. She saw the shadow's head move as if in agreement with her. She was delighted.Takes you right back to childhood.” she mused. The last bus had rasped on its way home to the depot, its lights, puddles of everyday reality, receding down the road, leaving a darkened hush of magical expectancy.

Images of her daughter Jack and her friends, acting out fairytales in the long grass on the overgrown plots behind the old shops, glowed warmly in her thoughts. Jack loved to play a princess of Atlantis who survived the flood.

For a second, Rhea too was that Princess. But how could you tell that your civilisation was falling? about to sink beneath the waves of history? How, in this day and age would you even know to look when you're too busy paying the mortgage, seeing the kids through school and getting on with your career, when everything you built and hope for depends on not seeing, in believing it will never end? Rhea didn't know, didn't know to look, and yet, somewhere in her deepest recesses, she sensed something was building like giant waves just beyond the horizon. She shuddered, stopping herself, embarrassed at allowing her imagination to run into such silly frightening thoughts, instead, fondly remembering her daughter Jack's innocent re working.

Princess Jack. saw the waves coming and got in a boat with her friends, taking her magic book with her, and they started a new home on a beautiful island of kindly fairies where they lived happily ever after. Children were like that. They could escape into the worlds of the imagination and then come back to the everyday, to land as deftly as one of those fairy folk they were so fond of. It's harder for us adults. Normally.

The earthy air eased off the overcoat of Rhea’s everyday sensibility, ushering her into a timeless meeting ground where, dressed in starlight, she would be greeted by the spirit of the trees.

She dreamed of sprites, timeless inhabitants of timeless woods, dancing with the pure joy of being, spiralling up into the air on velvet wings.

She heaved a deep peaceful sigh, smiling into the trees, focussing on the shadow, which, since the fading of the light, was now no more than a thickening of air.

'You're the sprite of these woods, she thought contentedly. 'Enjoy your trees Mr, enjoy them while they are here.'

She stared hard at the shadow, willing it to answer again. Her mouth curled into a mischievous smile, as she wondered what he would look like.

A picture formed in her mind of some mythic woodland being, sinewy and tough as a tree, his outdoor darkened skin a rich ruddy chestnut, lithe, slim and graceful as a wild animal, but with eyes that shone with wisdom.

“You like to play and you're kind. You understand and love these green spaces,” she murmured.

The shadow grew denser, began to take shape.

Embarrassment snapped her back to reality.

“look at me, talking to a shadow.” she murmured wincing. Then, after a quick scan to reassure herself no one was watching or was within earshot, she said more decisively.

“No, not a shadow, you’re a wood sprite, my wood sprite, okay?” and she snuggled down into the warmth of her new make believe friendship.

“I wish you could keep an eye on these little wild things.” she murmured sadly,

“I saw a dead fox on the road the other day. Poor thing. It didn’t even have the dignity of going down fighting. It was just wiped out without a thought.” she confided.

“They don’t have much of a life on this side do they?” she continued.

Did the shadow move in acknowledgement? She was almost certain it did.

Reluctantly she roused herself, and looking at her watch, she murmured her farewells to the bats, beetles and moths.

Quietly, she slipped away into the darkness to emerge onto the street, unlooked at and unseen as an anoraked housewife coming home from bingo. She was blissfully unaware as the shadow, long and lean, followed, flitting behind her just above the street lamps, settling in the tree on the corner of her street to watch her as she went to her door.