Grayling Junction - Chapter One

Eyes of the World

In the beginning it is all about the thermals, about air forced to rise through an intervention of the sun. Hot pockets of air fire me through the sky like a cheerful bullet. Under tufted cumulus, soft like the dawn fade of a dream, I soar with the current, wings at rest.

This time I am a Red Kite.
I have been formerly a tortoiseshell cat, thrice a snail, once a woodpecker and once a magpie. There was also a short-lived adventure as a mackerel – pulled from the unending blue against my will, into the dark funnel of a cannery.
I was once a Native American Indian.
There are other visits, shut away inside dustier recollections.

I am permitted to contribute in this voice: a notion of thoughts without sound. Some people assume that birds are unable to enjoy thoughts, but let me tell you, that is not so. We might not often choose to think – granted some species might not trouble themselves with thinking at all – but I like to think as often as possible. With these currents of comfortable air removing the worry of whether or not I shall plummet from the sky, what else would I choose to fill my mind with?

Can a bird get lost?

This is the prevailing thought for today.
I have an impression of the country beneath, drawn predominantly in rubble reds, streaks of riotous orange and amiable squeezes of yellow. The sea shimmers somewhere between cerulean blue and the deep, shimmering green of envy. With the lowering sun behind my wing the water is a silver spread of crumpled winking; like the smile of a grandparent.

What I am not entirely sure of is how I find myself so far from home.
Home: a warm, feather lined nest in the uppermost branches of a broadleaf wood, tucked like a keepsake into the West coast of Wales. It is a long way from here.
I had sought to broaden my horizons and turned left toward the midday sun. A sudden confluence, like an intricately revealed sirocco, bound me inside a thermal band tighter than a secret. Then an uninterrupted, effortless glide above the polished surface of a moonlit mirror…

Who would stop to question magic?

I certainly didn’t. I tore into the journey like you might rip into an unexpected parcel. Now I content myself in moving with wide, circular introspection. The town beneath me has become a full stop. Within the breath of the sea, the unhurried activity of people sifting contentment between their fingers, I bring myself to a hovering linger.

The name of this town is Grayling Junction. Perhaps town is not quite appropriate, for it is a small clutch of lives strung like pearls along the coast. A consistent shadow falls long and black over the outskirts of the town as the leviathan mass of Randall City reclines unchecked on the back doorstep. Metallic towers threaten to consume with a relentless assault of bulk. The city stews in a clogged atmosphere of airborne scree, as though the sky is no more than scrap metal lodged in the cloud cover.

Grayling Junction, such as it is, spreads like butter between the imprint of the city and swagger of the mountains. Circling with wings wide the bleached wood of the dock buildings make quiet shapes beneath. Needling between the dockyard and a small boatyard opposite is a dropped garment of trembling estuary. Bobbing at the shallow end of this estuary is a cluster of modest fishing boats. Inside the yard is a clutter of vessels like kernel husks, smooth underbellies exposed to the sun. Other crafts are drunken men at rest, lying slouched against blocks, bearded with moss and seaweed. Sprawled between the creaking boats is a spread of netting that shifts like mist between buoys the colour of coral. A bank of fishing pots stacked with teetering imprecision waits patiently for a fall. A humble cabin with a sloping tin roof is both home and work for a man who can be seen repairing a damaged fishing boat.
Extending south from the yard is a long stone jetty, beyond which is an access road leading to a long, whitewashed brick building where some of the town live. In the morning they pour in and out with smiles like lazy fire.
I swoop low over the estuary when the fancy takes me. I like to tease the fish. Deep and slow moving the surface holds a lingering stagnancy. It is the odour of water at rest, one part river to three parts ocean. Many weeks of rain have bloated the estuary – and the boatyard waits impatiently to discover whether it might drift away as a clumsy flotilla.
The high fingers of the tide are like sock marks on the legs of the dockyard and over the ground – like new bruises – are a series of shallow, watery pools mottled with a haze of oil.
Beyond the dockyard a road runs north to south. To the north is the heaving bulk of Randall City. Opposite the boatyard gates is a series of tightly packed industrial buildings and faceless storage units. Continuing south the road pauses for a T-junction opposite a low wooden house. This is an important house.

The road east passes a nineteenth century train station that seems moments away from utter exhaustion and continues toward steep red mountains, climbing out of sight before passing a sawmill a few miles later. To the west the road skirts a modern industrial estate built around a vast, artificially lit fast-food outlet, before rising on a gentle gradient to meet a scattering of houses set into the green of tree covered hills. A few miles on this road stops abruptly as the land crumbles suddenly into the sea.

In time a call from the beautiful valleys of home will sound in my heart and I shall look for that right turn homeward.
For now, I circle the sky above Grayling Junction and watch the people of the town, watch as their lives unfold.