Black Feathers

63

The far end of the tiny canyon proved to be rich with rabbits.

Gordon set his snares daily and daily caught one or more. He roasted them over the fire, drying and saving their pelts. The rain never stopped, but he was never wet for much longer than it took him to hunt or use the latrine he’d dug. Many of his clothes smelled so bad that he took them outside and washed them as best he could in the rain before drying them once more on the walls of the cave. He also used the rain to shower several times a day, and for the first time in weeks he managed to get rid of much of his own stink. He boiled the rainwater and drank it every day.

The luxury of a dry, warm environment with food and water to spare was at odds with the reflective nature of the cave itself. Outside, travelling, he was free and there was a wide sky above him. His problems, though they were weighty and never left him completely alone, did seem to flee occasionally into the beyond of all that space above him. In the cave, every thought he had came back to him multiplied. To counteract this, to release the pressure, he spent much of the time making entries in his black book, trying to clear his mind.

November ’14

My eyes only

The rain hasn’t stopped for days. I keep thinking this ravine will fill up and I’ll have to swim out, but the water doesn’t seem to collect because of the sandstone.

The cave was made by someone who wanted to hide in these bluffs hundreds of years ago. Maybe a gang of outlaws. If you didn’t know this place existed, you wouldn’t find it by looking. I feel like I was led here.

I keep seeing the bad things I’ve done over and over. And at night I don’t know where I am sometimes. I can’t tell if I’m awake or dreaming. I see the men I’ve fought – Skelton and Pike, the raiders who killed Brooke. Most often I see Grimwold. In my dreams, they all laugh as though they couldn’t be happier. As though the world is a carefree place and nothing I did to them or they did to me ever happened.

Then I wake up and remember how I sliced Skelton’s eye and knifed Pike in the crotch. I remember how I stabbed the raider in the gut and the look of disbelief on his face. I remember what Grimwold did, what he would have done if I hadn’t stopped him, and I remember how good it felt to punish him. But the next time I fall asleep they’ll be after me. All of them. They hunt me across the moors or the hills, across rivers and through valleys, and there’s nowhere I can go to shake them off. Whenever any of them catch up with me, and they always do in the end, they ask me why I hurt them, why I killed them. They ask me to explain. It’s only when I try to explain and find I can’t that they get angry. Whenever that happens, I usually wake up. And then the walls of the cave are all around me and their questions stay with me but I still can’t answer them.

All I’ve done is make things worse for the people I meet and worse for my family. Why am I wasting my time searching for the Crowman? Most of the time all I can do is hide. I’m scared to talk to anyone for fear they’ll ask too many questions. When I see a village or a town, I go around it. I’ll never find him like this.

Somehow, I believe that the land is leading me with signs. It’s like reading a language in the shape of the world and the movement of the clouds and the patterns made by flocks of birds or the way they sing in the mornings. I act on all these things, but it feels mad every time. When I question why I’ve chosen a particular direction or route, the answers worry me. The wind was carrying me that way or the trees in that wood are calling to me or the wren told me to go this way; that’s madness, isn’t it? What worries me even more is my answer. No, of course it isn’t madness. If you don’t hear the voice of the land, you’re not alive. I can’t even be sure it’s me answering the question.

The cave makes all that stuff worse, but I know without it I’d probably be too sick to travel or even dead by now. Something must have led me here. Something reliable must be guiding me.

I woke up with all these questions whirling in my mind last night. The fire was down to ash and outside there was the rush and patter of the rain. For just a moment my mind shut up and was totally silent and clear. As clear as anything, from inside and all around me came a voice that said:

“Everything you need will come to hand in the very moment of its requirement.”

I know I’ve heard that before.

Doesn’t finding this cave just when I did prove it to be true?

I don’t understand what’s going on, but I know I have to try and trust what’s happening.