Voice of the Fire by Alan Moore (essential reading txt) 📕

full of queer sayings as no tongue may make. Phror. Becadom, sissirishic and huwf. Hob is set more by I, for hear. Make he a mark in grey of dirt with stick, and now an other, cross of it.

Opens I mouth, for make noise in I’s hurt, and say of fire is come through I, and rise, and rise, with grits of bright, in neath of old black sky.

The Cremation Fields

2500 BC

Floating downstream, away from me, it’s like a big white hand, dragging its fingers through frog-coloured water, tufts of black hair growing there between them.

‘Do you go as far south as Bridge-in-Valley? We may walk together there for safety,’ says she.

She is travelling to her father, who is dying, and she tells me that he is a cunning-man who comes one Summer long ago up track from Bridge-in-Valley, past the Great North Woods, far as the land’s edge, where the cold grey sea begins. He makes his children on a woman there, both boy and girl. Takes boy away with him and leaves the girl behind. All the long Winters pass. She does not see her father. He does not see her. Now he is dying.

‘Bridge-in-Valley?’ comes back my reply. ‘Yes, that is in my way. There is a short path by the river we may take, if you walk after me.’

About her neck, she wears blue fancy-beads.

Now it is almost out of sight, no bigger than a clot of spawn that slides away across the river’s smooth green belly, swollen with the rain. It tangles in a willow’s trailing scalp, moves on and leaves me taking off my wraps between the rushes, whispering like willage girls.

‘How do you like my fancy-beads?’ says she, and tells me how up track and past the Great North Woods the men make ore-fires on the shore. The sea-grass dries in long black strips upon the slippy rocks, then burns within a furnace hole of sand, above of which another chamber lies. Here is the ore, and smelted copper runs as quick as blood down sand-cuts into casting troughs. The juices of the burning grass are mixed with sand that turns to one smooth lump about the fire. The copper makes it blue, and young girls chip it into beads.

‘Now, where is this short path?’ she says.

‘Not far,’ comes my reply. ‘Not far.’

Lifting my elbows up above my head to pull away this stained old shirt, the wetness on my hands runs down my arms, as quick as smelted copper, in between my breasts. Washing it off, crouched at the river’s edge, brown clouds uncurl into the slopping green about my waist.

‘Your father does not know you, leaves you as a baby with your mother and does not come back. Why does he send for you now he is dying?’

Here she turns her head towards me, setting all her beads to chime, and tells me that her father, as a cunning-man, has many hides of land and wealth besides. It may be that her brother, lost to her from birth, is dead; or that he quarrels with the old, sick man. It may be that her father, with no son to share his wealth, is thinking that it should be passed to her.

About us, rain is sizzling on the leaves. We near the river’s edge.

Drying myself with dead leaves, splintering, crackling, stuck in flakes upon the wet and duck-bumped skin. Amidst the black-stained tangle of my rags, a prickling glint of bronze that snags the eye.

Reach down. My fingers, closing on the wooden hand-hold, turn a cold, flat metal tooth against the light.

And wipe it with sharp rushes, blade on blade.

‘Oh no,’ says she. ‘Oh no, don’t. Don’t do that.’

‘What is your name?’

‘Usin! My name is Usin. Oh, let go. Let go and don’t do any more.’

‘What is the old man’s name?’

‘What do you want with him? You cannot make me say!’

The ear. The thumb. Birds scatter up from reeds to sky in flapping, blind alarm.

‘Olun! Olun, that is my father’s name. Oh. Oh, these things you do. Oh, that it comes like this with me.’

‘Hush. That is all. Be quiet now.’

Later, stripping off its clothes and dragging it. The dull, deep splash, and my surprise to find the rain no longer falling. Everything is born to die. There are no spirit-women in the trees. There are no gods below the dirt.

They look so pretty, blue on my brown throat as puddles on a path. Her boots alone are not a fit for me but must be folded in my bag, heavy enough without them. Why, it tips me over on one side to carry it, making my way back through the sting-weeds and the dog-flower up towards the track.

Barefoot, then, south to Bridge-in-Valley. Nothing here to look at but the way before me, at my poor cold feet upon it, such as is my usual view of things. Mud, thick as ox-cream, quickly paints me yellow to my knees.

Wading through ash, among the highland mountains as a child. The grey fields all about, the oxen lumbering breast deep through dust. A darkness is upon the world, where is day come and brings no light. The sun is rare and strange. Vein-coloured skies at close of day. Piercing in blanket cloud, green shafts illuminate the skeletons of trees, spines split and ribs snapped off, bleached, twisting from the powder-dunes.

Our crops are buried. Nothing grows, and pale, slow clouds rise at our every step. Ash streaked in copper hair, the children’s faces white with it, its bitterness in all our food. Our animals go blind, their eyes like blood, the sighted centre part become a dull grey caul, as with a skin of fat upon raw meat.

We leave our homes, our settlements, a great crowd near as many as when people gather in to raise the stones. Beyond the woods, they say, there lies an old straight track to guide us, now there are no