Toby Rodwell - Issue 37

My name is Toby, and I am an aspiring novelist, poet, photographer, and experimental filmmaker, recently graduated from university. Living in a remote village in the Cotswolds, Oxfordshire, and regularly spending time visiting the sea, much of my work is inspired by the enchanting power of nature, whilst exploring modern interpretations of folklore and mythology. I seek to encourage audiences to imagine our current world as one brimming with magic and potential magic. For instance, what is a Banshee if she were invented in the city? Is she still a weeping woman in a white dress, or is she instead a disembodied voice, whispering beneath the hubbub, signalling the forthcoming collapse of society, to the few who may hear her - and never unhear her? 

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In Amber

By chance, in my most idle of recollections, I stumbled upon what I deem to be the purest day of my heart. Though in truth it was not a day at all, but only a second or two. I was at first astonished, and a little ashamed, to see that it was many years ago. I was a fumbling little child of twelve. And yet here, my mind has insisted, was the singular opus of my soul.

There he lay in the crevice of my mind’s eye. A boy in loose white linen draped on soft milky skin, with long frolics of amber hair playing in the evening grass, resting like a feather upon the earth. His pearly, pale blue eyes mirrored the fading sky. He kept them wide open for clouds to be caught and reconfigured. At first, they were puffs of smoke, and then, like a magic trick, they revealed themselves to be the impossibly hidden forms of faces and things that had once been familiar. 

This purest moment was to be kept entirely in this enclosed meadow of which I had ever since forgotten. The meadow was flanked by flickering trees, and among them in blended form, there stood a single protruding viaduct tower. The tower was abandoned and shrouded by translucent foliage that, if caught by the right ray of sunlight, resembled an engulfing amber that appeared to keep the ancient pillar perfectly preserved.

The structure had, like Hercules, once held up the blood of the world. Vessels of coal, and such crude things. But then time had found it to be but a tedium, quietly dismissing its service and leaving it to hold up only the empty air. Hidden beneath a shield of shrubbery, it seemed embarrassed to be found in such an outdated gesture. And yet its strength had never left it. Its grip had never loosened. It crouched and clenched its carven fingers, clutching defiantly onto the horizon. 

But unlike the tower, crucified in its eternal pose, the whole world beside was flummoxed with hues in flux and shades of seasons past like a river of flowing paint, that perfumed my boyish senses with sudden pangs of forgotten prayers.

My heart lay almost still, and my eyes rested upon the tower among the trees, without any intent. It was not at all conscious. I had run here with an uncertain frame of mind - a casual homebound strop, I must suppose. I certainly had not decided upon this destination. And yet, the currents of the woodland haze had held my hand like a hushed lover. I was stewarded forth by glitters of golden light that shoaled among the trees. I saw that the tree-trunks cried little tears of amber sap over old carvings, etched by couples who had long since departed. I felt as though I had trespassed into a hidden graveyard.

A powerful petrichor swallowed the enclosure like a mist. Dangling drops of rain from a long-gone storm still trembled upon the grassy floor. Old and entrancing, I had stumbled upon this place barely lucid, and in my dreamy stupor, I had never so much as registered where exactly I was. Hence, for so long, it had never re-emerged in my memory. Indeed, why it has revealed itself to me now is something I cannot yet answer.

I had followed my feet to the meadow and flopped upon the grass in a daze. My head, in a cradled swoon, wobbled my eyes over towards the tower idly and unconsciously. But there, upon that tower in amber, my eyes opened and retained their gaze. And to that, and in how my senses drew me so instinctively to this place, I credit, if I can credit nothing else, this one blessing to me.

As I gazed out glassily, the skyline blushed and drew a pinkish haze that cast itself over the lonely pillar. Suddenly, all at once - it was not a daydream, it was not a desire, but suddenly all the same - I saw a hundred equal pillars pummel up out from the treeline. But no, they were in fact a part of the treeline, carrying lush vines and candled by trickling, vanishing willow wisps. These towers had many windows, and inside, there were many rooms lit up only by the fading sunlight. The pillars had all at once become a flanking castle that rose all around me, conceived not out of but from within the woodland womb. 

And through the windows of this elvish castle, there were floating faces. They were the paper-white, myriad faces of all those who had long since been lost to the earth. Inside the fortress, they were merry, and they carried easy smiles. They seemed to play out their entire domestic lives in a single, fluid dance. They picked things up and put them down with the same rhythmic chaos as a branch shaking in the wind. They fiddled idly with flutes and other instruments that were at once mundane and all the same perfectly enchanting. They birthed a strange kind of music I could not yet quite hear but instead saw as a shimmering pastel glint that washed over the entire scene. 

Years seemed to pass inside these windows, as a gentle breeze swept over the surrounding trees, cleaning out their old and dusty secrets. 

I heard a heavy creak of shifting wood. Captivated, I did not move an inch. From a hidden doorway, there came, without any fan-fair, a comically eclectic conga-line of friends, family, loved ones, and all those I had only known through letters or calls as a boy. They were exactly as I had pictured them. Even the ones I saw just the day before, looked truer to themselves than they ever had, or ever would again. Their arms were entwined, and they wore almost holographic, vaporous robes, with flowers etched upon them. They walked, or perhaps floated, out to me, and invited me upon a single trek through the woodland path. They smiled and spoke of murky memories that could only be recalled upon dreaming. They sang out sonnets and re-enacted entire sequences of their secret lives. They danced and paraded around me in this enclosed meadow. 

I did not laugh, I did not cry, I did not feel happy or sad. I merely observed and fixated with my wide-open eyes. I kept my gaze neutrally upon them to let them continue their gaiety, for I felt that if I looked away, or even if I so much as squinted, that the whole scene would fade to grey. There was no intention to the vision I had thus created; no feeling at all save for that of the purest physical sensation, as if the scene had been woven into the tapestry of my mind by the gentle grass beside my ears.

All the same, I clung to it, for I saw even then that in this one spectacular moment, I had through pure vision created a perfect world, one that did not deny but embraced the reality and recollection of things tricky and tough. For indeed, many of the poems I then received were troubled or sad. I saw scars upon those young and old women and men that I might never think to notice again. And yet they wielded these scars openly, and poured out their hearts honestly, and indeed happily, with an outcry of celebration that juxtaposed the anguish of their allegories. But in this moment, such a contradiction was not peculiar. 

I watched with my eyes steady and unblinking, stinging but secretly star-struck, trying to stay detached. For I had seen that creation alone, in all its ugliness, was a beauty so complete that it was nothing short of a duty to maintain.

But then, an easy, casual moment later, the swaying bodies began to seep back into the emerald bushes and fade away entirely, back into the invisible footprints of lost and lonely knaves of centuries past. They carried with them only the wafting scents of idle incense and shared fruit from thousand-year-old picnics. Their forms at once arose and receded like a tidal wave, both amidst and apart from the membrane of itself. The vanishers were at once sharp, protruding shapes, and a singular, endless puddle of formless sea.

I gawked after them, and I almost sat up and searched for them, crying out name after name. But it was already too late. The sea of leaves retracted, and the wind blew forth again, making tiny trickles of grass slither around my cheeks. It reminded me then and now of the weeds of intrusive Self that snare and snake among all pure and pretty thought. For all you may cut them or pull them free, their roots shall always remain deep within your unavoidably murky and mud-coated mind. And yet, in this one pure-hearted day, the weeds were absent, just for a second or two, running off to tangle away in the willows somewhere. And here upon this chance, I had slipped away, for this single dwindling moment.

But this day was not over, for my eyes rolled back up to that lonely old tower in amber, a ruin once more. And the wise old tower told upon its own bricked-up body, with tattoo-like bruises that could be read like braille, the tale that was not as old as time but time itself. In its frozen stance, the tower was eternally upon its final hour. Baked in the last blemish of sunset, at once the triumph and the tragedy of its being.

I beheld the tower. I wished for something else. Another trickle of ghosts. I was fully conscious this time. But this time, there was nothing. My heart sank. I despised my greed and shut my eyes.

But then there came, gently at first, but with growing thunder, a volley of chimes that echoed almighty from the far-off village church. They clanged and cluttered across the sky. They buoyed through the bursting clouds like shapely vessels of sound. Such an anachronism was seemingly meant only for me, out there alone in the empty meadow. The one boy away from ticking clocks and too enclosed to know the horizon. It was a holy bestow from the past that reverberated through the clouds. And as I opened my eyes, I saw that these chimes carried form and colour; they were protruding pulses that collected the last of the pastel light. They were a train of eight rattling carriages that skimmed the top of the tower. They were a fishing net that collected the faces and things I thought I had seen, snatching them like tadpoles from the cloudy air. 

The chimes rippled out across the milky sky with treasures in hand, soon to be submerged in the starry waters. And as they fell so softly upwards, I knew in that one moment what these church chimes were.

Those pink balls of sound were the true hand of whom I only knew as God. His hand, swooping down with eight echoing fingers to retrieve his newborn angels that wafted amongst the edge of the sky. I beheld this miracle without revelation, but only the quiet understanding of a child. To witness a deity without religion, carrying no creed at all. 

And then, suddenly, like the tower that stood beside me, time found me tedious. There was no tick of some hovering ethereal clock. No jolt, no jostle. Just a slow dissolving. A gentle, irresistible drifting back into reality. It is not that I let go of this vision. It merely let go of me, for it was merely passing by. I was both its passenger and its carrier, yet only another vessel. In one simple moment, I was free from the ticks of time and the weeds of worry. In a crystal clearing, full of autonomous forms, untainted by mental impulse. Then, in just another simple moment, the world wormed its way back into me. This time, I knew it was over.

And as sure as I could ever be, I am sure now that thus concluded the greatest moment of my being. The purest day of my heart. Peaked so early, faded so fast. Was it the weakness of my spirit that let me be left so soon? Can other men and boys hold that hand for moments more, or whole days at a time? Or is God but a glance, a single second in every person’s life? To be christened and named thereafter, fought for or forgotten in equal chance? 

But on this, I never pondered, for by then the moment had truly passed. It was eight o’clock and nightfall, and I thought I had things to do. I stood up and wandered off, and to the lone tower in fading amber, I do not think I even said goodbye.

The Yellow Line

She did not cross the yellow line. She ran suddenly, and without warning, away from her distracted mother. She chased after her bouncing ball that she had dropped, as it rolled eagerly away from her on the platform. She chased after it in the single-minded way that young children do. But the sudden summer rain had created puddles and slippage, and the poor unprepared girl was only wearing flip-flops.

She ran, and she slipped, arching forward over a craterous puddle. She could have fallen any which way on such flat ground, but she fell and rolled to her right as the ball began to roll away to her left. She fell, and she rolled, and she did not even let out much of a sound because to a brave girl of four, a little slip is no big event, especially in the pouring rain.

She rolled, and then she did cross the yellow line, and then she sank down out of sight, down into the depths, down and down in a momentary cartwheel, down. She smacked and shattered herself on the wet metal rail tracks below. She still made no sound, for before she could yelp, her head was cracked open like an easter egg and the air inside of her was swiftly stolen. There was only a light thwump, which was all but drowned out by the rising, cacophonic drumming of the oncoming train. 

She was motionless on the tracks.

He was the first to see her. He did not see her fall, but he saw her on the tracks. He could have cried out. He could have said “Oh my God! There’s a girl on the tracks!” but he knew what that meant. Only in that one moment, he knew. It could have meant that anyone else could have noticed just one crucial second sooner. Could have sprang down and carried the girl out in a triumphant freeze-frame of glory. Could have saved her. But it also could have meant that later they would ask why he, who saw first, the only one who saw in time, was not the one to spring down and save her. Was not the one, as a lonely, able-bodied man of forty, to risk trading his life for hers.

And at first, he did move. His body lurched forward on its axis, spasmed; his spirit lashing out against the constraints of his mind. An epic duel of instincts. An entire war in a half-second. His fingers twitched, his knees jerked, he shivered as if trying to shake a demon. The war became a genocide. That was the best of him. 

His bones seized up and locked ferociously into place. Looming over her, far, far above in the grey rain-soaked heavens of the neon-lit platform, he stood with gaping, grievous face, and he resembled a gargoyle, turned to stone.

Someone will get her, he thought. Her mother, a staff-member, someone will leap down and get her!

He looked to the horizon. Blistering through the morning fog was a churning, glittering array of lights that rattled and ran forth with giddy speed. With them came a growing, growling, monstrous roar.

Time was gurgling in a whirlpool, slow and slow until it is suddenly gone. Jumping down was surely suicide. I don’t want to die, he thought, and he felt this thought rumble and reverberate, sinking down low and horrible in the deepest chasm of his stomach. Such simple logic rapidly rippled into repulsive self-loathing.

A millisecond. 

He glanced down; he glanced up again. 

Another millisecond. 

That rippling repulsion became a shrieking ocean in his bowels. 

He glanced away again, he glanced back again. 

He snuck a glance at the train, and he almost screamed. No, wait, it’s slower than I thought! There is time!

But that glance had been the moment.

That hesitation. That calculation. That first freezing fear. That half-empty bundle of milliseconds. Oh God, if they could have all known just how much he wanted, he really wanted in that final moment, to leap down there and save her, to die for her! He would do it! He would die for her!

Another millisecond.

There was a window, and it slammed shut.

Her mother cried out. Not terrified, just alarmed. She cried out her daughter’s name. Why, the train was here, and her silly little child has run off somewhere! It happens to every parent at one point or another. People looked up from their phones. They looked around, for a few short atrocious eons, as raindrops hung in the air. They did not see. They could have looked down, but something inside them made them not want to look down. Not consider that possibility. Not consider that fact. And in another millisecond, he almost smiled in cathartic glee. Why, they are all as guilty as me!

But the mother cried out again.

Her voice rattled. He shivered. He did not shake the demon off. His open lips were sealed shut. He was frozen.

Yes, he was frozen, and it’s not my fault! Can’t they see? I’m frozen! Why is nobody else crying out, diving down, saving the poor, sweet, crumpled, unconscious girl?! But it was he who saw first. And he who saw now, truly too late now, as through the sifting mist, hungry eyes blinked and bounced and seemed to dance on strange ice in the humid air, as the train curved like a shuddering python around the final bend of track. There came a wrathful atonal wail, a distorted metallic screech through the fog, a charge of splintering, sparking metal, like cannon-fire, like a charge of cavalry, like a million horses roaring and rampaging into view with the stench of roasting iron.

This isn’t happening, he thought. Someone will get her, yes, someone will. Even if they die, the child will be flung out, out of the way. She will get up, and she will run after her ball, and she will run out of the way. The train will stop. It will leap off its tracks like a flying fish, and it will leap out of the way!

But she was not out of the way. The tracks heated up to a scorching frenzy, and her sodden face started to melt with the imprint of a bulky school ruler, and still, she did not get up. She did not get up, and she did not get out of the way.

He thawed out slowly, even as his blood ran deathly cold. He could move again, and he twitched, and he shook in short, microscopic bursts of physical pain. He did a constipated, convulsive tap-dance. His body was electric, and his stabbing hairs were screaming. But his lips were still sealed, even as an almighty chorus erupted with maniacal terror all around him.

He looked down. He had not seen. They had seen before him. Yes. That is what it will look like. Like a boy who thinks he will be invisible if he just squeezes his eyes shut hard enough. I’m not here. I wasn’t here. I’m here now, but I wasn’t here. I’m here, but too late. Too late. It was too late.

He looked achingly down, and he saw - as the crowd wriggled and writhed around like tangles of seaweed being battered by a sudden wave - that someone had kicked the little bouncy ball. It crossed the yellow line. It dribbled down into the abyss.

It never reached the tracks. He looked down and focused on the gentle ripples of rain in the soft, beautiful puddle before his feet. The gentle ripples that tenderly reminded him of his home by the lake. The gentle ripples that mercifully obscured his looming reflection.

There was not that much blood. Just a light drizzle that spat across his face and was quickly washed away by the rain.