The Vorrh

from him, his fingers just touching her hips as she grabbed her coat and prepared to leave. He wanted to say something warm and appreciative, but did not have the language. Beneath his heart, there was a subtle and churning bonding, and he wanted to be able to stroke and soothe her with its gentle fire. She left him, unrelieved of his thoughts, and hurried downstairs to the bathroom on the second floor, where she had prepared a douche of alkaline salts.
    * * *

    I feel as if I have been asleep, asleep too long. My dreams, if they are dreams, are always in advance of my sleep, awaiting me to continue their tale to unwind their continuity. In daylight, they ache continuously. I have become bewildered by their closeness and my distance. I have been swallowed to this spot of land, the previous arrows stitching the way to here. I cannot see the bow, which must have fallen beneath me, lying somewhere in this place of contradiction, where it smells of snow and glows humid. My feet had held the ground before, but now I am unattached, and the roots and sinews of my pain nag at my hope in dopey, vague wafts. I am being erased by familiarity, the sense of knowing this journey from before. The arrow’s path has made me as vacant as the half-light landscape around me.
    There she moves; there in the scrub grass, wire and rotted paper, she turns towards my hand again. I have been too slow on this journey, the air and sky has seduced me. No blood has been shed, and history cannot move without this. I have to cut the light with blood, let her exhale and twist in my hand. Tonight, I will divide a life and paint the future road glorious. Enough of these shallows: the cities lie on the other side of the great forest, and I will burn my way towards them. She is in my hand, demanding arrows and distance.
    I loosen the first blue arrow into the evening, towards the first star, which has risen over the lip of the world and would set amongst the far-off trees. The arrow I release stole its colour from the
Bunga telang
, which grew at the edge of our garden. Its small, vivid flowers give it a female instinct that brushes the curve of the day, telling me to stop at this place and use the last moment of its light to set my direction for tomorrow. I do this as the breeze freshens, and its coolness reminds me of sleep, like a whistle towards an impatient story.
    * * *

    With a fine sable brush, he corrected the moment of death, magnified the tiny errors and removed them. After his focused labours, the crashing horse would be perfect.
    Horses had guided his life and crippled his journey. He had agreed to create the last set of images to kill the horse. When his brain was on fire, all those years ago, after the stagecoach had overturned and the solid rock that collided with his skull had rearranged his head, he saw them all the time, galloping in headaches, their iron hooves sparking the dendrite fuse-wire. He saw them cantering, all turning to white, eyes rolling savage. He heard them walking, their echo mocking the vacant night streets below his hospital bed. They paced his beginning and his demise with an equal, measured step. He had been empty before the accident, a man filled with vapour, aimless and devout, seeking a place in the world where he might gain weight and merit. When the speeding stagecoach had tripped on the unseen root, it had spun into the air and splintered, mangling and spilling all the lives it carried. He alone survived, tossed amongst the wrenched luggage and the broken, kicking mustangs. He had cut himself out of the canvas, a petticoat staunching his head, blood swooning clear of the hooves that were now running against the sky, trying to gain purchase on the dying clouds.
    The court had awarded him funds for a new beginning. On some of the papers, he altered his name again, to match the glitches and eruptions in his new brain. He was topping up with existence, and it pleased him. By the time he saw the doctor in England, he was becoming known. Only the best was good enough for this rising stalwart of art and science.
    Their first consultation was in the hospital by the river, at London Bridge. He was early for the appointment; this was something that happened constantly. He deplored tardiness and overcompensated for it in every aspect of his life. He would rehearse the most trivial of deeds: framing the minor in advance of its time; having keys in his hands four streets away from home; talking under his breath to have a