As I stood in the stubble field, looking up at a pair of mewling kites, spinning red and gold in the autumn air, I heard a sound and squatted down. The ground was popping and crackling, like the start of a fire. I wondered if husks were cracking open or, as the soil died out, the air popped through a surface bubble of water. Whatever the cause, it was like being in a pan of popcorn. Or a world bursting into flame, ignited by the glow of the spinning kites?
A few days before, I had seen a flash of scarlet in the darkness of a holly bush, the flare of a robin alight in the green.
And a few days later, glimmering gold poplar leaves fluttered in the air like sparks.
There is not much in the way of autumn colour. Instead the world seems dank and drab, yet out burst these flickers and flames.
The light is always here.
In my meeting with Harriet the Druid, she asked what I sought, and I laughed, astonished, at the image that at once arose in my mind - a nugget of gold. It was embarrassing to want so much, to want the secret, the all, the philosopher's stone. And yet, of course, that is what I seek. We talked of dragons and dark caves. The treasures hidden in hollow places. The power of transformation magic, which, it seemed, had not transformed me.
So I went to the poplar, the so-close-to-death poplar. Her trunk is fracturing as the fungi within eats her essence and expands.
She was, like an emaciated queen in her last days, noble, gracious, tolerant and compassionate. Accepting her fate. She asked if I remembered the trees twenty years ago, their delicate, wind-dancing leaves, glittering green-gold. And I do remember. When the poplars cast enough shade to keep the scrubby thorns at bay. When you could easily walk through the copse, on clear rides, under a glistening canopy. I remembered when the trees rose elegantly out of a bloom of white clouds, when the blackthorn blossoms filled the understory.
I asked her about the transformation, the quest for answers, and she said, "You have to burst open to find the gold."
Good writing, Crone x