A Provincial Death by Eoghan Smith

—one day, one day, one gloaming, one night—

—one gloaming, one night, a glow—

—a shade, a glow—

—one day—

                                                                        —one day a quiver in the dense nothing, one day a tremor in the deep emptiness, one day an imbalance between fall and escape, one day a strain in the tidal lock, one day a shrink of the in-between, one day the tilt towards the fall, one day the violation of celestial law, one day the unmooring of the lunar body, one day the release from captured rotation, one day the inching before the gathering pace, one day the gathering of the gathering pace, one day the day of the fall towards earth, one day the shadow on the stone, one day the shadow on the water, one day the waning of the light, one day the shading of the dirt, one day the trembling of the core, one day the shaking of the ellipsoid, one day the dancing of the Sun, one gloaming one day of the gloaming day, one day the day of the day of night, one day the night of the last horizon, one day the rising of the wind, one day the whipping of the tempest-dust, one day the pressure-swell of blood—of avian blood—of rodent blood, one day the bubbling in the tubes, one day the warming of the ectotherms, one day the swarming of the flies, one day the maddening of the bees, one day the hurtling through the void, one day the riot of radiant plasma, one day the quaking of underwater shelves, one day the upsurge of the seafloor, one day the heaving of Atlantic waves—the moonfervid waves—the archspasming waves, one day the flooding of the flats and bogs, one day the terminus of the tides, one day the quailing of the birds, one day the choking of the fish, one day the seething of the mammals, one day the pitching of the ants, one day the crackling of cranefly wings, one day the streaming of the air, one day the sob of spider-wilt, one day the descent of the browning worm—of hot termites—of blackening cicadas, one day the streaking across the sky, one day the wrench of spheroid to spheroid, one day—

                  One day the day of the deathly
one day the throughplunge of the Huygens peak,
one day the unstoppable incandescent apices,
one day the crash into the earth
one day the convulsion of the crash,
one day the igniting of the forests,
one day the cleaving of the hills,
one day the clouds of regolith,
one day the c=upthrust of ancient rock,
one day the shoot and fall of crystal, and the shot and fall
of glassy shards, and the splintering of the glassy
shards,
one day the blinding of the reptiles
one day the incineration of the moths,
one day the extinction of the taxonomies,
one day the hurling of unmortared rocks,
one day the soil firebombed with molten bones—
—with molten bones—
—with fiery bones—
one day the razing of the ruins,
one day the uproot of the relics,
one day the excavation of the fossils—

—one day the Sea of Showers vaporize the Sea of Atlantis, the Sea of Cold parch the Hibernian Sea, the Lake of Death devour the Lake of Garman, the Marsh of Decay waste the coastal slobs

one day through water and one day through fire—
—one gloaming—
—a shade—
—one night—
—one day—

*                *                *

—waves, pulled in by the Moon, were more furious on the night before the day of the last feeding. Above and below the tumult, transformations of life and death were taking place. Beneath a rock at the rim of the treacherous passage, inside fastholds of dabberlock leaves, dark sexes borne on the stipe of olive-yellow and yellow-brown fronds, a mature copepod, trailing egg strings of larvae behind her that if she had lived would have hatched and swum off into the vast blue, hooked onto and then tunnelled deep into the left eye of a European sprat in her fifth and final season. In that black jelly a life-cycle was nearing completion, and in that black jelly this eye-maggot of Sprattus sprattus would die. The next morning, the day the sprat finally lost sight of the portside of her world, the water was calmer and the seafishing was good. Gulls of all kinds circled labile forms below. Far from the rock, many trawlers were faring for rich hunting grounds, some southwards across the Celtic Sea towards the pink granite coast of Brittany, others westerly to the continental margin to fish the failed rifts of the Goban Spur or the Porcupine Bank. The fisherman, by and large, were happy. There would be ling and mackerel and monkfish, there would be tuna and nephrops. Passed-down songs rang out across the glittering sea. It was, everyone agreed, going to be a pleasant day with many possibilities. Those who had been left behind, whether late, unwanted or forgotten about, wandered down to the quayside to watch their boats depart. The prevailing southeast wind had decreased to barely one metre per second and whatever strands of clouds there were changed gradually. Above the surface, the rock glinted with the gentle interplay of wavesplash and sunlight and crystal. A hovering shadow was a rippling ovoid, stretching and shrinking with each roll of water, and then hopping clumsily down and further down the ridges of the rock until its beak could penetrate the surface, the shadow’s caster, a common auk, an Atlantic puffin, who will in the end kill the sprat and with it her parasite, cocked her head and peered into the adumbral seaweed. In the same instant the copepod dug deeper and found her final home, the sprat thrashed in a spasm of irritation, and the puffin, alert to the commotion, snatched both fish and maggot out of the deep, flashing the distinctive red and black beak so adored by wildlife photographers and childlike people, tucking in her little orange triangles as  she flapped into the air, lifting into the swirl in spite of the exhaustion from the long migration across the ocean that had made her almost too tired to breed, almost but not quite, almost too tired to hunt, almost but not quite, for she had broken from the island colony in search of a beakful of sandeel, and becoming disorientated had landed on this outcrop, one supposes two to three kilometres from the shore, or maybe less, or maybe more, and found only instead this single sprat to offer her single puffling—if he himself has not yet been eaten by rats—his last meal before, starving hungry, he will bobble out of the burrow through the sea pinks and wild turnip yellows and fading blue understories of bluebells towards the cliffs and, fluttering over the edge under cover of night, take his first journey out to sea. His last meal before his flight will be this parasite-maddened sprat, who is now gasping in the fresh air and, it might be said, actively dying, and who with her one functioning, seaward-facing eye, if she had the eyeshot to see the things her captor could see, if she, if she—what is that object, what is that thing, is that what I think it looks like, yes, I think it is, the same unmistakable form, the same unmistakable anatomy, it is a Homo sapiens clinging to the rock below, face down, whether expending or conserving energy it is hard to tell at this remove, is that a foot I can see jerking, it is hard to tell, but it is certainly a human being—if she shared the same sensory capacities, vital organs, depth perception, cognitive abilities, the same aptitude for abstract ideas and beliefs, the same facility for language, the same evolved gift for consilience as that human being with the jerky foot clinging to the rock below, mind you don’t slip now, all this and so much more, she would process the information that as the puffin ascends and now ellipses the rock the human being below appears smaller but no less real, no less animated, no less existent, no less embodied and ensouled, no less conscious and emotional, no less deserving of empathy for the common fragility and finitude of life, and so no less meaningful or meaningless, you are invited to take your pick, I am not theological about it frankly, I am willing to listen to your considered options, and—wriggling her head sideways in the mouth of the puffin—with her one good eye she would see beyond the giant tower of that white-coated lighthouse to those fishing boats that appear to be tugged by an invisible chord towards those distant points where sea and horizon meet, where it is all one indistinguishable, heartbreaking gossamer of bluish white, but there somewhere Wales, there somewhere England, there somewhere France, and there somewhere Spain, and—wriggling to face upwards, this effort is draining, there is not much puff left in her, the raspy spines on the bird’s palate are gouging her—train her one good eye on the immeasurable blackness beyond the nightblue exosphere, and catch in the corner of that one good eye before her final, desperate gulp the daylight wisp of that alien Moon, hauling the tide towards the unseeable shore below, waves bringing waves of lives and deaths, and with one final flip, one final heave, one final shudder of instinct, with the growing dread that she will never see her watery home again, or never again experience this onliest, polychromatic world, or witness again that faint, hypnotic Moon, with the creeping horror of perishing in the mouth of the puffin, of losing oneself forever to death, if a sprat could feel terrible comedy of such things, fathom the shallow and scale of this joke that has the power to stop time from unfolding, and with everything paused in air, wings unwinged, like a painted scene of impulses in action, movement trapped in inks and oils, life poised on the edge of life, seize her last opportunity as the bird, shuddering a feather, articulates a cramping jaw muscle, and in that instance of change, this writhing sprat will free herself from the beak, whatever the injury, whatever the chances of survival, and drop out of the sky, and plunge towards the rock, a jewel in the sunlight sparkling, a lone silver beauty tumbling, and falling—

*                *                *

—close your eyes, and fall into sleep, fall into water, fall into fire, fall one night, fall one day, one gloaming, one glow, one night, one day—

*                *                *

*                *                *

—and falling—

*                *                *

—and if anyone cared to look, they would see his face glued tight to the rock, snicked fingernails, scraped knees, purpling elbows. He is aching all over. He is experiencing some localised pain. Somewhere he has lost a tooth, his left central incisor, that was a good tooth, perhaps his best one, you don’t always get many good teeth in life, you have to have the right genes, begotten, as they used to say, by the right ancestors, the odds aren’t always favourable, somewhere along the line there is always a dud to whom some defect or other can be attributed, such as those worrisome moles from his dead mother or these pointy ears from his paternal grandfather, though the exact origin of his red hair was and remains a mystery, neither of his parents could explain it, never really tried, just exchanged a wink and shrugged their shoulders, and there is also this pain in his right foot, specifically in the centre of the heel, where something he trod on somewhere must have gone clean through the sole of his shoe just a few hours ago. He may come to regret the missing tooth later, but all things considered, it could be worse, it could be better, all things considered, including the sore foot, which admittedly is now throbbing. He cannot quite remember how he got to be on the rock, perhaps there was a boat, there must have been a boat, and yet he cannot remember a boat. He has no idea of how to get off the rock, though he knows, if he can be said to know anything, questions abound, that he cannot stay there forever. He tries to recall being on a boat, for how could there not have been a boat, but instead of remembering a boat, or at least the memory of being on the water, all he can think of is land, some mental imprint of moving between planted rows of spruce trees is fizzing in his synapses, and an image now of picking a path through a forest floor of stiff bluishgreen needles is manifesting itself. Between the boles, the moonlight is brilliant. In his mind it all appears brighter than the daylight is now, long silver spears are beaming down through the branches of rows and rows of spruce trees, slicing through the darkness, the pine needles are metal pins glinting in a fire. Among these artificial corridors it was silent and sterile and symmetrical, nothing moved, nothing breathed, it was a deadzone, yes, as if icy flames had long ago engulfed the trees, he remembers more clearly now the silence and sterility and symmetry, and the chill of the gloom, perhaps there was fog, no, there was no fog, it was a clear night, he neither heard nor saw animals, just pine weevils chewing on the bark. That was hours ago and though his sleep has been broken for the best or should I say worst part of a decade, he feels in his body that he got no rest. Those weevils looked menacing, something to keep a wary eye on and your distance from, so when he was tired of walking he cushioned the cleft of his back against a pile of stones in the middle of four evenly-spaced trunks and read the internet on his phone until the sky washed through from pewter to coral. This sunrise, he thought, at this time of year, is beautiful, I am glad to have seen it. I haven’t seen a sunrise like that one in a long time. I may never see another like it. It could be worse, a lot worse. You’re still alive aren’t you? What more could you ask for? He feels easeful making such prosaic utterances, feels reassured. Sitting on the soft forest floor all night would make one’s bum a little damp, and that is what happened, but there was nothing new there, it had a tendency to dampen ever since he was a boy, it had exasperated his mother, and that is not to mention either the periodic piles he has suffered as a man, though thankfully they are nothing to do with his mother, not directly anyway, and she was dead before the first flare up, he even welcomed the familiarity of a damp bum in this strange dead forest, a little discomfort would help to keep him awake, remind him who he was, keep him alive. He tried to maximise the battery on his phone by only checking his single social media profile and selecting the global politics articles he was especially interested in though he knew there would be no hope, for the phone I mean but maybe also the politics, he had no notifications either, and in the end the gadget started flashing its programmed warnings of imminent expiration—20%, 10%, 5%—and each new warning came impatiently quicker than the previous, with a certain automated glee he thought, before it farted out a slow, deflating hum and became one entire, unresponsive, useless, black rectangle. He pressed the buttons over and over to try and revive the phone, but of course it didn’t work, he knew it wouldn’t, he just pressed the buttons out of some affectation, some semblance of defiance, some proof of agency. He sat there, watching for weevils, staying vigilant, thinking things. And after a while spending his time in this way, he inclined his head towards the sky and noticed that the light was beginning to change and soon the morning sky blushed rose in the belt of Venus. He had lived through the night. Yes, that sunrise was beautiful, he could direct his full attention to it now that his phone was dead, such common beauty that often goes unremarked, those shades, this time of year, and just look at that magnificent arch of ballet slipper pink over the dark green roof of the dead forest. Maybe he had stamped on the phone then, in the prospering dawn, maybe it was then, when the sun had begun to rise, out of some sense of injustice, that he had trod on the device and some piece of plastic or metal had gone through the sole of the shoe. Or maybe the pain in his foot had nothing to do with the phone and he had simply stepped on a thorn or some other sharp thing somewhere. Maybe. The weevils, filthy little bastards, did they have something to do with the pain in his foot? Maybe. But maybe nothing—

*                *                *

—clarity, I feel, will be important—

*                *                *