Stagtine, 29. Summer Drumlins & Nancy

Section 3, Chapter 1 from my latest book, Stagtine

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Stagtine, 28. Entangled

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Summer Drumlins and Nancy

Nelly, daughter of Nancy, was first born after the cantrefs of cattle consolidated. At the time of late spring in a valley under shadow, she spoke and her words created new worlds.

A strange perfume carpeted the soon summer meadow and an eastern breeze lifted flower petals like a child lifts rocks.

Little, white wings fluttered in little tornados across the waving sea and settled, together, like children, at the base of a dying black walnut. In loving memory, they wrote in colors that gently worked to cover the black soil under the dying, black giant. The walnut’s juglone was now silent, the chemical its roots release to eradicate what grows around it is no longer needed when she stops growing, when she has nothing left to say.

Starlight enlivens from the outer records of heaven the sleeping hills in glancing, tangled shadows but sunlight, close and personal, calling us by name, brightens in shape shifting, sinewy light. Life settled like the petals of spring or the pebbles of old, forgotten brooks under this warm light and the step-motion strides of Virginia’s hot and humid summer burst with activity.

What was once a land replete with empty stillness became an earthen pregnancy of opportunity with golden pendants of beech, a season or two old, flickering in the speckled light of the new canopy and a light wind rustling upwards, filling the void. All conjoined in this land of new life.

It was a bright, ambrosial May morning, when wildflowers manifest as aging daffodils and dandelions and covered the winter-torn drumlins of meadows and dreaming forests with the first colors of summer. Amber hued the day. A speckled breeze hewed the hills.

A calf was born. But all was not well.

. . .

My hand closed around the tab of my boot. Elowyn, our oldest daughter, stumbled and fell forward into a crawl and Morgan dropped in behind us. The room was big enough for one and we struggled with three.

“Your daughter is ready for work.”