Read The Boat in the Evening for Free Online

are they going to do now?
    Having shown me what wings and air are, they stand in silent inspection. I can hold out no longer; I must do something, no matter what.
    *
    And yet I am still wishing, Stay! as I know that this must come to an end.
    What am I thinking of? Haven’t I been able to share in far more than I could ever have imagined?
    But I can see that we are no longer speaking to each other in any way. They are merely inspecting me with their round bird eyes. Mine are beginning to swim. I cannot hold out. Something must be done at once. There is a long crane’s foot within an arm’s length—they must have edged even closer—and I shoot up out of the moss, becoming more than two eyes, throw out an arm and seize the hard, tall stalk of a leg—and at last I shriek my own shriek at this unyielding enigma.
    The shriek must have been lying in my throat all the time; it came of itself.
    The effect follows like lightning.
    The bird starts on being seized by the leg, and shrieks a reply to my shriek before it has died away—a horrible sound. Like lightning it strikes at me with its giant beak, slashing a strip of fire down my face in its haste.
    I lie prone, expecting to be slashed again. The bird does not do it. It makes its departing leap, easily jerking itself away from my half-hearted grip, becomes airborne, fans out all of that sweeping freedom and sails in low flight down to the dancers. Its companion leaps and takes off just as quickly.
    The dancing cranes stop instantly on hearing the shriek. All of them take to the air. The sky is a dark seething of crane wings. Soon the whole flock is high in the sky, heading towards another familiar place, another marsh. Until their own has been cleansed.
    *
    For a while we were moving towards each other in some strange channel.
    The blood from the gash in my face trickles down on to my jacket. The blood in my veins prickles and tingles like ants in my numbed body. Unsteadily I lean over a puddle to wash. Elsewhere a particle of shame is smarting because of my behaviour towards those shy creatures.

3
    Spring in Winter
    The air was full of wet snowflakes, but that didn’t matter. Everything was just as it should be; it was a beautiful evening.
    A cluster of houses stood there, not large enough to be called a town. The houses had been laid out one by one, without any overall plan, and for this reason there were many unexpected alleys and comers.
    Over this a snowstorm was sweeping. At the narrow comers the mild snowfall met the strong light from the outdoor lamps, and seemed to turn it whiter than white.
    And the whiteness poured down into the comers incessantly. The snow near the lamps was trackless. People were indoors.
    *
    But not all of them. Out of doors someone was happy on account of the beautiful evening. A short girl was standing close to the wall in the shadow. Or half-shadow, for the mingled snow and lamplight were so strong that the shadows were weakened.
    The girl must have been standing there for quite a while; her footprints had been wiped out. She might have tumbled straight out of the night sky.
    The girl stood motionless. You could almost believe she was here simply to be snowed under in this lonely place—but she must have had other reasons for coming to stand here glittering.
    Snowed under? No, I can’t get snowed under, she thought with a bubble of joy. That dark, hard man of iron over there on his block of stone—he can be snowed under, he probably will be snowed under. I can only get warmer and warmer.
    The snow won’t settle on me, she thought, but if it does, that’s all right.
    In the meantime the wet flakes fell thickly and heavily on to her shoulders and on to the boyish cap she was wearing on the back of her head, and wherever it found the slightest basis for piling itself up. She already had small drifts of it on her here and there.
    Of course the snow is settling on me, she thought when she noticed this.