Gyre

Gyre.

As in the gold mosaic of a wall

Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre.

William Butler Yeats 1927

I didn’t mean to hurt you, John, I’m sorry – I’m really sorry…. These words were Stewart’s last, after which voice faded into unheard spaces and stopped less abruptly than his determined heart. Last words uttered as an apology were wasted as they were silence to his hapless trail walking companion. But Stewart struggled against this death as an ending; he tried to push onto something more now his physical life vanished.

Once more he looked off into white-out distances. Squalling winds and sleet. Stewart lost all feeling in his feet now and liquid soaked through to skin. Snow continued falling. He felt an irresistible urge to lie down, if only for a moment. But dared not give way to these impulses. Everything covered with snow, and he could see nothing through thickly falling flakes. Any outline, feature or shape muted, only semi-discernible, were those other walkers, or rocks, or trees? Stewart felt himself slowly slipping down. He knew this storm, being lost, hypothermia all leapt about like ghouls about to take his life. Yet Stewart felt light-headed, any fight against his imminent death gone, and he flushed warm. In these last moments of life he descended into a wave of euphoria.

He saw a warm yellow light burning and smiled to feel a more intense heat. Instead of being on snow-bound, dishevelled mountain Stewart enjoyed being lifted into a semi-tropical place. Even though dawn lightened this winter’s day, morning delightful, nothing like slow creeping grey of typical mountain dawns. No, this new light vested with scents of Sydney suburbia.

A bedroom curtain, yellow again but trickled with blue flowers separated him from a sleeping form Stewart reached out toward.

Inside this intimate room, being a fresh spectre forced into another’s life, a woman’s skin brushed against Stewart’s cheek. Acutely aware of unmanly smooth texture; child-like as if he might breathe a kiss onto his son’s sleeping form. Yet vested with womanly scents, yes here a lover, rather than a child slept.

What would a grown-up Adrian do when news came of his father’s tragic death? Still Steward would not deal with the boy now, grief would no doubt wrap several people into a tangled web. Instead his aura remained urged on by stronger desires.

Softness of the woman’s past tears tangible as she slept. He could discern their tracks across her cheeks. Aware his bristles caused discomfort, he pushed closer. But she continued to sleep.

‘What the hell do you want?’ Were whispered waking words past her lips.

Surprising aggression in her tone, Stewart recoiled. Nothing drew him back, on a storm ridden mountain, nothing more to do, nowhere else to go amongst ice, rocks and wind. Yet Stewart knew he now dwelled beyond these mountains, away from tempest. No, ice, sleet, lost, all gone; this, her room, her house, now his only forum. If she pushed him away where would he go - what now?

A desire for connection, even in the smallest way, pressed, draw his urgency. Stewart wanted to kiss her, push his lips on hers demanding, with almost animal longing. She kissed him, quickly, dismissive with only a fleeting touch of lips yet he tasted all her urges, fears and yearning, as if a whole kaleidoscope of emotions suddenly within his perception.

‘I am sleeping… I can’t deal with this,’ she said.

He heard her voice and wanted so desperately to cajole her into being awake, into being with him. She must help John. Understand now when his heart stopped beating, he thought of them – both. And he didn’t mean death to happen this way.

This sleeping woman experienced an awareness which took several days to identify. At first she dismissed it as a weird, confusing dream. Reliving past erotic experiences, tangles of bodies, gyrating and thrusting. Sure, that’s all it was! She too felt warm, hot and beginning to sweat, despite a cool morning. Explaining away her bewilderment about what might be happening as one of those damn night sweats, again. Except this one was peopled. Pressed too close to her face, rough stubble of several days without shaving. These bristles a legacy of days John and Stewart were lost, rambling through vegetation, unable to sight a track, wandering mountains.

She only thought stubble strewn face, that chin, those scratching spikes were a non-descript night traveller attempting to destroy her last semblance of a morning sleep-in. How she despised waking so early, she longed for winter’s chilled mornings when sunlight arrived late and extend lay in bedtime. Languish in warm quilts and shadowy half-light before her job, kids, breakfast, the cat and so many other things gobbled up day spaces.

Eventually she concluded this dawn’s intrusion was a lover, from long ago, thinking of her and contacting whatever part of her loosened in dreams. She did not want this communication, now happily married, house finally renovated, everything in her history needed to remain securely there!

On that winter’s morning she attempted to break past’s binding threads, in a selfish manner. Instead of being motivated to rekindle former loves, she wanted to lounge in slow return out of her sleep world. Wondering what right did an ‘ex’ have to rub his bristles across her face, why did he need to force a kiss, as if attempting to rob her very breath?

Bugger off!

Stop pestering me like some dog humping my leg; get your rocks off elsewhere. Bad enough trying to be your lover, let alone being visited by you in my dreams and thoughts.

Anyway, their break-up, messy, they’d not parted on good terms. Once through beyond packing up sundries and making a split she fully contemplated his inadequacies; examined reasons for relationship failure then became glaringly obvious. Only further fuelled by an admission she heard later, “…you knew Stewart married that nurse he’d been going out with for two years.” A quick count back verified his duplicity. Why hadn’t anyone told her beforehand, made his cheating obvious? Quicker she got rid of his astral travelling, dream visiting self, the better.

Yes, she was aware of giving him a flippant kiss but only to eradicate any nuisance from her sub consciousness. If you offer them something, they will take tokens and vanish – such were her early morning, still slumbering logic.

Afterwards she felt herself far enough back from this entity to perceive a shroud like whiteness over his facial features. Snow, or swaddling cloth, misty clouds engulfed mountains obliterating any landmarks, wind-borne dust, ice, storms thickened air, making it impenetrable, she wasn’t sure. Forced her to break through in order to start her day. Sort of thing didn’t happen on a bright sub-tropical Sydney morning. An unshakable feeling of some sort of link, connection or binding kept tumbling about in her mind and this would simply not be dispersed. But other than stumble about confused, she could not, did not want to explore these bewildering feelings.

Only weeks later did she learn of his death. Made multiple newspapers in New Zealand. Major angle taken dealt with storm’s ferocity, coupled with surprise and dismay a seasoned trail walker would attempt such a trek in mid-winter. Mystery of his unanswered emails promptly solved when Stewart’s PA rang and informed her… ‘he was lost, both Stewart and John did not survive.’ As well as informing her, ‘live-feed access is currently available to his memorial service.’

Only then she grieved; only then did she know on one morning, a few days ago, Stewart invaded her early morning slumber.

Her tears provoked a whole new emotional mine-field, especially when her husband asked, “what happened. What’s wrong?”

Just how much should she tell him? How on earth would he understand her grief? What words to explain their intensity, deal with a moment of a death seen in a dream, an early morning visitor who still haunted?