At
the bottom of our garden lies a pond, ringed by gnarled and ugly
trees, and at the bottom of the pond lies a cottage. The waters swirl
around the crumbling stones in little spirals, foaming over the
ruined chimney as if reluctant to press in too close. In the troubled
mirror of this pond, the cottage stands tangled in the reflection of
the trees, netted in their twisted branches as if it had been lodged
there by an unnatural gust of wind.
How
the cottage came to reside under the waters of our pond remains a
mystery. Is there any truth in the assertion that a witch caused it
to subside by slow degrees for arcane and unfathomable reasons? And
if so, who was this witch? There are no records to shed any light on
the matter; there is only conjecture and speculation. I, for one,
prefer this ingenuous explanation to those suggested by the more
prosaic members of our community. I refuse to accept that it was
built there, in its present location, as some sort of liquid joke.
Not
that this would have presented any problems to the patient trickster.
The pond could have been drained easily enough, the cottage
constructed and then the water pumped back in. But the sheer
obscurity of the joke causes me to frown and make many a harsh
grimace when I consider this option.
Instead,
I often languish by the side of the pond, peering down into the
depths, and repeat the word "subsidence" as if it were a
mantra. A slow subsidence, as slow as the growth of a dead man's
fingernails or the twisted trees themselves, would have sufficed to
preserve the cottage intact in its descent. No beams would have been
shaken loose, no thread of thatch unravelled. They rot now, it is
true, but such decay is quite a different matter.
One
evening, taking some kittens to the side of the pond, to save them
from the knife of my brother, I witnessed a peculiar and disturbing
sight. No sooner had I tied the little weights around their necks and
dropped them one by one, like depth-charges, into the glinting water,
than an unusual commotion began far below.
I
am not a superstitious being by nature, but my senses are keen, and
so, not wishing to waste an opportunity to initiate gossip, I threw
myself to the ground and, ducking my head into the icy water,
strained my eyes to discern the origin of the turbulence.
A
second later, I regretted my decision. As my eyes adjusted to the
gloom, I perceived a tiny man standing at the door of the cottage. He
was holding a large net on the end of a pole. Such nets were familiar
to me: I had spent many happy hours on the moors with an identical
net, collecting moon-moths to be ground into powder in the
apothecary's shop. I had developed a certain skill in utilising my
net; a skill not shared by my aquatic counterpart far below.
Gasping
and wheezing, he aimed the net at the kittens that floated down past
him. His frantic motions were the source of the disturbance. He
utterly failed in catching a single specimen. The kittens struck the
bottom of the pond and disappeared into the sinuous weeds. Bubbles
erupted from each mossy collision. The tiny man shook his fists and
snapped the pole of the net over his knee. Then he threw the pieces
away and pulled his hair in a parody of rage. The pieces floated up
towards me and broke the surface tension of the pond inches from my
face.
While
I was questioning my sanity, and just a moment before I could bear
the noxious waters no longer, the angry homunculus chanced to gaze
high above and spotted me looking down. The expression on his face
must have mirrored my own. We were both paralysed with astonishment.
For long moments, our eyes were meshed together by fibres of emotion
impossible to understand. And then he darted back into his cottage
and returned with an equally tiny woman. I assumed that she was his
wife. He pointed up at the sky and together they gaped at me.
Panting,
I pulled my head out of the pond and took a long deep gulp of air. I
resisted the temptation to take another look at the submerged
cottage. I had decided that I was suffering from a form of madness or
delirium. I resolved to forget the experience and make an appointment
with a doctor as soon as possible. I left the pond and made my way
slowly back up the garden-path to my house.
Yet
as I walked, I started wondering again about the peculiar sight I had
just witnessed. Supposing that I was not mad? Supposing that the
phenomena had been real? I had heard many stories about falls of
strange objects from the sky. There had been reports of fish, ice,
betel nuts, coins, worms, eels, snails, snakes and frogs. This last
item on the list made me shudder. I repressed this shudder and
stroked my chin. Such objects were supposed to orbit the world in an
eldritch region in the sky before falling. A region that lay in the
margins of reality.
If
this was true, then it was possible that I was living in such a
twilight realm myself and had been the cause of a strange shower in
another world. The tiny man had obviously been trying to collect one
of the falling kittens as proof of his bizarre experience. Probably
he would have as much difficulty convincing his neighbours and
friends of my existence as I would have convincing my own neighbours
and friends of his. I decided to say nothing and to resume my mundane
life without ever mentioning even the submerged cottage again.
As
I approached the door of my house, I heard a thud behind me. I looked
over my shoulder and saw the body of a tiny man slumped in the
bushes. I thought at first that my diminutive neighbour had tried to
follow me and had drowned in the air. But then another body fell into
another clump of bushes and I looked up. The sky was full of little
men sliding through the atmosphere with weights tied to their feet.
And higher still, to my complete amazement, the face of an enormous
kitten gazed down at me with eyes the size of seas.
My
first reaction was to rush into my house and return with my wife, so
that there would be at least one other witness to this miracle.
However, it occurred to me that if I could simply catch one of the
tiny men alive it would be evidence enough. I had no nets, but I
could use the old-fashioned method. I had a sudden ludicrous image of
a host of different dimensions impinging on each other, kittens
hurling down men, men hurling down snakes, snakes hurling down frogs
and frogs hurling down kittens...
I
called out to my wife and then opened my mouth wider. My long sticky
tongue snatched the little men from the air before they hit the
ground and I stacked them in a little pile by my side. Naturally I
swallowed a few. Life in the margins of reality does seem to have its
advantages. It is not every day that guests just drop in for dinner.
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