He climbs the creaking stairs. The wind rattles the shutters against their latches. He has Shem’s old coat on, a muffler drawn up over his mouth and nose and dampened by his breath. The upstairs room swells wide and dim, slope-ceilinged, with a window in each gable. There is a bedstead, an armoire, a small table and chair. The walls are rose-painted plaster. Beyond the back window, there’s just rattling, tormented branches, and black birds tumbling and skittering about. Looking out of the front window, across the road, the ground falls away sharply, so he stands now above the treetops and can see all the way across the valley to the distant mountains beyond. From here, turn right and walk ten minutes into town. Turn left and the nearest house is Miss Beamish’s, only just in sight, down at the crossroads. This is a pool of space; this is a silence wide enough to swim in. If writing could happen at all, in these days, it would happen in a place like this. Here, perhaps, he could make a little slime to ease himself along.
