A string of them, a massive V that forms and reforms as new ones lead the way. The sky is filled with their clamour. My head is filled with the echo of it – whistling, honking, crying, screaming. The sea changes colour. Now it’s green and brown and grey, and the geese fly over tors and fields dotted with tiny sheep. I’m with them, riding the sky, flying at their side. ‘Come on,’ I shout. ‘Come on.’ There are geese above me, too, wings outstretched and feet tucked beneath, and I’m riding in their slipstream and whistling through the air, pressed so close to them I can feel the warmth of their down. I want to stay with them, join their wild free flight. If this is the gabble ratchet, I’m sticking around. But now there are other birds with them – crows and curlews and silent-flying ones I don’t recognise that flit like bats on long, pointed wings. And above me the geese are growing, their white breasts darkening and their eyes turning huge and red.
