Move Like Water by Hannah Stowe EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Author: Hannah Stowe
- Language: English
- Genre: Biographies & Memoirs of Authors
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
FIRE CROW
There was never a time when I did not know the sea. As I lay in my cradle
at my mother’s feet, day after day, the salt wind blew around our home. It
mingled with the honeysuckle that curled around her garden studio, sweetscented and dappling light as she coaxed gentle worlds to paper with paint.
The small, strong oak trees my father had planted when I was born bent and
twisted to that wind, framing my world. A hushed roar, water on sand and
stone as the tides ebbed and flowed, both rhythm and rhyme. At the start, it
was only a lullaby.
Throughout my childhood the weather was never far away. At night, I
would nestle in my bed, tucked under the eaves in the attic of our cottage,
snug next to the chimney breast, fire-warmed, as storms shook the slates
from the roof, a ginger cat purring beside me. As I lay awake, I would
watch for the beam, the beacon, of Strumble Head Lighthouse as it swept
through the night, my companion in the ink hours. In the morning I would
scrape the salt spray from the windows, running my finger through its greywhite slick, a quick, sharp taste on my tongue.
That cottage by the sea was a harbour of sorts, a place I always felt safe.
It was ramshackle in every way—rendered wall crumbling, paint flaking,
wallpaper peeling, furniture clawed by cats and carpets chewed by dogs.
The garden was a blend between overgrown and functional, my mother’s
wild resistance to the manicured lawns on which she was raised. There was
a herb garden and vegetable beds, but they weren’t always tended.
Brambles and alexanders grew in the hedges, and you had to watch for
nettles. A great ash tree stood like a guardian at the foot of the path, its
leaves lush and verdant. At night, I would often stand under this tree and
look up at the night sky with my mother, locating the constellation of Orion,
the great hunter with his sword, bow, and belt. There was no reason for
Orion in particular, save that those were the stars I was drawn to first. I
would stare up at them, fascinated by the celestial light.
A concrete path
chalked with hopscotch, crossed and noughted, snaked to the door. Ants
would track across it, industrious and purposeful, before returning to their
nest opposite the rose bush. Once, when he was visiting us, my grandfather,
a contradiction of a man—a naturalist when out walking the Cotswold hills
where he lived, naming every bird that winged its way past, every tree,
from leaf and bark, as if they were his own family, and yet an enemy to the
rhythmic chaos of nature in his own garden—threatened to pour pest killer
into the ants’ mound. The day he left, I reached a small fist up to the
kitchen shelf and took a bag of sugar, the bleached granules sparkling in the
sun as I poured out a veritable feast in rebellion.
Chickens pecked in the yard, sweet peas climbed canes, and dog roses
bloomed. An orange creel buoy hung above the oak front door, the window
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