Vixen. Rosie Garland
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I take no more than three paces before the rain begins in earnest. At least it’ll wash off the muck, I think. I race along and soon come upon the drainage channel, now churning with orange water. I can’t believe it is full so quick, for the downpour has barely started.
It is too dangerous to crawl within, so I crouch and run alongside, comforting myself with the knowledge that no other person will be so mad as to venture out in this weather. I am a fool to be so caught, and counsel myself over and over never to follow the flight of birds again, for they bring nothing but trouble.
‘You bastard birds!’ I shout, and am rewarded with another splat on my arm. ‘Ha! Missed my head!’ I cry, and a volley lands on my shoulder.
The marshland is a blur, rain pouring so heavily that I swear it goes up my nose. I am grateful for the straight line of the ditch, guiding me back inland, but the next step thrusts me into mud up to the knee. I sink further and only just manage to drag my foot out. Somehow, I have followed the ditch in the wrong direction and am at the sea’s edge. Rusty water spews into the estuary.
I throw myself backwards and gasp on the quaking edge of the morass. I shove down the shock and remind myself that I have made a simple mistake and gone towards the sea rather than away from it. All I need do is retrace my steps and all will be well.
I turn about and make my way as swiftly as I can, which is not that fast, for the ground sucks at my feet as though unwilling to release me from its grasp. I fortify myself with the thought that soon I will come upon a hedgerow that betokens solid ground. But the ditch is met by two more: one leading to the right and one to the left. It is impossible to see further than five paces in either direction. I hop from sodden foot to foot, the earth softening dangerously as I loiter.
I set off to the left but go barely twenty paces when I am knee-deep in sludge again. I head back, bent beneath the downpour, but all is mud this way also. I have no choice but to strike out across the wasteland and pray that I can hold a straight line away from the sea.
The earth quivers like a haystack soaked by a week’s rain. The wind leaps in front of me and slaps my face; I turn and it flings mud into my eye, tearing up clods of earth and hurling them past my ears, twisting me round and round in a game of hoodman blind. Bulrushes uproot themselves and fly past, lashing my body in wet rope.
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