Farrell - The Pop-up Book of Invasions

Others bent to their paddling. And three men amongst us. So there we were on our good ships, with their striped sails. We crossed water to a long cloud where we wrecked on a reef. Fifty we were who came ashore. Soaked from the sea and with stonebruised feet.

We lay down in dry grass, and shared the men around. Till all of us had babies wriggling up the dark stream, leaping all obstacles. We milked the men dry. One died, another lived, and the third became a salmon. He turned cold in my arms and silver-skinned. His eyes were round and glassy.

He flipped from me to the stream and got away. So I was left in the long grass. Slick drying on my belly, the tiny fish swimming

I could see them floating just ahead, set upon a white cloth. I could see the flap of it, rising to cross a hedge like a flat fish swimming through clear water and me beneath like a small sprat following. To follow was not easy. The dishes rode across country, taking hedges and ditches on their white wings, while I was trapped by my car and the narrow ways of men. I had to turn corners and guess at my final destination. I saw the dishes fly to a cliff face and drop behind bare branches, hazel and ash.

I parked the car and found the cloth come to ground, embroidered hem fluttering by the saints bed. A heap of fallen stone. The saint was a lean man. He picked at the beef and poured salt over the leeks, lest he be tempted. He tossed his bread to the sparrows and foreswore the red wine, preferring water from his blessed spring. But his servant gnawed the bones bare and spread good butter on his bread.

He drank his wine, thanking whatever power it was that had sent cloth and dishes, whatever white hand it was that cooked this food, and the kindly air that carried it. I watched from behind a tree as he feasted while his master picked and prayed. I watched his belly swell. I heard him groan as his starved guts cramped. Within the hour he will be dead and buried under a heap of stone. While the saint will live, revered by all for his restraint.

And the feast will grow mould, the white cloth will rot and the wine will turn to vinegar in a tarnished cup.

The fields were too small for ploughs. Just room for one man and the breadth of his spade. I think of my father and his three spades: the one with the square handle, smooth from his hand. The long-handled shovel. The narrow spade that was the one preferred to dig the long shaw.

It is to be treated with reverence. Stowed bound in silk, in silver. The book is revered for the skin from which its pages are made. Skin of the dun cow. Blessed cow of the saint. His heifer with her twisted horn, milk spilling from her swaying udder.

He loved her, followed her wandering. Slept pressed to her side on frosty upland. Her spindly calf. And when she died cradled in straw he skinned her, blade tugging at tufts of belly hair, slitting neck and knee. He stretched her skin, pegged it to dry, legs splayed. Soaked it in his own piss to soften, then cut it in squares, shaven and stitched to make a book.

Now he is seated in a stone cell to write the words that matter most to him, on the skin of his dun cow. But when his eyes tire with writing he can rest his forehead on the desk and smell it: the scent of the dun cow and the winding way she led him, the damp lick of buttercups, the green plop where he could warm bruised feet, when the way was all stones and frost made the ground too hard.