As Winter Came and Went - Extract 6

Hmm... Those extracts are becoming shorter and shorter... I might post an extra one to make up for this!

 

The problem is that I do not want to reveal any spoilers that would ruin the palpitating and well-constructed plot (there, people who have read the book are raising their eyebrows and shaking their head and wondering: what plot?).

 

Anyway... Here is this month's offering and I hope you enjoy it! Feel free to tell me what you think in the comment.

 

I chose it because I feel in an autumnal mood and because, though it is not from the beginning of the book, being very descriptive it reveals nothing of my precious plot.

 

Extract from chapter 10

In the woods he strays away from the path, fighting his way through the tangled undergrowth. Bramble, bearing the last, shrunken blackberries of the season. The supple twigs of young oak trees. Fallen leaves creeping over the moss-covered ground. The gnarled trunks are a barrier against the rumour of the sea but the spray still saturates the air, the ground, the lichen and the bark. A salty stickiness, clogging up Dennys’s lungs, dulling his sense of smell, intoxicating and overpowering. And, stopping for a moment, he closes his eyes and becomes part of the wood, rooted in the rotting ground and caressed, like the oaks, by a dream of the ocean he cannot see. 

There is the wishing well, almost in ruins now, sagging as if under its own weight. Bright red, white-spotted toadstools cluster between the roots of a nearby tree. Paving the way to another world. Do the fairies still dwell there? Do they still dance round and round the ancient trees at dusk and through the night? Another world, but he belongs nowhere.
He hears the rain before he feels it and the bare branches cannot protect him. Translucent jewels on the bright green moss; a spider’s web becomes a pearl necklace. A tiny mouse scuttles under dock leaves. In the summer, foxgloves grow between the stones of the well, thriving in the damp dark shade, another refuge for the little people. The amber eyes of a fox meet his. The sodden russet and white of its fur, as it slinks out from behind a bush. The fox does not lower its gaze, does not hurry away. Recognition. It saw not a man but a changeling.