For Nodens

I.
I’m working with horses again, putting a saddle and bridle into a tack box outside a stable. The setting feels like a long time ago as at modern yards everything is locked in a tack room, burglar alarm set. The last task is to take the horses to the fields. This must be done quickly because the tides will come in to cover the path.

We lead the horses out in a single line down the narrow raised track: impatient, pulling at their bridles, hooves clomping on the water-logged ground. We take them through the gate and set them free. They spit their bits then buck and leap into the distance. On the return, water washes over our wellingtons. I realise no-one can steal the tack because of the tides.

II.
I’m standing with a friend beside a road. The road is composed of water and leads uphill into an old mill town and. Instead of cars, timber boats move slowly upward on a pulley like a fairground water-ride. I’m kind of glad to see this change. It will slow my friend’s driving down. It will slow everyone down.

We’re standing together again, this time at a roundabout on Penwortham By-Pass. But this time it’s like spaghetti junction but worse and all the roads are rushing water-courses. A Bard on a motorbike appears to show us a secret lane, cutting water with his tyres. We splosh through safely.

III.
I’m in bed. Where my altar usually stands is a dressing table and shoe rack. Water seeps up through cracks in the floor boards and over my shoes. In reality I don’t have lots of shoes and I’m not a shoe-hoarder. However in this dream I have strappy golden stilettos, heels with complex buckles, shiny fat-tongued trainers, studded leather boots. The most important task is to rescue the shoes.

I gather as many as I can and take them to the edge of a lake. The only way to cross is on a duck. Even though the ducks are duck size this is possible and they’re used to it. Lots of ducks are giving rides. When I get halfway across the lake, someone turns the wave machine on. My duck bobs and leaps. We can’t get across and to my horror I start dropping the shoes.

IV.
I’m standing at the top of a tall stone tower. Beneath is a lake. The Keeper of the Tower has given me a missive. I must steal the young of a monstrous cat before they cause trouble. I’m expecting something like Cath Palug. Looking down I see my parents’ house cat; black with a white snip, fast asleep, tail wrapped around yellow tennis balls in which she keeps her kittens.

It looks too easy to be true. Except, how am I going to get down? Suddenly I’m swooshing downward on swift black wings. I can fly! I’m a raven! I can barely believe it. Delighting in my newfound ability I circle and swoop, skate on the water, flap my wings.

“Look! Look! Look at that raven!” children pull on the sleeves of their mothers gathered with prams to feed the ducks at the water’s edge, pointing excitedly.

I’m having so much fun I don’t care until I remember my mission. I swish down and steal one of the tennis balls from the sleeping cat. When I take it from beneath my wing it is nothing but a piece of wood engraved with a number. I’ve been tricked.

V.
Old college friends have moved into my street because it’s one of few places left unflooded. Fish House Brook has become a river. However that isn’t the threat. Water rises from drains with sewer rats. Some are big as dogs. One floats by balloon-like, dead, bloated with disease.

We bag up our belongings and camp beneath the By-Pass. For some reason there are rat-sized portholes in the tents. Volleys of rats pour in, sleek and wet as otters, biting, squealing. We’re forced to leave in a mass exodus with our lives on our backs down a long and watery road knowing nowhere is safe.