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The Starlight Girl
A LandzDown Novel
The Starlight Girl was only ever seen by those who did not look for her. When Andy Milton saw her – he had not been looking for her – indeed he had not been looking for anyone or anything …
It was a sharp frosty night and his breath was puffing out in steamy clouds as he hurried along the footpath wondering what he would have for dinner when he got home. His face was a sickly yellow from the light cast by the high-mounted sodium lamps that lined the roadway. Somewhere, far in the distance, a dog was barking and he briefly thought back to last summer when he and Benny, his companion from childhood, had played and romped in the wild meadows beside the watermill at the southern end of the village.
He and Benny had walked the three miles from the cottage, down through the village, to the “Millpark”, as it was known, - as they had done every almost every Sunday since Benny, a golden Labrador, had been given to Andy for his twelfth birthday. Benny was the fulfilment of a promise his mother had made to Andy, to encourage him to pass his exams and qualify for grammar school.
The dog had been as boisterous as ever, despite his ten years of age and had run strongly for the stick that Andy had thrown for about the twentieth time that morning and despite the fact that the stick had landed in the water below the mill wheel, Benny had launched himself off the bank of the river, forepaws outstretched, as he prepared for contact with the water. The great splash as the dog hit the water was followed by a brief grinning glance over the shoulder, as if to get approval, before paddling off strongly to retrieve the stick which was now being pulled quickly into the backwash turbulence of the mill wheel.
With that unstoppable certainty of simple machinery, the wheel paddles came down on top of Benny - the first stunning him as it cracked his head, the second scooping him under the backwash wall and the third squeezing his now poor ragged body up through the wrought iron filter grill. Mercifully it was over in seconds - Benny was dead from his injuries and did not have to suffer the torture of drowning.
A tear formed in Andy’s eyes, or was it just the watery eyes of one walking in crisp cold air? … At twenty two years of age Andy was not yet immune from the pain of such childhood memories as he recalled their ten years together and then relived, once more, that final unkind day.
The road was darker now as he passed the last of the village streetlights and only a pale iridescence of foggy, mist-filtered, moonlight was present to illuminate the hedge on his side of the road and the frost covered grass verge on the other side of the road. That frosty grass verge, made seemingly colder by the moonlight, held a sharp contrast to the peat bog drainage ditch that ran through it, like a continuous wide black scar, parallel to the far edge of the road.
The ditches that surrounded all the local moorlands were part of a complex system of irrigation and drainage channels that served sometimes to add water to the rich pasture land and at other times to mitigate flooding and had the additional benefit of keeping stock within the pastures, without the need for further fences or hedges, by forming a natural barrier. They were very wide and very deep and the water in them was always very cold, even in summertime, and treacherously cold in wintertime.
Everybody in those parts had a sort of “community knowledge” - a respect even - for the ditches and the necessity of them, as well as the dangers they presented. People always walked and rode their bicycles on the opposite side of the road if there was a ditch only on one side of the road. When the road had ditches on both sides, everybody walked or rode with even greater care. At night, walkers walked safely in the pitch black by keeping one foot on the hard asphalt of the road and the other on the grass verge. Over the years children and adults had perished by stumbling into ditches and either drowning or dying from hypothermia. Some legends had it that trolls and goblins were known to come out of the ditches and drag people back in. Fairies were often seen dancing in the fields at night especially when the peat bog base of some of the fields was at the right temperature to give off gases - the experts said it was the natural gases spontaneously combusting that caused the “Fairy” lights – but the older folk knew that it really was the Fairies …
(Please bear in mind that the Administrators may stop this story at any time if it gets to a stage where it is consuming too much Bandwidth/Space.) So don't get upset if they do stop it, as - if they do, I'm sure there would be a timely warning so it could be wound up in an orderly manner.
