Context

Arrival

This memory is vague, it has an air about it of which suggests I was in and out of sleep. It was unnaturally light, and so I can only assume it was day - yet I was in my bed.
Between the opening and closing of my eyes and drifting glances, I watched the light roll across my ceiling in a golden arch, yet it never seemed to touch my face nor obscure my vision. It felt both warm, and far from me.
So vague and drifting are my recollections of that time, that it is only the outcome and attached memory that it leads to that confirms it to have been true at all.
From my pillow, the voices of adults drifted across me from time to time. I could just about place each one as recognisable, and yet I cannot truly say I saw any of them.
"It's quite a bruise to her ribs, but they said there was no lingering damage" my mother seemed to say, adding "Perhaps that she did not expect it, it helped her"
"Poor thing, I saw her go up, flung like a rag doll she was" I heard my Grandmother say, "Course... Once her father got hold of that beast... Well it was much the same."
"Dreadful bit of business" I heard another voice add.
I did not recognise that last voice, it seemed gruff, but somehow it fit in along side the conversation with enough fluidity that I did not pay it too much attention.
Somewhere else in that rest, the conversation continued unto another subject. By this time, I realised that they who spoke were sat around the kitchen table - having heard the sound of the wooden chair legs scraping across the stone floor as my grandmother suggested tea.
The kitchen was on the other side of the wall, it ran along side my room in our cottage, and my door had been left open.
"Travellers again?" I heard my grandmother ask, her voice a song atop the sound of her spoon gently stirring in her tea cup.
"Yes, moved into the vacant field on the west side of Mr. Everton's farm. Them great large caravans they pull about just hauled in there - tore up all the grass in tracks... Not to mention all their livestock roaming free".
A tutting sound was made, but I could not be sure as to who had made it.
My mother continued: "If it's any thing like last time, he'll have a trouble getting them to move on".

I do not know if my imagination gripped me, or that my dreams obeyed the small areas of conversation that drifted in through my door, but over the next few days - my dreams seemed to be filled with purple and blue painted carts, big creaking wood panelled gypsy caravans with green vines and golden flowers painted all along their sides.
I saw the rays of sun flood in from behind them as they towered over me, and the sounds of scraping violins and laughter as the travellers danced around their camp fires.
I saw a plume of soft smoke twirl into an evening sky, and upon it danced the golden embers of the lifting fire - that shone out such as a glitter of orange stars.
I coughed at the sight of it, and so too had I coughed into waking. Warm in my bed, I found my throat dry and my racking gasps caught the attention of my grandmother who came into the room.
As she did, and as she began to soothe me with gentle words that she would 'fetch me some water', I let my eyes open to those same beams of golden light that had been obscuring the silhouettes of the gypsy caravans in my mind.
That alone made it all entirely real, and as the cool of water soothed my throat - it too flooded me with the need to be outside once more, to see these travellers for myself - with their beautifully painted wooden carts, their singing and their dancing.

~~~

Of course, when I did make it out, this visit was a highly forbidden activity. My mother expressed severely that I was not to go beyond our gate, nor any where near Mr. Everton's farm.
And, with the confidence of a girl newly reunited with her canine companion - I figured that I would be able to see the colourful carts well enough from upon the gate itself.
I felt the clang of the yellow painted bars beneath my feet, and the slight swing within it's latch as I clambered up it. Elias made a soft whining sound behind me, tilting his head in concern that I was going where he could not follow.
"It is all right" I remember saying to the dog, as I heaved myself up onto the highest rung, hooking my elbows over it carefully and looking back. "I am only going to have a look... I'm not going over there".
It had always felt as if Elias was slightly in cahoots with my Mother, and so I was often careful to explain my reasoning to him when bending rules.
With one last glance back at the cottage to be sure I was going unnoticed, I turned my attention to the hedges further along the dirt path - and sure enough, a plume of smoke curled it's way into the air beyond. It was finer, and far more grey than the impressive thick darkness of the smoke in my dream - but I did fancy I that I caught a glimpse of the glittering embers. I could not make out any caravans, pulling myself so tall as I could manage on the teetering yellow gate.
I felt the tight tug of the bruise upon my ribs as I stretched, and sighed defeatedly as I relaxed back down, leaning my cheek on the cold of the bar.
It was then that I realised, directly opposite me on the other side of the track, there stood a young boy.

Perhaps he was just slightly younger than me, it was hard to tell. He looked somewhat wild, but I knew him immediately to be a traveller child for the pile of messy black curls atop his head. Wrapped in a purple cloth, with simple sand coloured shorts, the boy wore no shoes and looked as if he had just pulled himself through the hedge.
I remember thinking that must have been it, why I did not see him at first. And yet, he was so motionless in his being there and I so tired from a few days of fevered rest that it was very reasonable to assume I had simply missed him.
I shuddered to think he had been watching me the whole time I had climbed the gate, and as I had looked out toward his people.
Moreso, for it was his eyes. He was a fair distance across the track from me, and stood back in the shadow of the hedge - but the large, shimmering darkness of his eyes were unmistakable. They seemed to lean into me, to lend themselves to the view of even my very thoughts, and I found myself caught in a fear. A fear that stayed me from movement, that did not allow me to reach back to the comfort of Elias and his coarse fur - for wonder of what may happen if I took my own eyes from the little traveller boy.
A wind seemed to sweep down the dirt track between us, and - perhaps with the hindsight of applied imagination - the ember strewn smoke of the fire seemed to bend into the air behind him.
He just stood there, until the cracking sound of sandals on dry dirt broke in from the direction of the smoke and a traveller woman clutching a shawl about her shoulders came hastily to his side. She seemed to have been muttering something at him as she did, and upon reaching him had taken his arms in an attempt to have him look at her whilst she spoke.
Her efforts went unheard, as the boy and myself retained our strange return of stares. Softly scolding him, she took his jaw in her hand and attempted to force his attention.
Still, he stared - and so in his stubbornness did I come to find my own, for no longer was it fear - I realised - but a test. A game. I was above him, both in age and upon the gate, staring down into the eyes of a challenger, and suddenly I was swept into a competition, of which I would win.
I had, to my recollection, never felt the requirement to be competitive, indeed I do not think I had truly known it's traits until that moment. But, the boy wanted something from me, and had made me feel unsafe - and my youthful fear was almost guided into an adolescent anger.
As I wrangled with this peculiar, protective feeling I suddenly had - the wind that had swept across the path seemed to steady. And the boy seemed to soften, as if to shrink back slightly.
By this point, unable to stir his attention, the traveller woman had followed his gaze.
When her eyes too met mine, they became wide, and the hand that held the jaw of the boy suddenly shielded his glare - and she began whining out, calling something at me in a way I could not understand.
I did not move, I watched her. Unable, stubborn and unsure.
Stuttering her indecipherable words the entire time, she swept the small, wild boy into her arms and attempted to shield his face with her shawl. He seemed limp, and yet his stare was secure. Still, as she backed away up the dirt track, I caught glimpses of his shimmering dark eyes.
And, when they stepped out of sight, I stayed upon my gate, listening. The sound of the traveller woman's sandles slapped quickly across the dry dirt until they faded back into the soft sound of the breeze in the branches above me.

As my own feet felt the ground once more, my mother called me home for dinner.