By Laura Tyrrell
It had been officially declared a heatwave, at least in her small corner of the world: three days in a row when the temperature crept past 25 degrees. Her house had held the heat like a fever – close, heavy, inescapable. Even Scruffy had given up, panting on the cool tiles, too hot even to bark when the postman came. She hadn’t spoken to anyone all day, she’d barely moved. Another day alone. Grief had a way of muffling the world, of dampening down life.
With the worst of the heat passed and dusk stretching its limbs across the fields, she clipped Scruffy’s lead to his harness and stepped out into the cooling evening. They headed out, up onto Broom Hill, past the TV relay mast and into the top field, now filled with a golden sea of ripening barley, almost ready for harvest. They joined the narrow path that skirted the field, tracing a fine line between the crop and a wide head land of wild flowers and grasses bleached pale by the sun.
As they reached the brow of the hill, the path turned southward and the rooftops of the town came into view. She noticed a tiny speck of red nestled in the grass. A ladybird. Then another. And another. She crouched. Among the brittle stems, there were dozens – no, hundreds – a constellation of ladybirds scattered like small scarlet runes among the flowers. She had never seen so many in one place before. It felt like the little creatures were gathered with intent, as if summoned. Messengers, demanding her attention, pulling something she couldn’t name to the surface. Their numinous presence touched something tender in her.
The sun was low now, painting the sky in soft shades of peach and pink. Down in the hollow, near a tumble of collapsing drystane dyke, a fawn lifted its head from the barley. Its ears flicked. Its eyes met hers. She reached for Scruffy’s lead but he was stretched out in the dust behind her, leisurely licking a paw, oblivious. The fawn, unhurried but sure, turned and slipped over the dyke in one clean movement, silent as an arrow. Gone. She stood a moment longer, watching the place where it had been.
The light was fading, but the path drew her onward. Away to the east, the sky flickered, silent flashes low on the horizon. Lightning. She paused, scanning the far line of hills. The thunder hadn’t reached her yet, but she could feel the storm gathering, building somewhere just out of reach. She watched as another burst of light flickered across the sky, illuminating the clouds from within like a heartbeat. She could sense that something had shifted in the atmosphere: it hadn’t reached her yet but a change was coming.
At the edge of the field, the path forked – one curved toward the woods, the other disappeared into a low hollow thick with grass and shadow. The air was cooler here. As she stood at the crossroads – barley on one side, wildflowers on the other – she felt that she had entered a borderland: a liminal space. A place where meaning hovered just beneath the surface, waiting to be uncovered. The air seemed to shimmer as she felt the presence of something – or someone – precious and fragile drawing near, filling up the space around her. The certainty of him was everywhere: in the hush of the field, in the sudden stillness of the evening light. He walked beside her, her Shaman of Courage, not gone but transformed, woven into the fabric of this moment and into every step she would take from now on.
Paradise was here, found in the remembering, a fleeting, intimate encounter with peace and connection in the midst of her loss. She wasn’t merely choosing a path, she was choosing to surrender to what must come. Choosing between then and now, between what had been lost and what might still be found, between the grief she was carrying and the green shoots of something new. Here, in this quiet field, among the barley and the ladybirds, she found hope.