He is now in full sail back across the calm green sea, a gentle breeze at his back. Emerald ripples roll gently towards him only to be sliced into a widening V by the knife-edge of his prow. White clouds swim high in the deep ocean of the sky and fluffy banks of tree are piled against the distant shores. He has a cheery wave for the fat man steaming slowly past on his starboard bow, a tugboat pulling the coal barge of his overweight old dog. Children fly red kites and a white balloon floats high above, gaining height in the quiet air with a rush of flame in its belly. The distant ululating howl of a chainsaw drifts across the water, cutting through the background buzz of motor traffic and children's laughter.
Loofah felt as light as the balloon and only the weight of his shoes kept him tied to the surface of the rippling sea—for he had jettisoned several kilos of heavy ballast, unburdening the weight of his concerns onto the broad shoulders of the flatworm. It had been a good idea to speak to someone in a senior position—the invertebrate official had certainly given him a good hearing, not interrupting once—and he was now quietly confident that his worries would be voiced at the highest level and that with luck things might become a bit clearer in future. He checked his bearings against the sun and, with a gentle easing of the tiller, set a course for the corner of the green.
Once off the grass, after heaving to briefly to let a rubber car chug past, he tacked easily across the oily swell of the tarmac river. As he reached the opposite bank, he became aware of something kissing his ears: a lilting tone of honeyed sweetness wafting through the warm air.
'Featherbed Lane? Mm, the name rings a bell—let me just think for a minute.' The old man's face crumpled in intense concentration. 'Yes, I've got it!' he then cried, in a quavering voice, 'No, I haven't—sorry—I was thinking of Nottingham Street.' Vast rheumy eyes swam uncertainly on the undersides of his pebble lenses. 'It's the names, you see. They sound so similar.'
'It's OK,' said Loofah, 'I'll ask somebody else.'
'You're alright, sonny, it'll come to me in a second—just you see if it doesn't.'
A man in a dark suit strode confidently past, oozing geographical certainty. A little worm of frustration squirmed in Loofah's belly.
'I should know it—I've lived in this village for eighty-two years, man and boy.'
'It's just that I'm in a little bit of a—.'
'I remember when all this was open green,' said the old man, waving an arthritic hand across the open green, 'Though that was before the war, of course.'
A cyclist paused at the kerb and pulled a map from her pannier. Loofah caught the title on the cover as she unfolded it: 'Hollyoak Green—Street Plan (Highly Detailed)'.
'Aye, things were different then, though you'll be too young to remember.'
'Look, this lady has a map, why don't I just—.'
'Where was it you were looking for? The shops? Do you remember old Mrs Prendergast?—her as used to keep the greengrocer's over by the duck pond?'
The cyclist folded away her map and set off, turning left into a little lane just past the green. Loofah squinted to read the lane's name sign and then sighed with relief. Once again he sensed the haunting sweetness trickling into his ears.
'Vegetables,' mused the old man, 'Though you'll be too young to know what a vegetable is, I expect. It's all computers these days, isn't it?'
He cruised up the pavement beside a column of ancient conifers, their blue foliage drooping and melting like overheated wax, then tacked left into the lane past two brick churches and a barbered lawn decorated with gravestones. As he turned, the flowing melody grew more steady, now lapping gently at his face and his skin, caressing his soul.
Long forgotten farm buildings in breezeblock and cobweb slid past on his starboard side, with two hardboard caravans and a rusting van in the nettle-choked yard. To port, there was a scattering of shoebox bungalows with felt lawns and porcelain flower beds, inhabited by ceramic gnomes and people so old they had slipped beyond the reach of time.
It was harder going down the lane, as the choppy unmade hardcore tugged at his keel. But the wind was in his sails and the sun was in his heart. And the music was growing ever stronger: female voices that soared and dived in perfect harmony, probing deeper, fingering his entrails and his bones, and washing over him like the water of a tropical lagoon.
In a dying cherry orchard skeletal trees thrust black bare branches to the sun, as in the forlorn hope of some Lazarus-miracle from the life giving orb. Around their corpse trunks, a tossing lake of buttercups and lilac-flowered vetch rioted in a celebration of life, mocking the very existence of an entity called death. It was the singing that carried him now, drawing him along between high hedges of blossom-bedecked hawthorn and under the boughs of friendly ash and venerable oak, and away from the fading fringes of the settlement. Every atom of his being had become a resonating sine wave, harmonised by the music into the symphony that was his body.
He reached a gap in the hedge. Here the music swung him round and he hove to facing a sea of purest yellow. For a long moment he was dazzled by the colour, by a tsunami of brilliant yellowness that blotted out all else, by a yellowness that was too yellow to be real. As his eyes adapted, however, he saw that jutting from these unreal waves a short distance from the shore was a rock of marble, the iridescent white stone shot through with veins of vermilion, like stigmata on a maiden's thigh.
But it was the real maidens' thighs that caught Loofah's attention: six of them, draped across the strange rock. Six golden thighs belonging to three golden girls, all clad in nothing but the weaving harmonies of their song. Even through the resonating dream of the music, however, he could see that there was something different about these girls—for from the shoulders of each spread a pair of dazzling white wings. As they sang to him, one drew a comb of carved bone through the golden tumble of her hair, another anointed the olive swell of her breasts with oil from a silver gourd, while the third leaned out to him, opening her arms in welcome. And all three caught the pure light of the sun on their wings, beaming it to him across the xanthous waves.
He stood stone still on the shore, transfixed, while the girls enveloped him with the gossamer nets of their bodies and snared him with the silken cords of their song. A warm sweetness thrilled through his flesh: three golden bodies spread out upon a marble platter, the dish of his desire. And what separated him from this delight?—a few paltry yards of yellow water.
Loofah sailed over the ocean like a sea eagle, the foaming swell sweeping by under his outstretched arms. Slicing cleanly into the water, he swam briefly through liquid greenness before breaking surface, sucking air into his lungs. The waves now tossed around him, first towering over his head, then throwing him high on a crest. At first he did not see the maiden-draped rock. He had expected his dive to take him to within an arm's length of his goal, but to his considerable surprise he now saw that it was in fact perched on the far horizon; what from the shore had seemed no more that a few yards—almost jumpable—had become a vast expanse of churning sea.
But the girls reached out for him, pulling him forward into the swelling deep with the cords of their song. And so, taking strength from the sticky sweetness, he struck out, hauling at the water in a steady crawl.
In no time he was in the midst of a vast Himalayan landscape, with mountains of liquid yellow being thrown up and crashing down all around him. His mouth filled and he coughed, spluttering water through his nostrils. Tightening tendrils of current wound around his legs and body, trying to pull him back, trying to pull him under.
The next yellow behemoth towered over him, threatened to break, and then tossed him high onto its peak. Here he caught another glimpse of the distant maidens; they were miles away now, three dots on the horizon. Yet still their melodies held him, however, pulling him onwards. A spurt of warm sweetness surged across his belly and, as he was plunged deep into yet another shadow-dark valley, he hauled at the water with renewed strength.
On and on he swam, tossed from towering wave to towering wave. But despite his struggle, he was getting no nearer to his goal—the stretch of yellow water between him and the girl-draped rock remained as wide as it ever was, completely refractory to his herculean efforts to narrow it. And, although each glimpse of the maidens triggered a surge in his efforts, his strength was now beginning to wane. Hauling at the water with rapidly tiring arms, his hope too began to ebb away, as if flushed out by the gouts of yellow water that flooded in and out of his mouth and nose at every stroke.
The current wrenched on his exhausted legs and he was down in the green depths, sucking swirling liquid into already sodden lungs. Pummelling at the water, he fought maniacally, made the surface—gasping at the air like a drowning fish—but was soon under yet again.
He kicked weakly, but the current held him—and this time he knew he could fight no more. The cords of song still pulled and the golden-bodied nets still held him, but the warm sweetness was used up. Hauled deeper and deeper into the greenness, he was now powerless to resist.
As he sank, exhausted, limbs hanging still, he let the water fill his mouth and nose. Far above him the waves still stormed, but he was now below their baleful reach. Down here all was quiet, down here all was calm. Columns of sunlight, broken by the waves, danced around him like manic spotlights, but he knew that the darkness was coming, coming to enfold him in its cool, loving arms, coming to make his peace complete.
A yellow wave broke a mile above his face, the force of it sending a billowing spume of foam down into the depths. As it swirled around his outstretched arm, tickling at his splayed fingers, his hand closed in a disinterested reflex. He expected to see streams of bubbles slipping between his tightening fingers—but no, he still held it, soft and spongy against his palm.
A sudden beam of pure sunlight cut through the surface and hit him full in the face. He lifted his clenched fist and slowly opened it. A crumpled mass of yellow blossom sprung open on his palm—and the brightness burst in through the portholes of his eyes and flooded his skull with light.
Struggling to his feet, Loofah emerged into a chest-high sea of oilseed rape, its blossom tossing in the wind. He sneezed out a nose full of pollen-yellow mucous and wiped his streaming eyes, then noticed the sound of female voices drifting down the breeze. Three naked girls with white wings were perched on a rock a few yards away, singing and beckoning to him with outstretched arms. He waved back, but ignored their entreaties: he had to get out of this field before his hay fever suffocated him.
But as Loofah turned to go the middle girl suddenly jerked forward, her song choking in her throat. Her eyes widened with surprise and he could see why—for jutting out between her perfect breasts was a glinting barbed spike. A gout of scarlet spurted from her open mouth and the life died in her eyes, and then she fell forward into the rape, a silver arrow shaft jutting out from between her winged shoulder blades.
Loofah's cry of horror collapsed into a spluttering sneeze. The two remaining girls screamed and leapt to their feet with a flurry of flapping wings. Something flashed over the rock and the second girl juddered forward as another arrow skewered her golden throat. Her wings convulsed and she staggered forward, clutching frantically at the ungiving shaft , then crumpled down the face of the rock into the tossing yellow blossom.
The prow of a skiff now rounded the rock. It was rowed by youths in white tunics, with a similarly clad maiden standing haughtily in its bows, her raven hair flowing in the stiff breeze. She notched another arrow to her silver bow and drew. The final angel screamed in panic and leapt into the air. For a few moments she hovered over the waves, beating at the wind with frantic wings. But they couldn't hold her and with a cry of dismay she fell into the path of the boat. The huntress aimed into the churning mass of wing and girl and loosed her arrow. The scream died and the wings were suddenly still. A last golden arm rose out of the yellow waves, clawed at the air with dying fingers, then sank slowly away.
Where the angel had fallen, and around the wave-lapped sides of the rock, red poppies now bloomed among the rape.
Dentressangle dropped the little polish tin down the front of her tunic then bent to pick up a crumpled swan by the neck. The dead bird's wilting feathers were streaked yellow and red with rape pollen and blood, its wings hung limply like a pair of broken parasols, and its sinuous throat was still pierced by the arrow. She grinned, tossing back her ivy wreathed hair, and the white-garbed youth clicked his camera.
'Norbert, there was absolutely no need for this,' said Loofah.
He was sitting on the grass verge beside the track, staring miserably at his shoes and snuffling with a combination of sorrow and the remains of his hay fever. A few yards to his left one of the young oarsmen was plucking another of the murdered swans, tossing handfuls of bloody feathers into the hedge, while four of his shipmates hauled the skiff up the grass bank at the edge of the field.
'My friend, I had no choix but to kill the nasty birds,' said Dentressangle, posing for another photograph, 'For I had to be saving of you, had I not? Think what would have happened if my matelots and I had not been passing in our little bateau.'
'Nothing would have happened because I didn't need saving. Some harmless girls were singing in a field and I got a bit of hay fever, that's all.'
'Is this a harmless fille?' Dentressangle shook the swan's limp body at Loofah. He winced and turned away, unable to bear the sight of the great white bird, once alive and full of beauty, but now dead—and all, according to Dentressangle, because of him.
'My friend, the wicked oiseaux were trying to kill you—it is their way. And it is the way of I, Norbert Dentressangle, to be saving of you, to destroy those who would be doing you the harm.'
Loofah shook his head, blinking tears from his eyes.
'Come, do not be sorrowful about les cygnes mauvaises,' Dentressangle went on, throwing the limp body to one side, 'It is a time for joy—for you are once again reunited with your dear friend. And see, I am up dressed spécialement for our reunion.'
The Frenchwoman's white tunic was not much longer than Loofah's tee shirt and hugged the elegant curves of her body like a glove. The hem and neckline were decorated with twining ivy in embroidered silver, with the same motif being repeated on the quiver strap that divided her magnificent bust and around the curving limbs of her bow.
'Nicole Farhi,' she purred, caressing slender thighs, 'in the hand-spun Syrian cotton. Avec the footwear by Gianni Versace.'
This time she had dispensed with stilettos and wore sandals with tight leather strapping wound around her tanned calves. To complete the outfit, the elegant sweep of her neck was graced by a heavy collar necklace in white gold.
'Nothing but the very best for mon petit Seeker,' she simpered, 'Because I have quite forgiven you.'
'Forgiven me?'
'It was not so nice to be leaving your dear friend avec all the nasty gendarmes.'
'Oh, um, right,' stuttered Loofah, with a slightly sheepish grin, 'Er, sorry about that.'
'But I am carrying no grudge. For it is not good to be carrying a grudge, not against one's nearest and dearest.'
'No, no, of course not.'
'And now perhaps if I am showing you that there are no feelings that are hard, this will cheer you up a little—yes?'
As she leaned forward to stroke his hair, Loofah found himself staring down the front of her tunic. Her hand then slid over the back of his neck and caressed his shoulder, and he felt himself sliding forward into the warm nippled softness. But when he looked up it was a velociraptor's head that came towards him, its jaws opened for a kiss. Loofah jerked back, stifling a cry—were those fibres of bloodhound flesh trapped between the dagger teeth?
'Norbert, do you mind if I ask you something?' he said, covering his alarm, 'Would you like to travel again?'
The reptile pulled back.
'My friend?' she asked, very quietly.
'To go back to where I come from, to be something special again, like you were in the old days.'
The Frenchwoman stiffened, her lizard eyes narrowing.
'Won't that be possible for you,' Loofah went on, 'when I find the double woman?'
For a long moment Dentressangle did not reply. When at last she spoke it was with quiet deliberation.
'When la femme double appears it will be happiness enough for me to be seeing my dear friend restored to his home and chèr Monsieur Stobart with the bacon and the eggs in his fat face. This is all that Norbert Dentressangle is asking.'
'Right,' said Loofah, with some hesitancy.
'My friend, you must be careful of the slaves of the toad, they will tell you the lies of many different species. For they want that la femme will help no-one, they want that you are showing to them where she is so that they can be killing her—then, of course, you are doomed, then no-one can be saving of you, not even yours honestly.'
'I am aware that Miss Leggett and her staff do not have my best interests at heart.'
'And you must always beware of the—' the reptile shuddered, a pale fear flaring quickly in its malicious eyes '—the evil one. For it is wanting to travel and it will be stopping at nothing—and I mean rien—to help that its foul creature the Anti-Chercheur shall find the woman first.'
'I haven't forgotten about your, um, counterpart,' Loofah said, 'But don't worry, he won't be able to deceive me again—not now that we've got Dudley.'
As he pointed to the front of the Frenchwoman's dress, she seized his hand and pressed it against the soft swell of her breast.
'This is good, this is all très good.' Her features were now restored to full loveliness and she lowered her eyelids in a fluttering smile. 'And maintenant I think we seal our dear friendship before it is being—how you say?—trop tard.'
'Too late? Too late for what?'
'Come, my pretty garçon,' she purred, caressing his cheek, 'It is useless to résister the irrésistable.'
'Norbert, I…'
Two of the youths were now either side of Loofah, gently pulling open his jacket, while Dentressangle eased the tunic off her sculpted shoulders. Loofah's poor brain now swam with confusion and—despite himself—the familiar warm stickiness started to bubble down his spine. But then, as his gaze—moving of its own volition—began to caress the sinuous curves of her body, he saw between the Frenchwoman's opened thighs a white wing stretched out on the path behind her—and when he looked back to her face, he was met again by the velociraptor's deadly grin.
'Wait!' he cried, tugging his jacket closed.
'I have waited long enough,' cooed the reptile, releasing her left breast from its cotton sling.
'But I have something to tell you. Something very urgent.'
She seemed to hesitate.
'It's about the horse we were looking for,' Loofah went on, 'The Horse of Rain.'
'It is good that the finding of the cheval is soon,' said Dentressangle, making a final adjustment to her tunic.
'Very soon, Norbert; no more than minutes, in fact—which is why I must dash. And after the horse, the double woman can't be far behind, I'm sure of it.'
'And the big worm has said that the pauvre créature is very shy, yes?'
'Pathologically so, in fact. Apparently he has serious trouble making friends, hardly goes out at all.'
'And because of this you must be going to the Horse by yourself?'
'That's what the flatworm told me,' said Loofah, aware that he was gabbling, 'I know it sounds a bit strange, but he was quite insistent and—.'
'Then of course this is what you must be doing.'
Loofah started—had he heard correctly?
'It is?'
'If the big worm says you must be going to the cheval alone, then certainement you must be going alone.'
'I must? I mean—yes, I must,' Loofah bumbled, 'But usually you like to, er, keep an eye on things, as it were.'
'I trust you to do what is right, my friend, you are knowing this.'
'You—trust me?'
'Naturellement—and so the things are having no need of my eye upon them.'
'Right—um—okay.'
'And besides, I have some important business in an autre place. So if you are sure you have no time for a little…?' she said, clicking the sultry smile back into place and playfully pinching Loofah's earlobe.
'I'd love to, Norbert, really I would,' he said, trying to sound regretful, 'But you know how it is—duty calls.'
Over Dentressangle's shoulder he could see her youthful oarsmen hauling the skiff off the grassy bank and into the tossing yellow waves.
'So, my friend, until the re-seeing,' said the Frenchwoman, 'And do not forget to be at all times wearing my petit gift. It can get chilly to the bones at this time of the année and I would hate for you to be catching the coldness.'
Loofah watched as the young argonauts hauled at their oars and the skiff pitched away through the flavous swell. Their mistress stood, hands on hips, in the prow, a statuesque figurehead. The effect of her pose, however, was somewhat marred by the indecision above her shoulders; for with each pitch of the little boat her head would change from ravenous velociraptor to beautiful woman and then back again, as if some manic transplant surgeon was testing his skills to destruction. Loofah shook his head and blinked, trying to steady the picture; but to no avail—for the changes got faster and faster until the two sets of features began to blur into each other. Indeed, just before the boat disappeared out of sight behind a salient copse of ash, the final image was a steady blend: the reptile's snout and jaws, but with full red lips, the woman's sultry almond eyes set deep in lizard-skin sockets, and rich, raven locks sprouting from a scaly skull.
Loofah contemplated the confusion and sighed; it could not be resolved. In particular he was puzzled by the alacrity with which Dentressangle had departed, not even leaving one of her pretty Argive sailor-boys as a minder. The Frenchwoman's gift nestled against his neck, caressing him with its slinky skin as if trying to soothe his worry. It was like a boneless snake, almost alive: a scarf in vermilion Chinese silk by John Galliano and the first designer garment he had ever owned. Stroking his new pet like a much-loved cat, Loofah struggled to think generous thoughts about its giver.
'Murder, cold-blooded murder,' hissed the sharp breeze from behind.
Loofah tasted venom in his gorge and turned slowly. A frock-coated mirage shimmered in front of the frothy masses of hawthorn flowers; at its feet the half-plucked body of a swan lay sprawled across the track in a cloud of its own white down.
'They did try to drown me,' said Loofah, without much conviction, as a silver arrow of guilt pierced his own throat.
'A grown man drowning in a field,' sneered the hedge, 'Just like you new lot, scared of your own shadows. Not like in my day, when men were—.'
'But they were wild swans,' interrupted Loofah, 'and those can be very dangerous. I'm sure Norbert wouldn't have killed them for no reason.'
'Wild swans, eh? Look at the wing.'
The mighty limb was stretched in the dirt, once a masterpiece of aerodynamic design, now maggot food. Loofah saw at once that something was not right.
'The flight feathers have been clipped,' he said quietly.
'The impresario can't have his props flying away, can he?' whispered the wind, 'It would spoil the show.'
'So you're saying they were put there, just to scare me?'
The shimmering top-hatted head nodded against the wooded horizon.
'And killing them was—.'
'All part of the act.'
Loofah stared blankly at the mutilated wing as the implications of this revelation gripped his brain like the muscular coils of a hungry anaconda. New images now appeared, electric with urgent reality: of him being suffocated in the mass of insect breasts; of him being swallowed alive by the ravenous porcelain mouth; and of him sprouting green shoots at every touch of the seductive sapling.
'What about before? What about the termite queen and the horrible toilet?—they were trying to kill me, I know they were. Even the tree-lady tried to turn me into a plant.'
'What could be easier than fooling a gullible tourist?' whispered the May blossom.
The star of the show appeared—and just in the nick of time: Dentressangle with handgun and Raybans at the termite nest; Dentressangle the GI at the toilet, with his machine-gun spitting fire; and Dentressangle and his eco-paths in the forest glade.
'But Norbert saved me,' said Loofah, with an edge of desperation, 'Without him, I'd have been a gonner.'
'Like taking candy from a baby.'
'No! I don't believe it!'
But as Loofah looked closer he saw indeed that the termite dugs were foam rubber with painted nipples, that the toilet was a hologram, and that his sprouting skin-bark was no more than a body stocking with bits of twig stitched into it. The showman came to the front and took a bow—but the grin was theatrically fake and in the harsh glare of the limelight lizard scales now showed through melting greasepaint.
'But I don't understand—why would he do all this?'
'If you save a man's life, he becomes your friend. He trusts you—the poor fool.'
The courtesan pulled a thorn from the lolloping bloodhound's paw and it licked her reptilian cheeks in blind devotion. Loofah wriggled unhappily—pieces of a rather unpleasant jigsaw puzzle were beginning to click into place. The scarf seemed to sense his disquiet and gently caressed his neck, trying to comfort him. He patted it softly, grateful for its concern.
'What happens if I lead Norbert to the double woman?'
'My old comrade has ambitions in another place. Like the rest of us, he has never forgotten.'
Loofah swallowed hard. 'We will go together, surely?' he asked quietly.
The shape shimmered against the blossom and foliage, but made no reply.
'She can only take one?'
'One… who is two.'
The hedge's enigmatic reply sent a chilled-eel shiver down Loofah's spinal canal.
'But not both me and Norbert,' he said, in what was barely a whisper.
The translucent top hat nodded slowly in assent.
'Does he know that?'
'The relevant memorandum is in the public domain.'
With reluctant fingers Loofah pushed more jigsaw pieces into place; the picture began to form, an image that he did not like at all.
'Last time you told me that you were betrayed, you and the other travellers, when you were trying to unite against Mr Stobart.'
The shape convulsed suddenly, as if he had stabbed it.
'We could have won,' sighed the bitter breeze, 'We could have squashed the fat toad in its own slime.'
'But who was it? Who was it that betrayed you?'
'Betrayed!' hissed the wind, 'Betrayed!'
'Was it the other Norbert—the one who brought us here, me and the other one?'
It shivered quickly, its pain turning to rage.
'Or was it Norbert himself?'
The May blossom twisted and writhed behind the convulsing shape. Its fury poured through Loofah's skull like boiling lead.
'Please tell me, I must know,' he said through clenched teeth.
'Yes, it was him,' rustled the hawthorn leaves, eventually, 'If you can call that perverted thing a "him".'
'But which? Norbert or the other Norbert?'
The hedge shimmered significantly—but said nothing.
'You mean it was both of them?' asked Loofah, quietly.
'One… the other… both… it's all the same, isn't it?'
Strange images flickered on the inside of Loofah's skull, of two identical velociraptor-faced courtesans fusing into a single being in a bizarre reversal of amoeboid division. Then the first image faded and a second came slowly into focus, of himself and another—though was it really another or no more than reflection in a mirror?
'Two sides of the same coin?' he said, his voice barely audible.
'Two halves of the same whole,' confirmed the twisting briars.
Icy planarians slithered quickly across Loofah's skin and he shivered.
'I don't think Norbert sees it quite like that.'
'We never do, do we? And that is our tragedy.'
'But Norbert isn't like you, he's still—.' The hedge pulsed suddenly as if it were about to implode.
'I'm sorry, I should be more careful.'
'My old friend is a treacherous carbuncle on the face of the sweet earth,' hissed the quivering leaves, 'But he did learn something that not all of us learned: if the divided damned cannot live as one, it must live asunder—and though it may loathe itself with a purulent venom, it must never… it must never…'
The foliage choked into silence and shivered in agonising grief.
'It must never—what?'
'Harm itself,' whispered the fading breeze, 'For if one half of the same whole is lost, then…'
The edges of the mirage began to blur with pain. Loofah shook with his own sobs as the Victorian finery began to blend into the May blossom and the hawthorn leaves.
'Damned! Damned! Damned!' sighed the wind, dying in the high branches of a spreading ash.