The Golden Barge

Written in 1957.

City-troubled but untroubled, the river flooded silently through the dawn mist. Drifting banks or early fog shrouded the cluttered townscape: the twisting alleyways, the jagged spires and ant-heap tenements.

Soon, soon the sun would burn through and dissolve the looming morning mystery. But for the moment Jephraim Tallow could sit, look down at his misshapen, strangely proportioned body and wonder.

Then it was that the golden barge, drifting but purposeful, emerged from the glowing haze, burning brightly with an inner light, to fade again, unexplained, silent.

Jephraim Tallow knew then that he had to follow, alone, that lure, the mystic enticement that would lead him down the river, deep into the fabled downstream lands of war, of famine and enchantment...