Читать книгу Doggerland - Ben Smith - Страница 10

It ends with a wave. A single wave spreading across the horizon. A neat crease in the surface of things. As it spreads, it grows in height – ten feet, twenty feet, sixty feet. It hits a low island. There is barely a pause. Just, perhaps, a slight adjustment in direction and flow as the wave bends, folds, then passes on, leaving behind nothing but open sea.

So, water completes its work – of levelling, of pressing in at edges, of constantly seeking a return to an even surface, a steady state. And now it is only the way the sea peaks and rises into sudden, steep waves that hints at the landscape underneath – a ridge that was once an island; an island that was once a coastline; a coastline that was once a range of hills at the heart of a continent; a continent that was once frozen and covered over by ice.

For a hundred thousand years the water waited, locked up as crystal, sheet and shelf. All was immobile, but for the slow formation of arc and icicle, which was the water remembering the waves it used to be and the waves it would become again. The only sound was the crackle of frozen mud and ice rind, which was the water, down to its very molecules, repeating its mantra: solidity is nothing but an interruption to continuous flow, an obstacle to be overcome, an imbalance to be rectified.