Bag of Weasels. Chapter 6

We bobbed round the edge of the brown water, looking for access. Waterlogged wooden pillars poked out and up over our heads, and in between there slid a recess of mud that sloped up to a possible route.
Our boat wedged into the ancient slime, but our landing failed: the mud sucked and pulled and was loathe to let us cross, and our floundering drew the beady eyes of crows that picked amongst the green-slimed rocks scattered and heaped against the line of the wooden shore wall.
We pushed out again. Now, the river took us round and under a causeway, behind the wall, into a bare bright glass fortress. We had broken the seal and come in. We scrambled up steps and into an alien London.
Towering walls of mirrored glass tore up the landscape in predictable lines and forced us to travel in vast right angles, across bare laid wide pavements that offered no shelter.
I'd had places to go here once: spaces and places now behind iron fences, sealed off with huge boards, and filled with dead harmony.
"This land was alive once, said Ralph grimly. "Empty and thriving.
A house in the docklands, a refuge, an island in an ocean of gridlike composition: now gone.
He stared into the girders and plastic and glass that clogged the old refuge: "It has been killed.
We were being squeezed.
Keeping apace in the mirrors skipped two other splashes of life: a large dark figure with short grey hair and messy grey beard, green trench coat flying back cape-like, and a taller, straggly wild haired thing, all arms legs and elbows, a large white feather sticking out of its head. We looked at them and they looked at us. They smiled their encouragement and we pressed on.
We came to the Aspen Way. The traffic sped fast and deadly, but we danced through the gaps with urgent skill and into streets proper.
But the streets were changed. Their scruffy dog charm was worn out and tired, and all was closed to us: shops shut their eyes, refused to bear witness. We walked alone, fast and silent through kebab wrapper tumbleweed.
And yet.
Something Watched: I was sure there were Shadows where the sun should have hit.
"I think I'm getting unwell, I said.
"It's not you, said Ralph. That was sort of comforting; it supplanted my concerns with deeper, stranger ones.
Stamp stamp head bent don't look behind. It's not me. It's out there. It's not me. Stamp stamp till the streets ran out. And then they did.
Waste ground is sacred; covered by goat-paths worn in over time by wild kids and drinkers and rejects from the street lights, these paths tripped us round green stinking still-water and dead rusted structures, scorch marks from tyre fires, never-seen gatherings between the brick piles. Witches. Where grass grew yellow, fed on chemicals. Where the sky got big. This was still the city, but this was my patch ' my back to nature. My terms. The shadows stayed out and the sun shone again.
But we finally wound round and out, back into the streets.
Not far now.
"All back to my house, I quipped to a silent Ralph.