Begin again then, where the trail runs cold...
This is the story of the people who had forgotten their own
story.
They lived, a long time from now, by the shore of a lake, in
the midst of a great and ancient forest. When the sun shone it turned the waters
of the lake to gold, and when the moon rose it changed them to silver, and all
through the night and the day the great forest breathed and its creatures
conversed with one another about what the wind and the sun and the rain were
doing. The human people had enough food to eat, and enough to do getting that
food, and enough to converse about, what with the doing and the eating and the
wind and sun and rain, so that there was hardly time between one day and the
next to snatch a minute's silence among the trees and think, or pray, or lie
still and watch the leaves turn in air.
There were other places, beyond the human village on the
lakeshore, where silence was. In the Stone Lake to the south, deep beyond
thought, the rains pooled and fish swam under the sheer walls of rock. But this
was also a favourite place to play and swim during the summer months, and the
jumping cliffs more often rang with the sounds of shouts and splashes than with
silence. To the west was a ruined place where no one but ghosts lived, and
people went to get steel and other useful things from among the heaps of rock
and pebbled glass. But here there were wolves and coywolves, and those who made
the journey went warily, with the sounds of hammers and chains ringing in their
ears as they harvested the good materials.
The best place to find silence was on the eastern shore of
the lake, where the rays of the setting sun from across the water stole through
the pine branches and turned the air to mystery and breathlessness. Young
people would steal across the lake in canoes and lie down on soft beds of
needles, watching the blue sky through the branches darkening into night,
drinking in silence. In winter too, it was quiet there, for no fires were lit
and no one chopped wood or broke the ice to fish. And when the young people
returned home from the Wood-Beyond-the-Water, the wind seemed different to
their ears, whispering through the branches: 'elsewhere, elsewhere,' it seemed
to say. Old people would see the young ones sigh, and smile, knowing in their
own hearts what it was like to be young.
This was true for years beyond memory, but there lived a
young man who wanted more. He sought the Wood-Beyond more often than the
others, and each time he returned from the silence of the pine groves his heart
was more troubled than before. At last the words 'elsewhere, elsewhere' echoed
in his ears unceasingly, and he came before the elders and said,
“I have it in my mind to cross the water and settle forever
in the Wood-Beyond. There I have found silence and deep peace, and having
tasted that I know that this village is no home of mine. I will take with me as
many as will come.”
“Do not go,” said the elders, “for when you leave, silence
will come to where we are and remain.”
But the young man was a fiery heart, and he spoke to his
friends about his wish. Many decided to go with him, and they packed up their
tents and trowels and dishes and deerskins and adzes and axes and withies and
washing machines and seeds and smithies and all of their family remembrances,
and went in a great fleet of canoes to the eastern shore of the lake. They
landed there and built a new village, and dwelt among the tall
groves they had grown to love.
The summer passed, and winter came, and the young people
learned that the soil in the Wood-Beyond was not strong enough to return them a
sufficient harvest. Before winter was at its deepest they left their village
and moved out onto the land in smaller groups to hunt and to trap, scattering
north, south, and east into the deep silence of the forest.
When they gathered under the pines again in spring, leaner
than when they had landed, each talked about the place they had wintered in,
comparing this land to that land and conversing about which had the best game,
the best soil, the best access to water. All agreed that the Wood-Beyond could
not support them, but no one could agree on where was best to move. An argument
arose, and as the young man who had led them listened to the noise of voices
rise through the branches he felt the peace of the Wood-Beyond seep away
forever into the earth. It could never be called Home. The wind off the lake
picked up and made the pine trees sway, and it seemed to him that they
murmured, 'elsewhere, elsewhere'. Finally he spoke, urging his companions to
move further east, and this they did.
They found a new place and built another village in a valley
with rich earth and a broad stream with many fish. They planted and hunted and
worked at the crafts that pleased them, but as the corn came up they saw that
it was diseased, and that they had built on poisoned soil. Again they broke the
village before midwinter and scattered north, south, and east, and again they
gathered in spring to debate where next to move. This time the young man who
led them thought he heard the whole valley stir with the spring wind and cry
'elsewhere! elsewhere!' Again they picked up and moved eastward in search of a
place to call Home.
This continued for many years, for each place they chose
proved wanting in some way or another: one was sheltered from the wind but
flooded too easily, one had rich soil but no game, one was abundant in game but
the springs carried the taste of bad metals. Each spring they picked up again
and moved, sometimes northward, sometimes southward, but always further to the
east. Children were born among them who had no memory of the birthplace of
their parents. Some people died from the hardship of their journeys, and things
were lost along the way, things that held memories that could not be replaced.
Nowhere could they find the peace they sought.
When the young man had become a man of middle age, with
forest-born children of his own, they came at last to the shore of the great
sea. As he looked out over the endless waters he heard the restlessness in his
own heart echoed and re-echoed: “ELSEWHERE, ELSEWHERE,” shouted the waves, and
he was moved almost to tears.
“Here is the answer to our long wanderings,” he said, “for
when first we yearned to cross the water, our yearning was only an echo of this
greater yearning. Let us build greater canoes than before, and paddle across
the Great Water to where we shall find our Home.”
Many were troubled and would not consent at first, but his
fiery heart was strong, and eventually the people took their axes and adzes and
made canoes from the forest that were deep and strong. Then they put their
children and their belongings into the canoes and began the journey over wave
and along the pathways of the wind. After long and harrowing labours, they
reached at last a small village on a distant shore. As the dawn broke over the
hills before them, they landed their canoes and approached the center of the
village, where a woman walked alone in the shadow of the clock tower, cradling
her infant child in her arms.
The leader of the wanderers approached her. “Is this Home?”
he asked, his voice trembling.
“No,” she said. “I have lived here all my days, and I have
never heard it called Home. What you seek is elswhere, elsewhere.”
At this the man’s long-suffering heart broke, and he wept
there before the woman and all his people. But she was kind, and she asked him
to tell why they had come. He told her of his people’s long wanderings, how
they had lost so much, and how even their memories had perished as the young
children grew up without a home. “That is why we sought, here beyond the sea,
our last hope of finding peace,” he said, with tears in his eyes.
The woman nodded, and looked at all of them standing there,
and then she said, “There is a place where silence is, and deep peace, a place
which is called Home. But why did you ever leave it?”
And they knew that she was right, and as one they looked
back at their own shadows stretching westward across the water.
“But please,” said the woman, as they made ready to go, “take
me with you. I am an outcast among my own people, and there is no home here for
my son.”
And that is how Hobart the Hunter and Marsiah, Mother of
Tales, joined the Wanderers and journeyed Home, there to begin again in a new
land.
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