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~ Heathen Stories and New Myths ~

In the Woods

I was lost. Very lost. The kind of lost where you can climb the tallest tree around and still not see a hint of a street light or a lamp.
I had been walking for days, you see. There are trees here. Old trees. Trees that were here before the dawn of civilization. Trees that had seen the rise and fall of the empires of man. I felt as if no one had ever been here before I. Closer to the sky was I now. The valleys falling from me as I ascended the old man to get my bearing of direction.

The sky, turned the color of life's water, told me I should find my nature's bed as Sunna's lullaby is scored in the air in gusts of night's dust. As the sky fades to black and the eyes of gods blinking peer down on my seclusion, I must make my own light. A small fire built under a low, sappy pine serves as well as any hall for the purposes of any solemn traveler. Long into the night, I was restless, pensive, waiting for something, though I didn't know what. Just as I was thinking what had caused this disquiet and subtle anxiety in my mind, I was struck with an answer like a lightning bolt, in the form of a midnight guest. There were three knocks of wood on stone, and I peered from under the low-slung branches of my makeshift hall.

An old man, as tall as the trees surrounding us looked down at me. "Do you have any more room under that tree, boy? The night has taken a toll on these old bones." I invited him in, and old he was. Impossibly old. Though not frail for his seemingly ancient shell. He was weathered, as a man who has seen too much, glad and grievous. We said nothing for some time, as I drank water from my bag and my guest hummed quietly to himself, a wisp of laughter crossing his face now and then.

Eventually, something had to be said. "What brings you out this far? I thought I was alone for miles in every direction." I could only ask the first obvious question.
"The same could be said for you, my friend." He replied as smoothly as if he were expecting the question.
I don't know why I was being so honest with a complete stranger, but it just came out.
"I was trying to escape." "Well then," the old man laughed, "the same could be said for me!"
His laugh, so full of mirth seemed to cause even our little fire to grow brighter.

We talked long into the night, exchanging our dreams and wishes for life and for the world. I told him that I wished I could stay out here, away from the modern world.
"Oh, do you now? Just escape it all, and live with the earth? I've heard it before. I've done it before. I was a wanderer and a hermit. A poet and a warrior. I've done much in my life, boy, and I'll tell you this. You can't be alone all the time. Man rejoices in man, you know."
"Oh I know I can't be alone. I just wish...I wish I could have lived so long ago. I was born far too late. I could have been a king or a fighter or a farmer or any number of things. Simpler life and simpler world."
"Simple! You've had your dreams, yes?"
"Of course! Most nights. So vivid, they are, you wouldn't believe! I feel as if I might never wake up, sometimes."

 "Tell me boy, have you ever been the explorer? The explorer on the open sea, no sense of where or what, only why! The searching, the wandering, the discovery your all-consuming goal. Your friends and family you may never see again, and remain lost in the depths of the ocean's black for all time? And then, the morning comes when you see the green of land explode over the endless watery expanse, and you can do nothing but scream out with the sheer, careless, frivolous joy of the thing? Have you ever been the warrior, fighting for his land and his king? Knowing only what is right and what is wrong and the only way to solve it is on the field of battle? That place, a place where the treaties of compromise are written not in ink but in the blood and sweat of the chaos of war. That place, where on the side good, or the side of ill, nothing matters but the sound of steel on steel and hammers on stone, and all men are equal."

The old man's voice is shaking with passion, and tears stream down his face, weeping for a world he can not have ever known. But he must have. His fervor is that of an ancient king, watching and waiting for a time to rise again. Due in part to the smoke filling our tree-home, my sight is obscured, but I do not see a grizzled old man, but a warrior-god, a harbinger of storms. We are on the open sea, he and I. On the field of battle, casting words only spoken in halls above the clouds. Screaming from mountaintops. Screaming hails to gods from their very feet.

It's dawn, and there's smoke rising from my fire pit. I am alone, and shivering cold. It's time to set out for my next destination, my next discovery, my next encounter. I peel apart the branches, and see two sets of footprints entering my tree.
And, of course, not a print to be seen walking away.

© Zachary Nicastro
 

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