Silence is Broken

                                                             Silence is Broken

            

      In the valley. The dry, barren wasteland amid the arid desert rocks, where the bald Eagle flew.  This was their homeland.  A vast expanse of land that bordered the river, edged across the lakes by forests that rose high up onto the plains. Their village of conical tents covered in animal hide. They had lived here since the beginnings of time, they were the ancestors of the future. Their ways the same as their forebears, unchanged, and never changing. Amid this township a huge fire burned. It smoked and crackled. These people had gathered. Horses neighed while they sang, chanted in a low rhythmic singular voice. 

       The witchdoctor danced, he whooped, he shook burning twigs before their faces. His song to rouse the dead and numb the mind to the drums that beat the heart of the village. He promised her that as the sun went down so the “silence would break”. The sound would herald the end of the old and bring in the new. Mikita could not understand this. There was no new world to come without her husband. Her life had ended. She was old, used. Without him she would be an outcast from the village. The day her husband took the brunt of that Moose’s antler was the day her world ended too. She felt her duty would be to burn with him.

      Mikita covered her eyes, fearing she would faint at the thought. An arm touched hers bringing her back with a kind smile. Did they expect this of her?

      Then several more joined the gathering. Some danced, their tanned faces painted, their hair clamped under their feathered headdresses. Men. Warriors. Would  one of these fine men seek her for their wife? 

      She watched blandly as women fussed over their beads and swayed to the rhythm. 

      The drums throbbed. Drawing them. Taking from them the truth of the present and giving them the old truths of the fathers. 

       Mikita wanted this. The present was too painful. Too horrible.  

      She wanted to be lost to the vapours, the course smoke of the fires to tingle in her throat and scents of the burning sticks to numb her mind. 

     Singing, whooping filled the air, chanting waving, dancing. It was frenetic, yet mournful. A desperation, an urgency of their need. The spirits of their fathers so readily ignored them, easily took from them that assurance that the afterlife was one intoxicated dance away around and ever round the blazing fire.     

      Mikita watched. 

      The sinking sun cast orange and purple shadows on the calm lake. The wooden boat was set into the oily waters. They were near the end. The single boat glided over the still water, knowingly taking the boat, knowingly treasuring and welcoming its only passenger wrapped in a shroud, lying with all life gone.

         

        A whoosh. A flaming arrow was soared toward the boat. A gentle thud then a ball of roaring flames as the boat was engulfed.

     The  world silenced as they turned to the banks and watched: in profound silence. 

    Such silence as had never been known. The silence of knowledge, of anticipation. 

     Mikita tightly clutched Nerin’s hand. They waited an eternity. Until finally through the fire, white eyes formed, then up rose the grey head of a wolf. Mikita’s heart skipped a beat. Nerin smiled. “Is it him?” he whispered. She breathed a sigh.

    From the far off mountains a lone wolf bayed up at the solitary moon.

©️2016 Lorraine Poulter