Conclusion
by Axioma
by Axioma
It is the summer of the South, quiet and hot. The sounds of waves and wind in the grass are like slow breathing of the land. To his right the hills rise, scattered with occasional trees among the yellow blades, and to his left an infinite blue sea sparkles in the light of the midday sun.
His horse topples under him suddenly. It is dead before it truly hits the ground. He has been anticipating this and leaps off before it can crush his legs beneath his weight. He is not surprised – the horse has been slowly dying for a while now, his ministrations to its needs actually accelerating the process. Now, he knows, hardly anything is left of its brain – he has slowly been killing the nerves to prevent the beast from feeling the pangs of hunger and exhaustion. It has been ridden into death and never felt a thing.
He is glad of the wide, black hat that shields his face from the glare, as he digs a grave on a rocky beach with his hands. It takes him the rest of the day, and the stars are well out when the hole is big enough to permit the horse's entire body. He covers it with stones, erecting a cairn. He feels a strange debt to the animal he has driven into death. It is a good cairn.
The scenery does not change much for the rest of the night. He travels on foot, and around him, night insects hum strange songs beyond the understanding of mortals. He does not understand them either, but he hears the song altered by his presence, feels it dipped in some dark, inhuman presence. Through the night fields he walks, his trail a wake of subtle discord. Then he is past and the insects take up their song again, and all is as it was.
There is a dawn and another day after it. Idly, he begins to entertain the notion that he has passed beyond all the lands of mortals and gods, that there are no living things here save the little minstrels of the night. It is not so, of course, but it keeps his mind occupied for a while.
Then, at dusk, a change. From afar, he sees a strange speck in the east. Soon he can make it out even against a darkening sky, a cottage near the beach, a small wooden boat leaning against one side. He knows he must have been seen by now – in his black cloak and hat, he stands out in the sun-bleached land like a fly on a coat of gold. He does not quicken his stride.
She comes out of the house to look at him, draped in a shawl that once held a pretty pattern of red, now faded to the same color as the rest of the fabric. She is old and wizened, her face a mask of dry wrinkles.
“Good evening, grandmother,” he says, a motionless silhouette on her porch set against a blood red sun. His voice is soft and calm. “Who is the master of this house?”
She looks at him for a while, eying the wrapped parcel slung over his back. When she speaks, she is cautious, reedy. “This is the house of Naph Aum Dachakak, stranger.” She nods, closing her eyes as she does so. “Do you seek hospitality and shade?”
“I do,” he says.
“Then come in. The roof is yours.”
They are in one of the two rooms now. The ceiling is just high enough so that he does not need to bend down when he stands. He sits in a wicker chair and runs one finger around the edge of the bowl filled with sweetbreads the grandmother has put on the table before him. They look ancient, beyond stale.
She turns from a cupboard, where she has been rifling through a basket of more bread. “Will you eat, stranger?”
“Yes,” he lies. He feels safe about lying.
“Good,” the grandmother nods. “Bread is life!” She takes the sweetbreads from the cupboard and piles them on those already in the bowl. Several fall out and bounce off the table and onto the floor. She seems not to notice. The new sweetbreads seem as stale as the ones already in the bowl.
“Where is master Naph Aum Dachakak?” he asks her, ignoring the food.
“Naum?” she asks, as if surprised he knows the name. “Why, he has been dead these past five years. I buried him myself. He's with the Dragons now.”
There is silence.
“Do you...enjoy the bread?” she asks finally.
“Yes,” he says. “It is a tribute to your kitchen.”
“Naum always said I wasted too much sweetflower, but he had a sweet-tooth nonetheless. He said it was a waste of money, but oh, how he did ever love those sweetbreads...” She starts out with a grin that shows more hole than teeth, but towards the end her words become longing, melancholy.
“Did you love him very much?” he asks.
“Yes, I...Yes, I did.” She sounds confused, her eyes peering into the distance as if trying to remember something very important. “I'm sorry, stranger, we old people do talk. May I offer you some sweetbreads? It is not much, I admit, but it's better than going hungry!”
“Yes, please, bread would be just perfect, grandmother.”
She gives him a smile, then piles more sweetbreads on the table. They fall over eagerly. He picks one up and balances it on top of the mound already in the bowl.
“Is it good?”
“Perfect. Where are your children, grandmother?”
She doesn't answer.
“Are they dead?”
“Yes,” she whispers, and looks out the window again. The stars shine in the East and the last light of the sun sinks in the West, and again, there is the sense that she is struggling to recall something, yet coming up empty handed. “I...buried them next to my husband. The years have been hard, stranger.” He no longer thinks she is speaking to him. “The years have been hard...” Then she looks at him again, as if seeing him for the first time. “What is your name, stranger?”
He doesn't want to answer. He waits to see if she will forget and offer him the sweetbreads again.
“Stranger?” she asks. She leans forward across the table, then takes hold of his hat and puts it on the table among the scattered debris.
His skin has the pallor of the dead, and his eyes are like black marble.
She doesn't scream. She only sags backward and exhales loudly, as if she has been holding her breath. “It's you, isn't it...Father Death,” she says. “You've come for me.” When he makes no reply, she goes on, “I have been wondering when you'd come.”
“You've been waiting.” It's not a question.
“Yes,” she whispers, half looking as if she is going to collapse on the spot, all her energy sapped. He rises suddenly in his chair and grabs hold of her hand. His hands are gloved in soft leather, and he massages the back of her hand with his fingers.
“Tell me, grandmother. Where is your family buried?”
They walk down the beach together, the tall dark man and the wizened old woman, holding hands like lovers. Above them, the sky is majestic with stars, and the only sound is the lapping of the waves. After an hour's walk she falters, so he picks her up and carries her like a child, her arms thrown around his neck and talking softly to herself about Naum. Once she asks him if he's met her husband, and he shakes his head and tells her that no, he hasn't.
“Turn South here,” she tells him eventually, and he turns away from the sea and walks toward the unseen hills in the night. Before long they come to a tree amid the grasses, tall and straight, pointing towards the heavens like a spear-point. At the base of the tree, there are four graves, small mounds of stone with burnt-down candles and dry flowers.
“Naum is in the big one on the left,” she says as he sets her down. She can still stand, it seems, but he lets her hold on to his arm for support. “Then there's Pemhen – he was sixteen, and Chama and Aund were nine and ten. Chama helped me dig graves for both her older brothers, and she never complained or cried until it was done.”
“You come here often.”
“Yes.” She looks away, towards the graves, then slips out of his grasp and bends down to stroke the stones of her husband's mound. “Once every week, I come and talk to them. It's not much, but it's all I have to give them, Father Death. Only time.”
“You remember the dead,” he says, “and you honor their memory. What more can the dead hope for, if not the remembrance of the living?”
“Pemhen dreamed of becoming a soldier, you know. So did Chama. She would have wanted to be anything Pemhen was. But it all ended here.”
“It's not so bad.”
“It's not?” She gives him a smile, and he sees her teeth are mostly gone. Then she takes a deep breath and looks him in the eyes. “Alright, Father Death.”
He nods solemnly, steps forward and cups her face in his hands, bending over her. “You're ready.” His lips touch hers and a shudder passes through her entire body. Then she falls to the ground, limp.
He sets to digging another grave.
In the morning he heads East once more, and in the distance, cities glitter. Now I come, he thinks. Now I arrive.
His conclusion is still far.
