‘I hope so too.’
‘Hope is all we have.’
‘And each other.’
They enter the woods and stop and wait and listen. The packed trees flatten the day. Dark illusions are at play.
What sunlight penetrates here is shaped and trapped; is reduced to rectangles there on the ground.
They hear no voices, nor see any signs of life such as footmarks or scorched circles. They smell no latrines. The dogs instinctively corral the swine into a cluster and the man scratches behind their ears to reward them.
That night after they have found water, and they have all drunk from it until their trunks become swollen, he hog-ties the front legs of the swine with lengths of dried gut so that they must sit slumped forward, capable only of dragging their back legs, and when they do they scrape away the skin, and it hurts, so they don’t. He feeds them the last of the nuts. They settle.
The man and woman are deep in the bracken, hidden from view. Here they press down a hide mattress then they lie on it close together in the thin, dry darkness, their arms around one another, their mouths open, breaths combining, and they dream of the sun and great stones and the huge waterfall of home until the birdsong is loud and the sun is stabbing at their eyes.
Only when the man goes to check on the swine does he see that one is missing.
He uses his hands to count again because he knows he has as many as he does fingers, but this time there are more fingers than swine.
He wades into the bracken, first in one direction and then the other. It has not been disturbed beyond the circle that has been flattened by them. It is unfathomable.
The man crouches down in the dirt to look for tracks, but the swine have scratched and swept the dust there so that it is impossible to see any other markings. Their scat is everywhere, strong. He studies the stalks and none seem snapped or bent.
The coolness of the early day is already slipping away, and his temples and back are wet with sweat.
The man wades further away into the bracken and the waxy fronds brush against his legs. The woman sees him and says, ‘What?’, but he doesn’t reply as he circles the camp now, pushing through the plants and looking this way and that. He feels first panic and then fear, then anger, and then he arrives at resignation.
He returns to the swine and slowly begins to untie them. Each one stands up, stretches, and then begins to snuffle at the ground.
The woman is by his side. He points to them and in turn holds up his fingers. ‘How?’ says the woman, her eyes widening. ‘Where?’
The man shrugs and shakes his head.
They both look beyond the ferns and into the trees and see that the sun is high, and they watch for a moment as beams of light play across the crisp carpet underfoot.
Here, beyond the towering columns of ancient tree trunks, unseen in the unknown beyond, a pod of birds noisily take flight.
She uses the sun to guide them. They walk for a long time but they keep stopping to check the direction or to drink water, and to wash their faces and cool their feet, and to do the same for the beasts. They remove their rough garments and submerge them, then wear them wet. The dogs come alive in the water, and enjoy having it splashed in their faces. They try to bite gulps of it, as if it were a solid thing. The hogs trough and grunt and relish being scratched. They leave a trail of dung, though the man notices that the pellets are getting smaller, darker, drier and less frequent. He keeps thinking about the missing hog, and when he does he turns back and looks over his shoulder, and he sees the fields and hills rolling away behind them, and he sees the dotted knots of dense woodlands that link together to form throughways for the bears and the wolves and the deer and the foxes and the lynx and the polecats and all the other animals that stalk one another in the permanent death dance undertaken by all living things.
The distant sky rumbles but there are no tumbling clouds or streaks of white or purple light, and the sky has not turned the copper colour of limestone water as it does on other such days that harbour storms.
They are in the grasslands and their clothes are covered in burrs, seeds and seed heads, and marked with smudges of pollen.
The man and woman look at each other, and the dogs stop, their pricked ears turning towards the source of the sound. Their tails go down, curling tight between their back legs. Though their view is obscured, they lower their bodies and fix their eyes towards the top edge of the fields. The rumbling gets louder and the man gestures with a hand for them to crouch. The sky signals no storm, yet it is wracked with the thud of something powerful, something larger than any living thing. A deep drumming.
Then suddenly shapes snap across the field line: black furious shifting shapes in a race across the path ahead. There is much jostling and there is the sound of snorting and breathing too, and hooves hammering at the hard loess as more horses than either of them can count go charging through the grasslands at the high end of the meadow. The two of them are close enough to see their manes as they bounce and thrash and their tails swing; close enough to feel the air around them become changed.
In amongst the herd are younger ponies running at full speed to keep up, their coats shining in the glare like minerals reflecting the sun. One or two falter in the grass beds but none fall.
Some of the horses trail strings of phlegm from mouths whose lips are peeled back to reveal big strong yellow teeth set like rocks in pink gums, and patches of white foam smear their rounded trunks.
They move as one.
Their twitching nostrils are wet and flared and their eyes are wide and black and wild as they search for something unseen, the target of their desires buried deep within the collective abandon of the wild charge, and the man and the woman grab on to the dogs, relieved that the horses are not running towards them, where they and their caravan would surely be trampled into the cracked earth.
The swine are disturbed but they cannot see the horses as they rumble off into the distance, a billowing cloud of dust and pollen and dandelion puffs the only sign of their passing. A deep silence settles across the plain.
The man and the woman smile, aware that they have witnessed wonder and beauty.
Tonight, in sleep, they hope to see the wild horses once again.
In the trees a tangle of vines block their trail once more.
They hang heavily weighted with great bunches of green grapes. Spherical, shining and succulent, the fruits are framed by fans of leaves and creeping stalks that wend their way around branch and limb.
The woman twists one off and sniffs it. She pops the skin and tastes the sweet spray of the juice, warm and sugary. The taste of the sun.
She chews through the flesh and before she has finished is already stuffing more into her mouth. One, two, three. The man does the same and soon they are crammed full and they are laughing through dripping lips. And then after they have each swallowed the grapes they kiss, their mouths meeting in a place beneath the branches.
They pull apart and she takes several grapes and crushes them underfoot. She says a prayer. She stirs them into the dirt. The skin and the flesh. The seeds. She mixes it all into the dry mud.
The man goes to feed the dogs some of the grapes too but she halts him by gripping his forearm.
‘No,’ she says. ‘They’re bad for dogs. Remember?’
Instead they feed the grapes to the pigs, who eat until they are belching and farting, and then the man and the woman carefully pick several more bunches and turn back from the impenetrable mass to pick a new way through the sunken maze of this island.
They walk through the trees for a long time and then they walk through the fields for an even longer time and sometimes they talk.
‘What do you think is past these fields?’ she asks.
‘We have spoken of this already.’
‘I know. But what do you think is past these fields?’
‘Trees.’
‘And what do you think is past the trees?’
He scratches at his beard
before he speaks.
‘More trees.’
‘And after them?’
He hesitates. He thinks for a moment.
‘More fields.’
Now it is her turn to hesitate.
‘It can’t just go on forever.’
‘Why not?’
‘Just fields and trees.’
‘Yes. Yes, it can.’
‘Just fields and trees forever.’
He nods.
‘And big rocks and deep, dark rivers. And hills and plains. And the sky and the gods above and the gods below. And – ’
‘Yes?’ She urges him on. She wants there to be more.
‘And you know what else.’
For a moment she is puzzled. And then she remembers. Her face brightens.
‘And the circle.’
‘And the circle,’ he repeats.
‘In the centre of it all.’
‘In the centre of it all,’ he repeats in a whisper so quiet she doesn’t hear him.
Coarse gritstone that knuckles its way out of the earth and sparkles in the sun soon becomes buff limestone. The sun paints patterns upon the rock from a different palette.
Where the land falls away they see great plunging slabs of pale stone the colour of a few drops of blood in a small bowl of water. Like the open wounds of the earth exposed.
The scars of the gods.
Later, crouched low in a copse that is a green fortress on the yellowing thirsty plains, the night is disturbed by sounds that scare them. Howls and screams, and once a low grunting of something close by, urgent and ravenous. The dogs and the swine are restless too so the man sits up to keep watch. He has his spear and he has his slingshot but neither are any use against the flies that flit around his head. He swats them away but each time many more return. He watches the woman, who is sleeping now on the dried beast’s hide, curled on one side, and he feels something strong inside him, a feeling that keeps him warm through the cooling moments of night, a feeling of a need to protect but also a reliance upon her too, and he wonders if this will be the time, whether this trip will give them what they want, what they crave and desperately desire, whether adhering to the rituals and appeasing the gods in the centre of it all will bear bounty, and then he thinks about what he would do without her, and how without her he would be here all alone, just him and the beasts, and he is very scared and very awake.
They first feel its pull.
They have felt it from down a dale, through a river and across several hills. They are aware of its proximity and then they finally come upon it, rising before them.
Perhaps they have been pulled towards it from the moment they left their home many mornings ago, for they know that such things are not built by chance.
Strategically placed at the peak of the land, there it is. A sacred circle of stones.
An avenue of rocks to guide them to it.
They see the smouldering remains of last night’s fires first, the damp blue plumes of morning neglect.
They see the huts dotted around the place.
They see and hear and smell the animals that are corralled or tethered to posts – swine and oxen and cows and sheep and unfamiliar creatures that look like sheep but aren’t sheep and in fact have blank eyes and faces that make them look more like people.
They see bowls, and tools for tilling and sowing, and bags of grain.
They see men and women. Many men and women, unfolding themselves towards the sun’s embrace.
And they see the circle of stones in the centre of it all.
The stones stand straight and true like young trees. They grow from the soil, twelve of them arranged in as perfect a circle as a man could measure.
The woman notices they have been shaped and sculpted, these stones, and that they bear the scars and scuff marks of hammer and chisel. They are as similar and as different as people are to one another, twelve individuals belonging to a greater community; they have a commonality, a sense of belonging. There is a continuity in the way the circle goes on forever.
The man notices that beyond the circle’s perimeter a trench has been dug, its contents used to create surrounding earthworks that act as protector to the monuments without obscuring them from view.
It all stands here for a reason too big to understand, yet they both know that they believe in the reason.
Each stone, thinks the woman, has a character, and none is to be feared. In fact, she wants nothing more than to touch them, and to walk to their centre, and to sit there, and feel the sky overhead, and the sun on her cheek, and then lie back and sleep deeply.
But there are other people here. Some look on, and one or two begin to wander over, and the dogs whine and gurgle, but the man tells them to be quiet, and still the woman does not feel fear.
She feels happiness, or something stronger, stranger.
A feeling beyond words.
A woman approaches them. She is tall and dark and is followed closely by another woman, who is even darker and more beautiful. They squint into the sunlight and then shade their eyes.
‘We welcome you,’ says the first. ‘Do you farm?’
The man nods. ‘We farm. Yes.’
‘What do you bring to trade?’
‘Swine, tools and skills. Seeds. And goodwill.’
The tall dark woman nods. She smiles.
‘Do you stay here always?’ asks the man.
‘No one stays here always. But there is a place for you to rest.’
She points towards the huts that are scattered around the field beyond the stone circle. They look like large bowls woven from branches, upended and big enough to sleep two.
‘There is a place for everyone,’ adds the beautiful woman, but when she speaks they see that she has no teeth at all, and her voice is a soft rasp formed by the softness of her troubled mouth. ‘If you have an offering.’
‘We do,’ says the woman. She points to one of the swine. ‘We lost one on the way.’
‘Or it was stolen,’ adds the man.
‘There is no stealing here,’ says the tall woman.
‘Good.’
‘There is no killing here,’ says the woman without teeth.
‘We only want to appease the gods and receive our reward.’
‘This is the place for that. This is the time for that.’
‘That is what we heard,’ says the woman. ‘That is what we hoped.’
There is a moment’s silence, and then the tall dark woman speaks.
‘The swine must have a thirst.’
The man nods.
‘And the dogs,’ she says. ‘You should rest before night.’
‘Before night?’ says the woman.
‘Everything happens upside down here,’ says the beautiful woman with no teeth. ‘Upside down and inside out. Light is dark and dark is light. No days and no nights. Wrongways and gods-wise, all happens at sunrise.’
‘There is water over there,’ says the tall dark woman, pointing to a ditch.
The two women turn and walk away.
They sleep until just before sundown and awake to activity.
There is a crowd now, of people like them, men and women together, without children, farmers mainly, drawn from afar. They are gathering in clusters on the earthworks, by the ditch and in the stone circle, and already many processes of bartering and negotiation are underway. Transactions are taking place.
There is much to trade, laid out right there on the arid patch or, in the case of the animals, tethered close by. There are farmers offering seeds, bulbs and cuttings. Others have pigs, cows, sheep. Murderous hunting dogs and tiny puppies too. There are bitches in season, bitches for breeding. Stacks of baskets, sacks, purses and pouches to be swapped. Flint heads, spears, slingshots, cudgels. Swaddling clothes and bowls. Cured hides. Leather balls and spools of twine.
There are cheeses and balls of butter. Sides of pork and ham.
Nuts and dried fruit. Beans and lentils and flax.
Honey, oil, wax.
Not everything serves a practical purpose. Some offer small items to be enjoyed as luxuries, such as colourful stones and necklaces made from shells or animal skulls tinted purple with dyes made from berries. There are ornamental carvings from horn and bone. Woven headbands. One woman is offering intricate hair plaits.
And in amongst the traders are several solitary men. They walk alone between and around the stones, and now and again they stop and pick up an object. They slap the haunch of a swine or check the teeth of a sheep. They look at those who are trading and they exchange a word or two, sometimes more. Some just walk on by, saying nothing.
The man and the woman hastily wash the dust from the swine and let the curious dogs lead them to the marketplace.
They all draw interest – man, woman and animals alike.
They are viewed with similar wandering glances from the other trading farmers, but especially from several of the solitary men. One in particular watches from afar, half obscured by one of the large standing stones. The woman is distracted with the dogs but the man sees him and offers the smallest nod of the head. The man behind the stone just stares back.
Darkness is falling, though it is not true darkness, but instead the thin, charged light of the longest, brightest day, when the air appears to be stretched so tightly that it hums, and the grass rustles with life, and night never really presents itself, and is merely the day resting for a while.
The man who was lurking behind the stone slowly walks over and stands before them. They see that though he is short and his shoulders broad he has one arm that is small and withered. It has the dimensions of that of a small child. His chest and arms are thick with curled hairs that have turned a honey colour in the sun.
‘What do you offer?’ he asks.
When he speaks it is to both of them, though his eyes are trained on the woman.
The man gestures to the tethered swine.
‘As many of those as you have fingers, less one to give to the gods.’
The hairy man looks at the animals. He crouches down and studies them closely.
Male Tears Page 6