by Dan Pearce
I scooped Flor up and turned us both away from Racheele’s ash. I forced myself to try and hide the flood of emotions threatening to overtake me before they added to my daughter’s worry. I lacked the strength. “Mamá go away” I said, breaking through a giant choking sob. “Mamá go.”
As mentioned previously, Flor was the only child I would ever father, and it wasn’t until I lost her that I came to understand why I was so thankful for my infertility. The curse took me away from my daughter ten years after that awful day.
My mother helped me care for Flor after Racheele died, but she died that winter.
Dad was no nurturer and was of little help. Unable to function without a companion giving him relentless instruction, he left in search of a new mate. I had no idea if or when he would return again.
Seth was gone.
Abel was dead.
Over the course of a few short months, what had just recently been a thriving family was cut down to a single mourning man and his bewildered toddler daughter.
After Mom died, I took Flor and built us a new home, in a different village, in a land weeks away from that place. During the next nine and a half mostly depressing years, I worked the land and hunted the woods to provide for the two of us. I had a difficult time wanting to bond with my daughter during the brunt of that decade. A big part of me admittedly resented Flor because she reminded me of her mother in too many ways. She had the same shape to her eyes. The same smile. The same laugh, even.
It wasn’t just her appearance or mannerisms that kept me distant from her, though. I lived in daily fear of the same fate somehow befalling her that befell her mother. I wouldn’t answer any of her questions regarding what happened to Racheele, and eventually forbade her to ask them at all. I didn’t fully know where the line was when it came to the curse, so I stayed far away from it. I didn’t sleep deeply during the nights, fearing I might mention the curse in my sleep and wake to a pile of ash that used to be my daughter.
During those last two years we were together, though, Flor and I actually did become close.
At a time when both young and old men from our village had begun eyeing her as a potential mate, the protector in me kicked into high gear. I kept her away from all suitors and took it upon myself to teach Flor everything she needed to know to protect herself from them when I could no longer be around. I taught her to hunt and fish and to properly work a field no matter the season. I taught her the skills of raising sheep, and of creating pots from clay to carry the water and cook the soup. I taught her to sing and to dance and to fight. Those last couple years with my daughter, once the pain of losing Racheele had at least somewhat dimmed, are still some of my life’s fondest.
If 10 winters the mountains see,
with no woman he shall be.
When he sleeps on the fourth sun,
he shall wake and find them gone.
The winters came and went. There was nothing I could do to slow or stop them. After the ninth winter melted away from the mountaintops, the emotional heaviness of the curse began to once more severely depress me. I had never told Flor of the curse, and I didn’t think she remembered her mother dying. I obviously could never tell her of the curse and how I would soon be taken from her, either. I was already responsible for the death of Racheele. I would not be responsible for my own daughter’s death, as well.
I dodged the depression whenever I could by preparing Flor for life without me and going deeper into her training. I hoped that the curse, by some miracle, only included my daughter in its clause forbidding me to share the details of my curse with others; loopholes in the wording could definitely be argued. That hope was miniscule, though. Something deep inside of me always warned me that she was wrapped into all of it, so I raised her under that assumption.
Flor turned twelve that summer. It was a season that passed all too quickly. When the leaves began changing, I went outside each morning and looked toward the mountains that were a little closer than they had been where we last lived. Any morning I didn’t see snow was a happy one. I really did not wish to find out what the curse would bring to me or my Flor once the snow did finally appear.
Eventually the snow came. I remember it rained all that night. Cold rain. I remember I held Flor extra close as we lay keeping each other warm near the fire. I knew what that cold meant. I knew what likely awaited us on the mountaintops the next morning. At dawn, the snowcaps confirmed it. In four days, I would find out just what the curse would do to any woman who was still in my life beyond the tenth mountain winter.
I had already lost all hope that the curse wasn’t lasting or that it could be removed. Besides the small evidences I couldn’t ignore, years earlier I had traveled to Yarib in search of Tashibag. I hoped to unburden myself of the curse, prepared to unload the desperate and loving pleas of a single father upon the witch. Tashibag hadn’t been seen in Yarib for several summers, and nobody there knew where I might find her. My only hope after that was for the magic to fade, but I knew it hadn’t.
I’m surprised I didn’t smother Flor with last ditch-effort lessons after the snow came. We practiced fighting well past the time we would usually retire each night. I set extra traps in the woods with her during the days. I fastened a dozen new spears for her while she slept. We gathered a large stockpile of fruit that would dry well. We slaughtered two of our sheep and hung the mutton in strips to dry. On the fourth day, I stayed awake late into the night stitching together the two dried pelts to make Flor a blanket. I had to assume I wouldn’t be there to keep her warm after that night.
When I finished the pelts, I looked over at Flor who lay huddled on the hard, cold ground near the fire. I laid myself next to her and hugged her with one arm from behind. “My sweet Flor,” I whispered. With all my anxiety, I did not think I could sleep at all. I just wanted to hold her and absorb as much of her life as I could while I could. I unfortunately found myself fighting heavy eyelids much faster than I hoped, my energy depleted from our incredibly productive four days. I drifted to sleep before I realized I was at risk of doing so.
The next morning’s sun hit my closed eyelids to bring me back into consciousness. A rush of adrenaline launched me into a sitting position. “Flor!” I shouted before my eyes could adjust to the new brightness that attacked them.
Flor was not there. Our home was not there. Not even the snowcapped mountains were within eyesight.
I looked around me. I was seated at the far edge of a wide thicket. Tall sparse pines surrounded me on all sides. I could see through their trunks for quite a distance in every direction. There were no smoke plumes rising into the sky. There was no sound of moving water. There were no fields or crops or herds of animals. There was no evidence of civilization or of other people at all.
I was completely alone in a land that I did not know at all.
I wandered the Earth after that. Dozens of winters came and went before I was able to find another human again, and more than a century still before I was able to figure out where I was enough to head in the direction of my home once more.
The greatest thing that haunted me was never knowing what happened to Flor that night, or in the span of life that followed. I had no way of knowing whether she survived my displacement at all. I have always hoped with a replete father’s heart that she simply woke where she fell asleep, surrounded by all the preparations I left behind, and that she was strong enough to successfully take on the world at such a young age. I choose to believe that was what happened. The many very possible alternatives were too painful to ever give them much space in my thoughts.
Ten years was not enough time for any father to be with his child, and our separation left a hole in me that would never fully fill. The decades that followed my displacement were among the loneliest I have been through. Unable to die, and unable to really live, I wandered with the weight of it all upon my shoulders and with no real outlet to unburden myself of its brutality. Some days that weight seemed so heavy that as if it was physically p
ushing me deep into the Earth as I roamed.
Each new day that I hunted, or fished, or farmed, or gathered from the ground, brought heightened drudgery and sadness as I contemplated how I had never done any of those things to provide for only myself; I always had done them with others in mind. I hated knowing that before Abel came back, my heart had been full, my crops had been plentiful, my family had been strong, and my future had been bright. Now I just walked and walked alone, in what I’m certain was circles at times, hoping for any sign of human life at all. I wanted to find it, but I was usually gratified that I didn’t. It seemed I was only capable of hurting other people, especially those I loved most. That was the true core of that depression.
With increasing frequency, I relived my favorite memories of Racheele, especially at night. I would talk to her aloud and imagine her always comforting hands were somehow there calming me. I would see the glow of the fire in her eyes and watch our bodies melt together as we made love. I would hear the words she would always find to keep me strong and to keep me motivated to keep going. I would hear her tease me playfully like she so often did. I would see her gradually getting old alongside me. I would appreciate the beautiful and time-delivered wrinkles covering her skin. I would see the beautiful natural sagging in her body. I would see her resting in my own aged and wrinkled arms, as we lay together until our very last day.
The more I imagined Racheele being there, the more real she became, and the lonelier I got. The loneliness eventually saturated me, and my depression over it became so thick that I cut my arms open with the hopes of bleeding out. I was tired of walking. I was tired of being alone. If Racheele’s soul existed somewhere, I wanted to find my way to her once more. I wanted to find my way to Flor, whom I also knew was dead. I really just wanted to find my way to any place and any reality that was different than my own.
I made the cuts deep, and I enjoyed the pain as I did. As my blood drained out of me, I slipped into a methodical and sweet darkness, welcoming the end of my own existence. Instead, I awoke some amount of time later, covered in a vast amount of my own coagulated blood.
I had been perfectly restored, which only made the loneliness worse when I had to finally accept the reality that I would never be allowed to end my misery, and I would never get to see either of them again.
Loneliness.
It has always been the severest of my burdens. Solitude has never created my loneliness, and it was nowhere near as depressing to me as loneliness ever was. It seems too many people believe being alone is the stimulus that creates loneliness. It wasn’t for me. Loneliness was created within the constant awareness of what I once had, what love once was, and what I feared love would never again be. Loneliness was created in those moments I was unable to ignore the quiet air around me where the words and breaths of another used to be heard. Loneliness was created because a life now empty had once been so full. Loneliness was created because the world loved torturing me with constant physical reminders of it all.
When life was once full, it doesn’t let you forget.
That is what loneliness was.
It is the weight I have carried with me the last twelve thousand years. It is a weight I will likely carry for at least twelve thousand more.
CHAPTER 9
When one has nothing but time and what seems to be an endless empty world surrounding him, wandering is often all that makes sense. Sitting put in any one place for too long becomes aggravating.
As I wandered those first hundred years, I built countless shelters for myself. I eventually left each of them behind to continue my search for civilization which must certainly have existed somewhere, if I could just find it. The idea always loomed in the depth of my thoughts that a village may be just beyond the next horizon, or that the only thing keeping me separated from the rest of mankind was the mountain or the hilltop in front of me. For just more than a hundred winters, I would reach the end of each horizon and only see a new and empty horizon in front of me. I would work my way around each mountain or great hill only to see another I would need to pass. Each new forest led to vast openness through which I must then wander, usually to see another forest in the distance.
A hundred years is a long time to be alone, just me against the wilderness. I talked to the trees. I made friends with the large stones around my shelters. At some point along the way, I fastened a net out of saplings and vines and managed to catch a beaver. I spent more than a month attempting to train her. A friendly animal to accompany me would make the world seem so much less empty, and the training helped keep my mind occupied. That beaver never did become docile though, and eventually I became angry for her lack of trying, and I ate her. I found success with other animals. I adopted an orphaned fawn, which accompanied me for the better part of four years before she broke her leg and couldn’t continue with me. For six years, I wandered with a bobcat by my side, which I snatched out of its mother’s den. We became quite close, and then one night he chased a rodent into the darkness and never returned to me.
Two decades or so into that first great wandering, I felt my mind begin to slip away into a place that felt so close, yet so distant. I began seeing many people and animals who were not real. I would anxiously approach the people only to find myself talking with the trunks of trees. I would follow the animals only to find myself lost deep in the woods. It did not take long to admit just how much the solitude was getting to me, and I knew I had to keep my mind active if I wanted to keep it intact.
It didn’t take much time to push my way back into sanity again. In the rest of my wandering, I kept mentally active invented new and creative weapons which I could use to hunt. I came up with fun and creative traps, which were more like chain reactive games than anything else. I found ways to mash colorful wildflowers together with certain insects and oils to create paint, which I used to decorate my limbs and face. I collected the biggest teeth from my largest kills and created fantastic jewelry with them. I experimented with the different plants and roots I encountered to create incredible gardens, the likes of which had never been planted. I etched the records of my travels onto the walls of caves as I came and went. And, I found a way to have Racheele and Flor close to me always. It was during that first wandering that I started my Book of What Once Was.
‘Book’ is a term I use lightly. The world did not have books, obviously, but I came up with something close.
I sharpened sticks and burned the ends with fire just enough to build a layer of char. The stretched and hardened pelts from various small animals and large rodents made good surfaces upon which I could draw pictures. I figured out that heating small amounts of sap with spring water produced a liquid I could brush against the hides. Once they dried, the drawings pictures permanent. My skills as an artist became better over time, and my techniques allowed me to capture detail that couldn’t be captured on a stone wall.
It took more than twenty pelts to accurately recreate my memory of Racheele, and another dozen to recreate our little Flor. Eventually, I got the details fine-tuned enough that I felt I was somehow looking upon them both. By the time I did find other humans again, I had eleven different portraits of Racheele. Some captured her smiles; others captured expressions I cherished most. I had half a dozen portraits of Flor, all from various ages and stages in her life.
To keep the pictures from waring, I did not roll them. Instead, I stacked them flat and stitched the pelts together using boar’s hair.
Once I had finished the first of all the portraits, sleep never once came upon me when I wasn’t looking upon at least one of their beautiful faces while the fire dimmed to nothing beside me.
Over the centuries, and eventually over the millennia, I added to the book. Each time I loved another and was forced to leave her, I added that lover’s face to the book. I kept the same format of charcoal on animal pelts, long past the time that technology brought along better mediums. Some of the images are now barely visible; some of the pelts are worn down to nothing; a few had to be
recreated. I still have the book, which is currently locked away in a climate-controlled safety deposit vault. When the time comes, I will sadly add Samantha to it, and gaze upon her face next to all the others while I try to somehow find sleep.
It was my book that helped me find peace each night those lifetimes I first wandered. It was the book that gave me hope that beauty did still exist somewhere in the world. It was the book that pushed me to always keep making my way to the next horizon and over the next mountain.
This world is enormous. I feel I walked enough to circle what I now know is the globe at least a hundred times before I finally happened upon the Village of Welb. I wasn’t welcome to linger in Welb; they didn’t take lightly to outsiders and sent me on my way. Thankfully, one of their elders was good enough to point me in the direction of Itzbi.
I eventually reached Itzbi, which was the first largely populated village I had ever encountered, and even in my haggardness, I was openly welcomed by most.
I was taken to the home of a wealthy merchant named Sem who sheltered, clothed, and fed me in exchange for my labors, which I happily gave for many years while I learned their language and enjoyed the presence of other people for a change. I introduced my many hunting contraptions and inventions to the merchant, and eventually we became business partners. I created things, he sold them, or bought them for himself.