The Ancients

In this forest split by pine, a river flows slowly and painfully on the flat bed of debris from buildings that have disappeared and people that have been laid to rest in the soil. A noiseless tread permeates the leafy green, and an unheard sigh of wind touches the eaves and combs the grass. A broken call resounds across and into the canopy, and the sunlight responds with splintering rays that gather in speckled formations on the sluggish water. A presence in this forest is undetected, and its entrance is unheeded. The leaves part in an unnatural motion, folding into one another and breaking away soundlessly; the soil compresses beneath the presence and the wind diverges around its figure.

A noiseless tread, an unheard sigh, the presence winds itself between the eaves, the grass, the wind and the water as if it were the God of all this land and all the time that had passed in it. It begins to change the details, small at first, but a vital part of its imaginings and speculation about the unknown. Perception is born without eyes in the presence, using a sense of being and purpose; it constructs reality and landscapes change. Gradually, sunlight is deflected into the eye that shone it and the wind is enslaved to serve the presence. The unhooved animals emerge from these beings and nuzzle the soil to depletion. The forest is guarded, especially at night, when the sigh becomes louder and the tread becomes quieter.

****

1,000 years later

The war is fought and lost, the billowing gusts that blow in vain to regain the forest territory are deflected by a retaliating revolt from the presence, and the sun uses its fires to scour the land in an act of self-infliction but relief from a greater pain. The cool river runs on a high fever as the presence imparts its final gift of unabating brightness to the forest as the pines are murdered from the ground to the eaves, and there is no more wood to be harvested. An eerie accuracy of efficiency echoes in the land, the wind flits and flies from place to place, delivering the same news and the same future to each of the ancient forests in return for some rest.

Is this a dream?

And suddenly, the presence believes that there is such a thing as a soundless tread and an unheard sigh, belonging to the community that has had a history of waiting. Reluctance replaces ignorance and more than just the wind flows from forest to forest. Evidence of murder and deliberate assault is dispersed throughout the realm, because the skies do not partake in this land-based conflict. Efficiency becomes a constant complaint to which the forests respond to by waiting, as they have always done in the face of change.

More of the presences take the side of the forests, and the forests can hear their thoughts, an undulating repetition of unexplored memory and analytical awareness that something is being murdered, something, but not quite sure of what it is. Sometimes, the forests think that they can hear their voices, the unheard voices coming alive in an animated disorientation of reality. Sometimes, the world is very quiet, and they know that that day will not be the stopping day. The presence is more powerful now, and ancient forests are resigned to their unending death.

One day, a far off wind unfurls around the very oldest, and most wise of the forests and speaks softly, fearing that they have heard the cruelest and strangest of yarns: ‘there are young ones, who can hear the presences, born into their world from their guilt…’ The wind slips away, fearful.

A noiseless tread, an unheard sigh, the ancient trees remember those times, and a small flame of hope is fanned and kept alive.