Squonk

She sat on the side of a crude road, drawing in the dust with her fingers. Sometimes she would look up from the pictures to watch down the road with an intense stare. The sun was still low in the sky that morning when she took a break from watching the dust to glance again down the road. This time she could make out a lone figure approaching from far off. Halfway from the horizon to where she was sitting, her brother had walked a far distance within her sight as she had been drawing pictures in the dust. Slightly put off by this, she sat still for a moment, reveling in her waiting frustration until she could not ignore how close he was. She stood up and ran the remaining distance between them, legs pumping with excitement.

Cathan had been walking all that morning and felt somewhat cheated out of a day, realizing that he had been far closer than he had imagined to his childhood home. A smile had dominated his face since the moment he saw his little sister Ailill sitting far in the distance, probably only an ell away from their home. When she began to run towards him, he felt everything come pouring out of his mind, everything about his whole trip that he was storing in his head. Before he knelt to meet Ailill, a solitary tear traveled down the young cheek, in solitary rebellion to his actions. She came barreling into him, a tiny ball of reserved energy, and hid her damp face against his shoulder. Upon feeling her small body against his, trembling in what could only be small sobs, Cathan could not help but feel all his strength disappear for a moment as he allowed himself to agree with her relief. He recovered quickly, not wanting his return to be inhibited by grief of any sort, and picked his sister up to carry her the rest of the way home.

The familiar weight wiped its eyes and as soon as the breeze revived it, was squirming to be let down from its brother’s arms. Seeing the cottage clearly now, he set the excited girl down and stood to watch as she ran with the same fervor towards home, eager, no doubt, to announce her brother’s arrival before he could. The second he reached the door it flung open and his mother collapsed into his arms with hysterical sobs. Behind her stood his father who was grinning ear to ear, his eyes clear and bright in their familiar way. Cathan patted his mother on the back as she gasped her astonishment at seeing him home at long last, all the time aware of that nagging feeling in the back of his mind that reminded him of his past wish to never see his family again.

He had left home with no intention of ever returning, furious at his parents for his isolated upbringing and wishing to experience the rest of the world as it was and hoping that he would find something amazing that would make him forget about home and going back. But what he had found had the opposite effect on him. He yearned for home even while fascinated by the local customs of other towns and heard rumors of lands even more distant where he could find adventure and riches. Now his mother was ushering him to the table and pouring him a bowl of hot broth and he was outwardly agreeing to tell them all of his travels and all the while wondering whether he ought to speak of the allure the outside world had on him, even now.

Sitting across from him in their usual way, the two of his parents together still had that uneasy effect on him and he bowed his head to drink the broth, aware of the two pairs of eyes watching him without rest. When he reached a point in his meal, he paused eating and first told his parents that his heart had changed during travels and now he felt remorse for having left so hastily for the world but after it all did not regret the decision. His parents were silent receptors in a way they felt was encouraging, but their combined gaze Cathan found to be intrusive and demanding, halting his words at inconvenient times and causing him to stutter when under any other circumstances he could have spoken fluently and with passion. He told them of his wanders to the high cliffs where the ocean met bare rock and the towns where very drunk men explained the mystery of life to one another. He told of the strange customs he encountered in some towns and the monasteries that produced great works of art though it was rumored the world was under a dark influence back on the continent. He spoke of the stories he heard from numerous peddlers about foreign lands and the trades he saw and some of which he learned a bit. Reaching into his bag he produced a fipple flute, which he handed to Ailill and who took off running with it, abusing its high pitched notes but fortunately going outside with it to practice. When he had finished telling the stories, he returned to the soup, which had grown cold but was tasty nonetheless.

That night he could not fall asleep with the usual ease he had after a full day of traveling. Getting up quietly, he left the house and walked for some distance down the abandoned road. When the horizon was level and clear on all sides he lay down on his back in the grass. Now this felt familiar too, for while traveling he had slept outside most nights, sometimes unable to find shelter for the night or unable to pass up the beautiful weather. Gazing up into the heavens, he was struck by how clear the night sky was of clouds and rooftops and mountains and trees. He felt he could see for miles across the land and for millenniums in the heavens. He lay between reality and a dream for a long while, oblivious to the sounds of small animals and insects in the field around him, engaged in battles of universal proportion within his mind.

At no particularly special time he opened his eyes wide and took a very deep and long breath from the night air. The moon was in another part of the sky now, and Cathan wondered that its crescent shape might now be fuller than it had been when he was walking. Laying still and silent for innumerable more minutes, he focused meditatively on the sounds he heard there and the feeling of the grass beneath him and the breezes that passed above him and the light scent that he finally distinguished at the end. And he opened his eyes unwillingly breaking the delicate connection he had forged with the nature around him. Feeling robbed he sat up, aware suddenly that dawn was fast approaching, and fearing that his mother, finding that he was not in bed, might worry. He started back, walking at a pace slightly more than leisurely, thinking that it would be a huge mistake to let either of his parents feel worried about him while he was visiting. For while lying in the field a ways from home, he realized that wandering would always be in his heart, as would a longing for something familiar, though far stronger. There was nothing for it but to leave again. He had greeted this idea with warmth and the more he now thought of where he could go, the more excited he became to finally be going there. He reached his parents house just before dawn, and peering through an open window was shocked to see his mother already awake. But when he walked in, she beamed at him and praised his “new habit” of rising early for a breath of fresh air.

When finally the rest of the family rose for breakfast, the guilt in Cathan’s throat was threatening to choke him. There was no conversation as they ate their last meal together. Ailill was playing with her flute rather than eating, and nicely filling up the space with meaningless noise rather than awkward silence. Perhaps it was by his expression or either by his mannerisms that his father had picked up on his intent to leave, but anyhow he had told his wife at some point before the meal, and now both acted cold towards Cathan. He felt trapped in an callous situation, but his desire to leave was never stronger. He almost felt a pull from another direction as he offered to clean up. Ailill was running outside with her flute, now able to play a few more notes and put them together into a tune. It was mindless and filled Cathan’s head as he tried to ignore his parents sitting at the table and whispering to each other about their son.

When the plates were clean, Cathan called his sister into the room with a resigned feeling of agony. Seating his family across from him, he told them without distractions that he received an offer from an important man in another town and wanted to head in that direction to see if there was any opportunity in it. It was a lie of course, but he couldn’t bear to tell his parents to their face that he wanted the exact same thing he had wanted so long ago. The goodbyes were tedious, for he spent most of it with Ailill, for she had started crying and did not appear to be recovering despite multiple hugs. His father had held out his hand to shake and his mother had given him a less than warm embrace. Cathan was beyond all of them already.

He disappeared in that early morning haze where the air hangs over the land like translucent low-lying clouds. Upon reaching the edge of the cliff where the expanse of water below reached out to the corners of the horizon, he stood back against the less traveled road. As he watched the sun’s reflection off the lightly rippling waves, a breeze rose up from the road behind and blew out to sea and he knew that he was dead to them.

posted by Sarah Ruiz  # 11:34 PM