murielle

Resolution: The Man on the Hill, Conclusion

Dearest Mother,

It is a full month since last I wrote. Ham has not returned. I hope he will not come back. I pray he will not. I will try to explain, forgive me please.

On the day I wrote you I intended to share my meager meal with the man on the hill. The man I felt was somehow protecting the property while my Hamish was away. The man who so terrified me when I first saw him, but whose presence became such a comfort. I was excited, apprehensive. We never so much as hailed one another, yet I regarded him as a friend. My heart hammered as I gained the crest, once reached, I lay down the scythe and retrieved the basket from where it lay further down the hill. I did not speak, or even glance his way and although I could see he still gazed off to the east I knew he was aware of my presence, accepting of it even.

I laid the old picnic quilt on the ground and began to put out the small meal I prepared and then I sat and waited.

There was no sound, not from the beautiful beast he rode, or from the man himself, but he dismounted and came toward me and sat across from me.

I waited, not knowing what would be appropriate for me to do or say, or even if he would understand me, or I him. For now I could see that he was not just a random man on a white horse, wearing native colors, but he himself was of the land, his skin glowing copper in the setting sun. I took the bread, broke off a sizable piece, spread it with some butter and some of the jam I had made from wild berries that grow on our land and offered it to him. He declined.

“I am called Thunderchild. I lived on these lands all my days. Winters came, thawed and spring gave life to the earth and the water. The village lay in the valley beyond. One day a man came. His skin was pale and he spoke with his hands. He traded us things for pelts, cooking pots and blankets. He left.

“The children were first. Their pain was great, they had huge weeping blisters. We bathed their burning bodies, but there was nothing we could do to ease their suffering. Then Death came. The elders and the weak died next, and then there was no one in our village. Now, there is nothing where we lived.”

Mother, he spoke of his loss and his grief and his anger and his pain. He spoke of his sons and his wife and his father, all dead. He spoke of the beauty of his village and the joy and peace of his life, destroyed by infection, contagion, disease.

Hour after hour we sat across the quilt as the full moon rode the sky and the insects and the rodents feasted on what lay there between us. From sunset to sunrise he talked and I understood every word, but his lips never moved. His face was a ruin of scars, pox marks.

As the golden light began to creep over the land again, he turned, his eyes burning into me.

“Now you and your man have come to the land. What do you bring?”

He gripped my arm. His touch was ice. “This is my gift to you.”

He threw back his head and sang, an ululating wail of grief and loss and pain and such rage.

Then he was gone, as if he never was.

I have been able to think of nothing else. Over and over I envision his children dying in his arms. I hear their cries. I hear his wife beg for release and his father’s last words for vengeance.

I am not myself. I am hot, then chilled. I cannot eat and am too weak to fetch water from the well. I have a rash.

Oh, Mother. What have we done?

Mama, mama what can I do?

I will be with you very soon, I think.

Your loving daughter,
Aileen