A drip, a drip, a drip of water.
Water falling from the sky.
Clouds roll in and cap the Earth,
Obscuring yonder mountains high.
The cap, it falls to form a prison.
A prison which has no gates to open.
Those inside know not the prison,
Only of the promise broken.
The prisoners have no eyes to see.
No eyes, no sight to part the darkness.
For dawn they wait, with young ones crying,
For dawn they wait, and hearts fail hopeless.
The
water dripped on Jarrod’s head. And with each drip, he heard a whisper.
Drip,
the voice of an otter.
Drip,
the cry of a wolf.
Drip,
bubbles blown by a fish.
He
opened his eyes in the dark. The dark sucked at his eyes as he blinked in the
rain. He opened his eyes wider and the darkness sucked at them. There was no
light. No light of the moon, no light of the stars. Even the feeble lights of
the farm nearby were obscured by rain and branches and leaves and mist.
A
rustling, heard over the patter of rain. A snaky hiss, scales sliding over the
rocks. Clicks of grabbing claws and, here and there, whiffs of foul,
black-beetle breath.
“Not welcome, not
welcome, not welcome, here of all places,” the black-beetle voice said in the
darkness. And with each syllable, the darkness cracked to reveal smoky tendrils
wrapping around tree trunks, snaking over boles and filling them, leaping over
the creek, caressing leaves on the trees before plucking the branches bare of
leaves one by one.
Jarrod opened his
eyes wider, and the light from the tendrils faded. If he squinted, it returned.
Underneath the
hissing, underneath the syllables, Jarrod heard the other voices:
“Help us!”
“Set us free!”
“Prisoners would
be free!”
With each voice,
new ones joined the cries until no words would be interpreted and the voices
sounded like the blended screams of joy and terror and Jarrod was swept from
the dripping tree and tossed by the tendrils to the ground into a misty bole
and opened and swallowed him.
The
voices, once muted, were louder and came from both inside his skull and out. Jarrod
felt the darkness. He dared not open his eyes, but felt the darkness prying at
his eyelids, creeping underneath his feathers and working to unclench his
clawed feet. The earth convulsed again and spat him out.
Jarrod
lay still.
The
screaming followed. And this time Jarrod, eyes and claws still clenched tight,
recognized the screams and cries of pain and fear of friends. Of young once
watching as their families died. He smelt blood and the gorge rose in his
throat.
The
screaming quietened, but the trees. There were trees, and the trees roared in
agony, and the rocks tumbled and the ground shook.
A
shout of command from a quiet voice, and the trees and the rocks and all the
Earth grew still.
Jarrod
opened his eyes.
He
lay on the shore of a montane lake, surrounded by trees, bathed in bright
sunshine. He looked for the hole in the Earth that had spat him out and saw
nothing but Indian paintbrush and bachelor buttons.
The
voice spoke, again in a whisper:
“Set
them free.”
Jarrod
thought of the cavern in the Earth, dripping with water and screams, and a
cloud seemed to pass over the sun and his eyes failed and, for a moment, all
was dark again.
“How
can I?” he asked. “When I think of them, I cannot see.”
“Close
your eyes, and you will hear,” the voice said.
Underneath
the first voice, strong but still as a whisper, Jarrod heard a quiet burbling
cackle, growing louder.
“If
I hear, I will hear only their agony.”
“Then
close your eyes and stop up your ears, Jarrod,” the voice whispered. “I will
see and hear for you, and you will deliver them.”
“Close
your eyes, stop up your ears, and I will find you by breath alone and eat you,”
said the cackling voice. When the voice spoke Jarrod’s eyes failed and sound
came to his ears as if he were deep under water. Jarrod strained to see in the
darkness, groping, gasping with his beak open and eyes rolling.
“Close
your eyes, Jarrod, and set the prisoners free,” the quiet voice said.
“No!”
Jarrod opened his eyes wide.
He
heard the chorus of voices again, calling from the darkness. The darkness that
was his.
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