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The sun hastened from the ocean isles. At the breakfast table, Eli and his mother shared a delicate silence. Their dwelling was a stuffy arrangement. A thatched roof made of bundled grasses and reeds covered their heads. The floor was dirt and their straw filled mattresses thinned brittle from many seasons without replenish. Their kitchen, living room and dining area shared the same space. The chimney and stove their sole source of warmth.
Eli rocked listlessly in his chair. The autumn winds seeped into his bones. The boy's fingers fiddled on the splintered table. His face was downcast for one so young and Eli's mother, black haired, widowed with darkened and sleepless eyes. She'd prepared for him browned maple sausages, barley and half an apple. He'd packed the other half. She added to his weight two tinderboxes and more rations.
"You look like you're thinking about something much bigger than yourself," she said.
"I'm frightened this all a lie." Eli's voice creaked like the floor. "But I think I'll hate the truth, too." He sat still in his chair.
They ate breakfast slowly; neither could find the words appropriate. His famished mouth chewed and all she could imagine was Eli's tomb ledger. Her son would be remembered by a wooden plaque interned in the earth with his name and a platitude praising his selflessness and piety. She could not understand nor accept and so she held him. They came together and knelt on the hovel floor. Dirt stained her apron. They consoled each other in each others' arms. Mother and son lamented. Bodies pressed together like two sides of a hemisphere and that was their world. They squeezed each other till it hurt. Her voice croaked. "Heaven is a better place, Eli." Another platitude. "I love you, son. I love you so much." Was all that was remained.
*********
Walking towards the eastern gate, Eli's leather shoes crunched cross the flat terrain. The sky was grey and the horizon distant. His latchets were his father's; the boy had finally grown of age to wear them and it wasn't a keepsake or anything like that. Elijah's father died a nameless man, perished shortly after the voyage from scurvy. He left behind his only son and a faithful widow. Approaching his group, Eli nodded toward Amias before side-eying the Fellow. With his cigar in hand, smoke steamed from his ears. Grinning wily the Fellow inquired, "Are you frightened, child?"
The guardsmen willed the gate open by mechanism and drawstring. Its heavy door, a tightly wound bundle of tree trunks, groaned and spurred the sylvan *fowls to a panic. Crows dotted the tree line, a bickering black murder; they did not flee. They merely battered their wings, only feast could spur them to flight.
Villagers peeked their sallow faces from drab dwellings to peer at the trio. Children layered in tattered rags for the cold clung to their mother's skirts. Shivering lips blistered some pocked, their adolescent eyes were empty as their tummies. Old men emerged from their hovels. Crooked codgers with wizened lines and weathered stony expressions; a few of them smile and waved. Black gum grins with no teeth, Elijah shivered from the frigid breeze.
From a distance, they all looked a swath of colors. Muddy yellows and oranges all trembling brittly like autumn leaves. Melody appeared from the riffraff and sauntered towards Eli. Her expression solemn and her gaze never leaving Elijah's pallid face. The Orator observed with the austerity of a hawk from his study's balcony. His palms gripped the wooded railing till his knuckles whiten and Amias eyed his father till he dismissed to his library.
Melody presented Eli a single laurel flower; it was a withered pinkish achievement. With dexterous touch, she fastened it to his beige shirt before patting down the petals. She pecked him then knitted another laurel just above her heart. She rested her left palm atop his heart and brought Eli's above hers. She closed her eyes and Eli watched with bated breath.
Eli moved his hands over hers. "I was yours already."
The Fellow spluttered on his own smoke before waving off the haze. Amias nudged the Fellow to move towards the gate.
"Goodbye, my Love."
"Come now, boy!" The Fellow called. Eli turned to his group and then Melody. Her hazel eyes flickered with a reckless certainty.
"Goodnight, Eli." she smiled.
*************
The trio approached the woodlands with a measured step. Even in the day, the forest looked to them a gaping darkness. Amongst the boughs, the crows wrestled for position; their red eyes altered between the forlorn and the cloudy skies.
"We must advance to the altar before nightfall," the Fellow ushered forward.
And so they descended deeper into the forest's belly, vanishing beneath the **Cimmerian dusk.
*fowl--archaic (bird) **sylvan--consisting of or associated with woods **Cimmerian--a member of a people living in and darkness near the land of the dead (Greek)
