a fairy tale
In the place where I live people wear soft leather bottomed shoes to glide over soil. Our feet do not make a sound. We show respect to those who fell to the floor during the wars of our times.
There is a place in the mountains where they say one can stay and never go hungry. There, they say, the rocks turn into meat upon contact, the trees yield bread soft, warm breads, and flowers bloom sweet candies. My mother will not hear talk of this dream place at home. "That is the place of the devil," she says, and the look in her eyes tells me seeking this forbidden land will lead to a fate a thousand times worse than hunger.
I forget sometimes what people tell me to do or not do. What they tell me slips away into the backwaters of my memory where it drowns in all other memories forgotten.
I gave him my satchel and shoes as he asked me, then I shed my clothes as he advised me to do. "Wear this," he said, and he shed his own skin. It fell off in a pile on the soil floor looking like a tablecloth used in my home. When I clothed myself in his skin I no longer smelled like my home or the valley. Instead I became like the men on the mountain. I smelled distinctly foreign. I thanked the man and watched as he dressed himself in my own clothes. He said he would wear them until new skin grew on his back.
Under my feet I felt the rhythm of aches and sighs breathe with each step I took. I felt like I was walking on quicksand. And indeed, when I tried to move my feet I could not feel my toes but only the inability to move them on the surface of palpable danger. When I turned to ask for his help he only laughed. Then I began to think it was he who was making my feet turn to stone.
Holding my father's blade I cut what kept me from moving. I did not care to look whether it was a serpent's tongue or the branch of a tree.
I watched as the folds of his skin began to swallow him alive under the sadness of defeat.
I saw the familiar clearing with my father’s chopping block and the axe he used for splitting wood on the ground beside it. Home. I ran through the trees, the wind in my ears, my breath leaving my throat in heavy huffs, my feet slapping the earth beneath the trees of these woods, these woods that had stood between myself and my home for so long.
"And who are you boy?" Mother asked me. Her weak eyes did not recognize my much-changed face and form. I told her I was her son but she did not believe me. "If you are the son that left so many days ago, and if you are the one who brought back this jade figure of father, then you are the one who will be able to restore him to his normal shape." She flicked her wrist and flung the jade piece at me.
People began to move away from the other person, who now shook his head and his hands. He kneeled to the floor and placed his head there in mercy.
A familiar gold and silken robe of dragon scales was placed in my hands on account of me killing the creature. For an odd reason I could not help but feel regret. The girl with the white hair and her foxlike sibling did not mean any real harm but only wanted to protect the mountain as the men of soil bade them do.
Suddenly a swarm of angry vultures swooped upon the ogre and began to peck at every pore and crevice of his body. Together, a mass of flapping and buzzing around a core of struggling flesh, they danced a violent dance. His pitiful screams were drowned in a sea of hundreds of angry screeches and the sounds of countless beaks piercing flesh. I ran from this bloody scene as quickly as I could.
There is a place in the mountains where they say one can stay and never go hungry. There, they say, the rocks turn into meat upon contact, the trees yield bread soft, warm breads, and flowers bloom sweet candies. My mother will not hear talk of this dream place at home. "That is the place of the devil," she says, and the look in her eyes tells me seeking this forbidden land will lead to a fate a thousand times worse than hunger.
I forget sometimes what people tell me to do or not do. What they tell me slips away into the backwaters of my memory where it drowns in all other memories forgotten.
I gave him my satchel and shoes as he asked me, then I shed my clothes as he advised me to do. "Wear this," he said, and he shed his own skin. It fell off in a pile on the soil floor looking like a tablecloth used in my home. When I clothed myself in his skin I no longer smelled like my home or the valley. Instead I became like the men on the mountain. I smelled distinctly foreign. I thanked the man and watched as he dressed himself in my own clothes. He said he would wear them until new skin grew on his back.
Under my feet I felt the rhythm of aches and sighs breathe with each step I took. I felt like I was walking on quicksand. And indeed, when I tried to move my feet I could not feel my toes but only the inability to move them on the surface of palpable danger. When I turned to ask for his help he only laughed. Then I began to think it was he who was making my feet turn to stone.
Holding my father's blade I cut what kept me from moving. I did not care to look whether it was a serpent's tongue or the branch of a tree.
I watched as the folds of his skin began to swallow him alive under the sadness of defeat.
I saw the familiar clearing with my father’s chopping block and the axe he used for splitting wood on the ground beside it. Home. I ran through the trees, the wind in my ears, my breath leaving my throat in heavy huffs, my feet slapping the earth beneath the trees of these woods, these woods that had stood between myself and my home for so long.
"And who are you boy?" Mother asked me. Her weak eyes did not recognize my much-changed face and form. I told her I was her son but she did not believe me. "If you are the son that left so many days ago, and if you are the one who brought back this jade figure of father, then you are the one who will be able to restore him to his normal shape." She flicked her wrist and flung the jade piece at me.
People began to move away from the other person, who now shook his head and his hands. He kneeled to the floor and placed his head there in mercy.
A familiar gold and silken robe of dragon scales was placed in my hands on account of me killing the creature. For an odd reason I could not help but feel regret. The girl with the white hair and her foxlike sibling did not mean any real harm but only wanted to protect the mountain as the men of soil bade them do.
Suddenly a swarm of angry vultures swooped upon the ogre and began to peck at every pore and crevice of his body. Together, a mass of flapping and buzzing around a core of struggling flesh, they danced a violent dance. His pitiful screams were drowned in a sea of hundreds of angry screeches and the sounds of countless beaks piercing flesh. I ran from this bloody scene as quickly as I could.
posted by samuel at 12:48 AM
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