The Villager

The rain drummed away relentlessly against the trees. A figure danced under its weight, running silently. Every footfall smoothed over by the wind’s incessant moaning, and the crash of thunder, and the constant, blinding, pseudo-rhythmic drumming of the driving rain. Every so often, a flash of lightening would light up the dripping forest and everything within it. The running figure would scream at each lightening flash, his voice drowning away with the sounds of the storm. The name he screamed, a woman’s name, did not make his actions any less unusual. His tall frame crashed through the trees towards his goal, pushing onwards as relentlessly as the rain.

Where he’d come from originally was a small village on the coast. He had lived there all his life, barely venturing outside the surrounds. It was a peaceful place. Not like this dark forest in which he now traveled. He had fallen in love with Eidis, the daughter of the village chieftain. He asked her father for her hand in marriage, and it was happily granted, for he was well known in the village as an honest and hard-working young man.

The wedding was planned to be a modest affair, by city standards, but for the village it was immense. Preparation went into it for weeks, culminating in a night of cheerfulness and bliss for the entire village the day before the wedding.

On the day of the wedding, it was humid. The sky was fully over-cast, and it was warm, but not too warm. A couple of hours before the ceremony was due to start, three great sails became visible on the horizon. This was not an immediate concern. Quite often ships came to the village with supplies. Even the unsubtle black shade of the sails did not raise apprehension even among the wisest and oldest of the villagers.

The ships grew closer, and bigger. No one cared. By the time they arrived at the docks, the wedding had begun. No one heard a sound as the dark ships were tethered to the wharf. No one heard a sound as the raiders left their ships and made their way through the village. No one heard a sound until the temple was broken into, and the raiders murdered every last man, woman and child inside. Except for him. Oddly overlooked. And now he was running, though not for his life. He was running to the mountain nearby where it was said that the gods dwelt.

Driven mad by grief and sudden bereavement, he ran through the forest at the foot of the mountain. Even if it were not so dark, his tears would still have not been visible, camouflaged with the pouring rain. As the wet grass gave way to rock, a huge grey mass appeared in front of him, and the forest petered out.

He did not know how long he has climbed. The seconds morphed into minutes, and each agonizing minute became an hour, and each hour became a day. Days became years, years, decades, and decades became as lifetimes. But all true sense of time left him as he climbed. When he reached what was perceivably half way, he stopped and looked around him. He saw a stone table sitting on a ledge, and noticed for the first time the eagles that danced around the mountainside. The bitter air was cold and frosty, and mist hung around him.

Sitting on a stony throne behind the table was an old man. The villager let his blistered feet carry him over to the table, and he stood waiting for the Old Man of the Mountain to speak. When he did so, it was in an aching voice that crackled brokenly with both a deep sense of age, and with an unearthly timelessness. The deep creases of his unequivocally ancient visage seemed to be an attempt at bringing life into an emotionless chasm, and yet it altogether failed at this. His body shook with reticent unease, his snow-white beard and long hair blowing in the wind. He was entirely naked, except for a single cloth draped about his waist.

“Why have you come to see this old man?” he asked, and the taciturn syllables were caught up in the wind, at once entirely unable to break free, and yet apparently glad as though the speaker had not so much as uttered one word in countless aeons.

But the villager had not come to see the Old Man. He made this much clear, his voice quivering with all the emotion the Old Man lacked.

“Then are you here to visit the Old Ones, of whom I am but a vassal?” queried the Old Man with a sigh, almost as though he was lonely. But this was impossible, he had been born without one iota of sentiment in his already frozen veins.

The villager answered in the affirmative, and could have sworn he saw something akin to disappointment in the Old Man’s rugged gaze. With not a single word, the almost lifeless Old Man of the Mountain raised a single cold, frozen finger. It pointed straight up the mountain, and the villager walked on.

And time slipped out of his consciousness once more. It was almost as if he was floating along at a rapid pace this time, and the closer he got to the top of the mountain, the warmer he felt. The blisters on his feet began to heal, and he felt a little younger. Perhaps the Old Man had been jealous, and if it were possible for him to leave the stone chair he was frozen onto, maybe he too would have made this journey to the gods. But his petition would have been for the end of his life, knowing it had existed for far too long.

As the village approached the uppermost peak, he felt a sudden wave of heat and all of the bitterness in the biting wind ceased altogether. This, he knew, was a god. And indeed it was. It was the messenger god, sent from up high to speak to him and relay his requests to the greatest god of all.

“What is it you would have of the gods? Why do you trouble us?” he was asked, in a voice dripping with honey and a thousand years of broken hearts.

“I want you to bring my bride back to me. I want to be with her, and I will pay the price, whatever it may be.” And at this the noble villager began to cry. His tears fell down the mountainside, and splashed onto the Old Man’s head.

“You will be willing to pay the price, whatever the cost?”

“Yes, whatever the cost.”

The Messenger God smiled a sardonic smile. “The price is high indeed for inconveniencing the gods. Your prayer will be granted, but the price must be payed.”

“Whatever the cost, I will pay,” replied the villager. And the Messenger God breathed on him a sweet smelling breath, and he blacked out.

***

Mordant laughter floated down the mountain. A broken body tumbled out of the warm dwelling place of the gods, back onto the hard rock and ice of the mortal realm. The jealous Old Man watched with distaste as the villager’s body crumbled into dust at the base of the mountain.

But if it had not turned to dust, one would be able to see a sweet smile on its face. The villager was with his bride in the after-world, and they were happy at last.