20. Wandering

The village lay at the end of a small road that left the main highway around a quiet lacebark. The little road passed into a forest, rose up, descended amidst white pine roots knotted like the grasping hands of a crone. Here men did not go, only donkeys and other animals heavy with toil and accustomed to pain. The path came to a pond and then gently exited into a valley, but one knew already what was coming before coming to there, for the village could be heard before it could be seen. The dead air of autumn that had settled upon it was punctuated by ecstatic wailing and the beat of drums made from hide.

Nobody saw the older man who walked off of the path and into the clearing, and who wore the rough canvas shawl of a beggar with flax sandals. Nobody saw him stalk through the tall grass toward the village. Nobody heard his footsteps. In the village all eyes were turned inwards, and all minds were carried away by their bodies. The people were as if possessed, such was the fever that beset them. Doll-like, their bodies inexplicably broke from the ground without tension and yet with bestial power. There was no order to it, no reason except that of the drum, whose thunderous appeal was steady, and at whose call the villagers broke one-by-one into violent paroxysms.

The man’s face bore signs of great age, and he was not handsome. He did not smile, nor did he frown, and was not given to fidgeting. He was of great height and soft complexion, and seemed all the more so before these people, short-of-limb but thick and hardy, and rough and dark from labor in the open fields. Their clothes were crude but suited them; he seemed accustomed to his rude attire but unfit for it--costumed.

They began to eat, and one could see their bodies in their food. They dined on boar with great savagery, so that one knew death, if cruel, was still mercy for the creatures. They left the interloper alone, though perhaps he was no longer invisible to them. Their hands they made as claws, and they came away from the victims full of marrow, bone and blood. They ate the creatures to the skeleton, and then that, too, they broke to bits, and soon nothing remained. He, though, ate nothing, and was alone.

Now they were full, and their spirits tired. They made fires and rested around them. There was murmuring, laughter; some brought balls of rubber, and games were played with them, each side in turn winning and being vanquished according to etiquette. The night was a sure occurrence. It was plain that many times before it had been this way, and there was no uncertainty that, under the same moon and when the air was cold again, that this would come to pass once more.

The man walked the grasses, circled the village. It was treacherous and painful. Many times he fell, and his feet bled from the cruel underbrush. It was dark, then. The fires burned low, flickering over the sleeping faces of the village. Now the villagers were still; some smiled from their dreams, some snored. Only he, the outsider, moved, so restless in that somber night as to seem foolish. He stopped, suddenly, when the last voice slurred into sleep, looking to the path and to the woods. The village he looked at again. No one looked back, and he disembarked the way he had come.

In the morning it was commented amongst the women that a stranger’s footprints had been seen leading from the pines. This, they attributed to the spies of a neighboring tribe, and at council war was agreed to. The men girded themselves, cutting the branches of the youngest trees and drying them in the sun. Many died with purpose, and did not see the moon or feel the chill of the night again.

The following year the festival came again, but was quieted by the loss of those killed, and he who did not belong.