Week 11 Prompt: Haver (about 1K words)

 therealljidol Week 11 Prompt: Haver

 

(AN: I have used the word “native” because it is (I hope) the least offensive of terms used for indigenous people before we learned respect. I hope you’ll forgive me.

This is the third installment of a series I started in 2018 or there abouts. I will add links if I can find them. If not, I’ll post the first two to my DW blog.)

 

 

Dear Father,

 

I pray you and mother are well and that you receive this before year’s end.

 

Autumn is racing toward winter. I have piled wood every day since spring and hope it will be enough. A few weeks ago when I rode Wager to the little trading post it snowed and while I can’t pack too much on him, at least he doesn’t get stuck in the mud like the cart. Third time this year I’ve ventured there in search of various necessities. Last time was just after harvest and I went with plenty to sell and plenty more to buy from the list I’d been given. Leaving Aileen alone to fend off wild beasts and care for the livestock troubles me greatly, but this time so much worse than before because of the last time.

 

When I returned after only a few days in the early part of the fall I unhitched Wager, watered and put the feedbag on him then went about unloading the cart. It bothered me some that Aileen didn’t even come out and greet me, but she was none too happy to see me leaving so I thought perhaps she was still sour on that and wondered how long she’d sulk over it. I was chewing on this as I lugged two heavy sacks of staples up to the cabin. I noticed the stench first and dropped the sacks bursting through the door certain I’d find my wife dead. But she was alive. Barely.

 

She was on fire, raging with fever and she was havering about thunderclouds. I couldn’t make it out.

 

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Forgive me, please.”

 

“What, what? What are ye saying, lass? I cannot understand ye?”

 

I gathered her up, covers and all, and raced across the meadow, terrified I’d fall and drop her before I could get her into the stream that cuts through the land. It runs deep down at the edge of the meadow and in warmer weather is teaming with fish. I went in with her still in my arms tearing off blankets and her nightdress as I held her in the icy water. She bellowed. Weak though she was, she let out a wail that flooded my heart with hope. I kept her in the water until she began to shiver.

 

Father, I didn’t know what I was doing, but I recalled you saying once at the dinner table when I was but a lad, “First you break the fever, then you deal with the cause.” I think that was in my mind. I knew nothing but my Aileen and the unbearable thought of a life without her.

 

Inside I put her down and let her lie naked on the floor while I built a roaring fire and left her beside it then I tended to the bed. It was in a terrible state, but straw is plentiful and we had more linens in the trunk, even a quilt or two. Soon I had her tucked up though she was still muttering about thunderclouds and forgiveness, but she’d stopped shaking and her face, though pale, wasn’t burning.

 

Tending animals who fall, or ail, is one thing, tending a grown woman who is fretful and havering endlessly about clouds and regret, for what I couldn’t tell, was beyond me.

 

The Kovalenkos live about five miles to the east so I saddled Wager and rode him hard until I reached them. Neither Vasyl or Olena speak much English and I do not speak their language at all, but I was able to convey my concern to them. He followed me home, and listened to Aileen prattle on and when he heard her mutter about the thunderclouds he turned abruptly.

 

“Help.” He pointed to the bed and left.

 

It was a long night. My mind raced with all that could have gone wrong while I rode to the Kovalenko’s homestead, all the things that could still go wrong. Had I done the right thing by leaving her, by bringing Vasyl? What more could I do? I stoked the fire and waited, and prayed as I hadn’t done since I was a boy.

 

Before sunrise I heard horses approaching.

 

Three men dismounted, Vasyl and two natives. One, a youth, took charge of the horses. The other an old man with white hair and a stern expression advanced to me.

 

“Your woman is haunted.”

 

“What?”

 

“She engaged a dead spirit.”

 

“What?” Father, I felt like a helpless, brainless child.


Inside he regarded Aileen, shook his head sadly and said, “Thunderchild is long spirit and filled with grief and anger.”

 

When the old man began to sing Vasyl took my arm and pulled me toward the door. I resisted, but not very hard. To be honest I didn’t want to stay. I was completely unnerved.

 

“He help her.” He stated calmly. “Smoke?”

 

And so we stood and smoked our pipes, waiting. From time to time we heard chanting and there was smoke and the smell of burning grass.

 

“Sage,” Vasyl said nodding wisely.

 

Father, I wanted to say something clever, but all that came out of me was, “ah.”

 

After about an hour they came out to us.

 

“Spirit gone. Woman fine.”

 

“Can I give you something for your trouble?” I asked.

 

The old man, whose name I leared was Standing Deer, studied me for a long moment. “Tobacco, three chickens.”

 

And so it was that because an old man cured Aileen of her encounter with a dead man I had to ride to the trading post again to buy more tobacco and a few more chickens and a lot of other stuff Aileen insisted we get for the man who healed her, the Kovalenkos, and most especialy for their children.

 

Father, I can hear you as clear as the dawn challenging everything I’ve written, and I cannot argue with you other than to say, I don’t know. I just don’t know.

 

Was there a spirit that troubled my Aileen? Or was it just the imagination of a frightened woman alone, fending for herself not knowing if her man would come back or not? I cannot say. All I know is that she is herself again and that is all that matters to me.

 

Aileen sends her love to you and mother and young Alistair and says to tell Mary to get her needles out, but as that’s all she’ll say, I’ve no idea what she means.

 

With love,

Hamish

 

 

(Luke 16:27-30 and Luke 10:7)

https://murielle.dreamwidth.org/78152.html

https://murielle.dreamwidth.org/78482.html
 

 

Week 1 (years ago) prompt Resolution

 Therealljidol Week 1: Resolution

Dear Mother,

Ham is gone. He left last week for town. I don’t expect him for a fortnight. Last time he was gone almost five weeks, but it was spring and the weather unpredictable. We had a fair harvest and the wagon was loaded for market. He will stock up for winter. I hope for mail. Even if he is gone a month I am well provided for, it will not be hard as last time. The chickens and the cow have settled in and are productive and good company. I enjoy tending them. He took Wager and left me the nag in case I need the neighbors. They are five miles east. I have only met them once. They are Ukrainian and seem nice. They have five children.

Mornings are brisk and clear and the grass is gold and billows and ripples across the plain like waves. I take the scythe to it each day for hay and am cutting a swathe up the shallow hill; we call it the shoulder, on the edge of our land. How my heart aches to see a tree.

I must tell you of something. Not that. Not yet.

The last time Hamish was away I saw a man on the crest of the hill. He was astride a beautiful white horse and dressed in native colors. The first time I saw him I was terrified and ran inside. I dared not venture outdoors. But at last, Maisy’s mournful lowing summoned me to the barn to milk her and lead her out to graze. I took the rifle. I did not see him again for several days. Then one evening, as the sun blazed its way behind the hill I saw him, a dark silhouette against the horizon. Clutching the rifle to me I watched, but he did not move or even look toward the homestead. Over the following weeks, I saw him each morning and evening in that exact spot, gazing to the east. I came to think of him as a sentinel protecting me from harm for during that time no predators came onto the land, not a coyote or a hawk, and the dogs did not bark.

When Ham returned he vanished. That is, I did not see him until last week after I bid Ham farewell. As I turned to go to the barn he was there, on the hill, as if he had never gone.

In the evening, when I cut the grass on the hillside, I know he is aware of me. I feel no fear. I feel drawn to him. And even though he never turns his head or his eye toward me, I feel he is anticipating, as do I, our inevitable meeting when I gain the crest of the hill.

I have prepared a basket of bread and preserves for this evening when at last I reach him. I will tell you of it when I get back home, Mother.

Your loving daughter,
Aileen

 

Sorry about the blue.  :-)

Therealljidol Season 11 Week 15 Sudden Death Write-Off

 Therealljidol Season 11 Week 15 Sudden Death Write-Off

Resolution: The Man on the Hill, Conclusion

 

Dearest Mother,

It is a full month since last I wrote. Ham has not returned. I hope he will not come back. I pray he will not. I will try to explain, forgive me please.

On the day I wrote you I intended to share my meager meal with the man on the hill. The man I felt was somehow protecting the property while my Hamish was away. The man who so terrified me when I first saw him, but whose presence became such a comfort. I was excited, apprehensive. We never so much as hailed one another, yet I regarded him as a friend. My heart hammered as I gained the crest, once reached, I lay down the scythe and retrieved the basket from where it lay further down the hill. I did not speak, or even glance his way and although I could see he still gazed off to the east I knew he was aware of my presence, accepting of it even.

I laid the old picnic quilt on the ground and began to put out the small meal I prepared and then I sat and waited.

There was no sound, not from the beautiful beast he rode, or from the man himself, but he dismounted and came toward me and sat across from me.

I waited, not knowing what would be appropriate for me to do or say, or even if he would understand me, or I him. For now I could see that he was not just a random man on a white horse, wearing native colors, but he himself was of the land, his skin glowing copper in the setting sun. I took the bread, broke off a sizable piece, spread it with some butter and some of the jam I had made from wild berries that grow on our land and offered it to him. He declined.

“I am called Thunderchild. I lived on these lands all my days. Winters came, thawed and spring gave life to the earth and the water. The village lay in the valley beyond. One day a man came. His skin was pale and he spoke with his hands. He traded us things for pelts, cooking pots and blankets. He left.

“The children were first. Their pain was great, they had huge weeping blisters. We bathed their burning bodies, but there was nothing we could do to ease their suffering. Then Death came. The elders and the weak died next, and then there was no one in our village. Now, there is nothing where we lived.”

Mother, he spoke of his loss and his grief and his anger and his pain. He spoke of his sons and his wife and his father, all dead. He spoke of the beauty of his village and the joy and peace of his life, destroyed by infection, contagion, disease.

Hour after hour we sat across the quilt as the full moon rode the sky and the insects and the rodents feasted on what lay there between us. From sunset to sunrise he talked and I understood every word, but his lips never moved. His face was a ruin of scars, pox marks.

As the golden light began to creep over the land again, he turned, his eyes burning into me.

“Now you and your man have come to the land. What do you bring?”

He gripped my arm. His touch was ice. “This is my gift to you.”

He threw back his head and sang, an ululating wail of grief and loss and pain and such rage.

Then he was gone, as if he never was.

I have been able to think of nothing else. Over and over I envision his children dying in his arms. I hear their cries. I hear his wife beg for release and his father’s last words for vengeance.

I am not myself. I am hot, then chilled. I cannot eat and am too weak to fetch water from the well. I have a rash.

Oh, Mother. What have we done?

Mama, mama what can I do?

I will be with you very soon, I think.

 

Your loving daughter,
Aileen