Fingerprints – a mess
The hawk soared in an ark high above the grassy plain. It circled, scanning the landscape below until something caught its eye. The hunter watched as the bird suddenly adjusted its course, folding its wings and diving down towards the ground where it disappeared among the tall grass not too far from where the man was observing. A couple of seconds passed; the hawk did not emerge as the hunter had trained it to. He waited with bated breath for the bird to appear. Even after a few minutes of waiting, the hawk did not fly up as expected.
The hunter held in a sigh of disappointment; he took the short hunting bow off his shoulder and placed an arrow on the tightly drawn string. He stalked through the tall yellow grass, the golden rays of morning sun danced through the yellow blades and across his tired face as he advanced towards the place where he had last seen the hawk. He was a couple meters away from his destination when he heard a low growl coming from the direction he was headed, he lowered himself deeper into the tall grass, his nostrils flared at the slight aroma of blood in the air. The hunter placed two fingers on the string, pulling it back slightly, he squeezed the end of the arrow and moved, keeping close to the ground.
He entered a familiar state of unbeing, all natural signs that would betray his presence reduced to the point of imperceptibility, his breathing slowed, his footsteps silent, his scent masked. He pulled back the string even more as he stopped his advance about two meters from where he had last seen the hawk. He was as still as possible, if he had the ability to do so, he would have stopped his heart from beating and his lungs from drawing breath.
The subtle sound of eating could be heard in front of the hunter. He could hear flesh being ripped apart in front of him. The sound itself wasn’t very loud. Still, it reverberated in the hunter’s head non-stop, the one sound he could focus on. He contemplated firing the arrow, trying to hit the creature based on sound alone but decided against it. He stalked forward once more with the bow half-drawn, held sideways, the string kept close under his chin. If the need arose, he could fire within a second. The smell of morning dew clashed with the aroma of blood, cutting through it and slightly disorienting the hunter’s senses. He advanced further, almost unconsciously, readying himself for the gruesome sight he knew was coming.
It wasn’t as bloody as his mind had pictured. There were three things he noticed as he parted the blades of grass blocking him view. First, the wolf cub staring at him with blood around its mouth. Second, the rabbit lying dead in front of the wolf. Third, the hawk lying motionless next to the rabbit with its neck twisted in an unnatural way. They occupied a small clearing between patches of tall grass. The hunter had his bow drawn and aimed at the cub, which went back to consuming the flesh of the rabbit, seemingly ignorant of any potential threat the hunter posed. His mind began piecing together what must have happened, rationalizing the incident, trying to find the logical course of action. The body, however, had already reached its verdict. His eyes could only focus on the dead hawk lying on the sunlit ground. A familiar rage overtook him. His mind went blank, his fingers poised to deliver their own justice.
The arrow flew too fast for him to register the movement. It had been set on the bow, held between his fingers, then it was lodged in the cub’s head, dark blood marking the entry point above the right eye where the arrow stuck out. The shot didn’t have a lot of power behind it, and yet it was enough to end the creature’s life. It didn’t suffer; death arrived before any sensation. The hunter immediately felt sick, recoiling and dropping the bow as if it had been the guilty party. He had killed animals before, that was the nature of survival, but he had never killed one so helpless and trusting. He did not let himself to look at it.
The hunter calmed himself within seconds. He absent-mindedly put the bow back on his shoulder and picked up the hawk as well as the rabbit. The former as a fallen friend, the latter as food. He left the cub; he didn’t retrieve the arrow. As he walked away, ready to leave his crime behind him, a question surfaced from the depths of his subconscious. Where was the wolf cub’s mother?
The hunter shook his head and picked up his walking pace. He remembered the rage he felt at that moment of judgment, when his body decided to deliver swift justice. The rage felt familiar somehow, though it was now extinguished like a fire that has burned through all its fuel. How long before he would be set ablaze again? He didn’t want to think about it. And so, he walked and let his mind drift into idle thought.
–
The boy did not have much to do after the death of his mother. That of course wasn’t the most pressing issue when she had first died, the focus was on the sorrow, the grief, the confusion. Now instead of pain he felt the empty pit left in his life for the first time.
The boy did chores, for it was the only thing he could do. He gathered herbs growing around the family tent. He practiced with the small bow that his father had given him. He prepared the pot over the fire in preparation for his father’s return. And when finally, he had no distractions left, the boy visited the grave.
They had buried her according to tradition. West of the tent, legs facing the direction where the sun rose each morning. When the star did rise, it would not gaze upon the grave of his mother, for she would be obscured by the shadow cast by the tent. Something seemed right about that, it made the boy feel like somehow, they were protecting her, even after death. Though the comfort was short-lived in the face of constant loneliness. He left a flower in front of the stick jutting out of the ground and made sure the piece of wood was secure in the ground. It marked the burial point.
That particular element had confused the boy when they had first buried her.
‘Isn’t a stick too fragile, father?’ He had asked with a slightly accusatory tone ‘It will take nothing but a strong wind to knock it down, then how will we know where she is buried? The grave won’t last unless we take care of it.’
His father hadn’t answered him that day. He simply gave him a solemn look and continued digging. Now, the boy was somewhat grateful for the fragility. Taking care of the grave gave him something to do, though that thought always brought a wave of guilt with it.
A blanket of melancholy smothered him in that moment. He stood in front of the grave for a length of time his mind did not bother registering. He stood there, and let the emotion seep out of him into the air, meandering like paint in water, slowly draining out of him, until there was nothing but the boy, the grave, and the sun crossing overhead.
A sudden hand on his shoulder woke him from the trance. The boy did not look at his father, he kept staring at the grave. After a moment of silence, the father spoke to the boy. His ears could not quite catch the words, but his mind understood the sentiment.
They walked around the tent together. Only as he walked behind his father, did the boy notice the rabbit and hawk the man held in one of his hands. He must have carried them in separate hands at one point, the boy realized, as the shoulder where his father had touched him had a bloody handprint on it.
The campfire was set east of the tent, as was dictated by tradition. The boy and his father crouched down on opposite sides of the fire pit. The boy had filled the pot with water and set a small fire beneath it earlier in the day, though it had been blown out since then. The boy hurriedly crouched down in order to start another fire. Without a word the father placed the rabbit in the pot, then walked to the other side of the tent holding the hawk tenderly between his arms.
The boy suspected the man was burying the creature and ran after his father abandoning his attempts at lighting the fire. He fell into step behind the man, walking the short distance to the grave on the other side of the tent. They stopped in front of the large stick jutting out of the ground. The man got on his knees, set the hawk aside gently on the ground and started digging a small hole with his hands. The boy knelt by the bird, trying to see what had happened to it.
Its neck was twisted in an abnormal way. He did not recoil at the sight. The boy distinctly remembered how even a month prior the sight of blood made him cry. Those days seemed so far away now, like a dream, like a false world which he no longer inhabited. What had changed since then? He knew the answer. It lay buried beneath his feet. The boy didn’t let the train of thought go further than that. He sat back and watched his father dig.
Once the macabre task was done the two of them sat in silence, neither of them willing to break the palpable fog of understanding that had formed between them. That of individual burden, accompanied by a dogmatic refusal to share it with anyone.
Soon, however, the carnal need for nourishment compelled the father to rise and head towards the fireplace where he had left the rabbit. He did not find it. For the pot hung empty above the blackened wood and the rabbit was nowhere in sight. Before he could seriously contemplate where it had gone a shout from his son drew his attention to something on the horizon. It was difficult to make out with the sun blazing overhead and the point of interest blending into the vibrant silhouette of the tall grass. He saw it however, with its grey fur and pointed ears, a rabbit in its teeth, red marking its mouth. The wolf stood indifferent to the world around it facing the faraway tent.
The man had no real way to know what the animal was looking at. His eyes could not reach the beast to divine its intentions. The terrible knowledge found him nonetheless like a law of the universe, and he looked at the wolf’s prey with a heavy soul and misty eyes. His son, who watched the wolf with curiosity. The debt needed to be paid, and yet the man could not fathom the price. He drew an arrow and shouted at his son to get inside the tent without looking at the boy. He rushed inside without a word. Part of the man worried the boy thought him too serious. Part of him feared the boy hated him.
The bitter cries of insecurity were quickly silenced, however, by a deep and primal need he discovered in himself suddenly, the need a father has to protect his son with all the power afforded to him by the bones and flesh. It drove him. Fuelled him. He took a deep breath, staring at the small blip of grey visible in the distance. Something in him imagined that the wolf had made a similar discovery within itself, though far too late, for it had already failed in its duty to protect the future from the vicious world. It must be suffering. And what is there to do with eternal suffering but spread it? The father wondered these things with a heavy heart and eyes glued to the thing in the distance. He would not allow himself to experience such suffering, he would not fail in protecting his son.
A fair part of his mind considered the justice of it, how he had killed the cub and so by the rules of karma and morality he should pay for the crime. The rest of his spirit recoiled at the thought. It did not in fact matter to him, what the just or moral course of action was, for in survival he had found a higher authority than any of the ones he held dear previously. He pledged allegiance only to the eternal perpetuity of life, at any cost. Survival was his mistress now; he would not fail her. The son would survive. The father dared not consider the alternative, expelling such blasphemy from his heart and mind.
The wolf stood on the horizon. The man knew logically that it could not see him clearly, but he hoped that it could somehow see him for what he had now become, he hoped it felt a fear deeper than any it had ever felt before.
It did not. It simply waited. It had time.
The son peeked his head out of the flaps of the tent. He saw his father standing firmly with bow in hand and eyes fixed on the distant threat. He wasn’t sure exactly what was different about the man, but something in the way he stood, the way his body appeared ready for anything the natural world could throw at him. In that moment the boy saw, for the first time since his mother’s death, that his father was alive.
–
A sort of arrangement had developed between the three creatures. Two of them would do nothing but stare at one another, as neither could go to sleep with the threat of the other, so they simply stared. The third, however, continued much in the same way he had before, he slept, he did chores, he gathered food, the one thing that had changed for him was that he now had to cook the plants he gathered and had no meat to add flavour to his meals. He was happy.
The hunter and the wolf stood watching each other, they did so all day, and all night. The wolf could have easily left, facing no threat from the hunter and the son, it stayed, nonetheless. The man was fed by his son and sometimes sat on the ground while eating; he would do so, never taking his eyes off the danger in the distance. The bow lying beside him on the ground, ready to fire.
The wolf did not eat. When it had eaten the rabbit, it simply stood as if ready to charge towards the tent, to exact justice. But it did not do so. It simply stood and watched. The man did not allow himself to sit long, he had to meet the enemy at the same level when it decided to strike. Perhaps it was honor, the respect one has for the enemy. No. Truthfully, sitting would give the animal an advantage, and the hunter would not give up any advantage he could otherwise deny the creature. So, he stood. So, it stood.
It was in this arrangement that they all lived, and though perhaps it would have been respectful of it to do so, time did not stop and let the feud resolve before claiming the participants. The boy grew, and as he grew, his father shrank: in stature, in skill, and in mind. The wolf seemingly remained the same though, at least that’s what it looked like from the considerable distance. It stood in that same way as the years passed, and it watched its enemy slowly wither in the distance, waiting for the right time. That time never seemed to arrive. So, it waited. So, he waited.
The boy, though he was no longer a boy but a man, looked at the wolf in the distance. He sat next to his father on the ground as the old man ate. They did not speak; they did not look at one another. The boy learned a long time ago not to distract his father, he was preoccupied. The boy admired what his father had become. He was a creature bound by nothing but love, ready to do whatever it took for his son, for his creation. This shamble of bones and skin was not free. It was perhaps the most trapped being in existence. But it had chosen this imprisonment. It had chosen love. His father loved him, and he allowed that love to consume all other aspects of his being, until he was nothing but skin, bones, hair, and love. In that, he had found more freedom than ever can be found by being untethered. So, he was free. So, it was free.
His father withered, and the boy and the wolf did not. Time passed. It pressed on them further, pushing them into the ground, pulling them into their graves. The boy’s youth gave him strength to resist the terrible gravity, he had grown into a tall man, though he did not eat meat. The wolf resisted the force by drawing on an endless spring of justice, it powered the animal, for it would not crumble into dust until that which was done to it was repaid. And the father drew upon the tenants of survival and the power of his love for what he had created upon the earth, and that was not enough. Not enough to maintain his shell. So, he withered. So, it did not.
One day after he had finished all that he had to do that day, and the sun was setting to the east, the boy walked out of the tent and passed his father. He did not realize the man was dead. In those last days the man refused to sit at all, he stood in his last moments, and indeed, he stood after his last moments as well, for the body did not fall as the mind did. The boy did not cry. For he had already recognized that his father was immortal, the love would carry on, the body was too weak or perhaps too strong to follow it. In that moment the corpse of his father spoke to him, it whispered, and the boy came closer to listen.
‘Graves are for the living, boy.’ Dried and cracked lips whispered.
The boy stood frozen, perhaps he waited for more, even when deep down he knew those were it. His father’s last words. He gave the still-standing body a gentle push and let it fall to the ground in a storm of white hair, forming a bed of snow for the gray husk. The bow lay at his side. The boy did not pick it up.
He turned and saw the old form of the wolf approaching. It did not run, for justice had time. The boy walked slowly past the large tent which had watched him grow up and walked to the large stick jutting out of the ground, marking his mother’s grave. He stood there, as he had stood there on the last day his father had gone hunting. He stood there, lost in contemplation. He stood there until he heard a low growl behind him. Turning, he saw the wolf, a monstrosity of grey fur and tired eyes, it was those eyes that really drew his attention. They were sad, and they were angry, but above all they were ready. It happened within a span of time. The exact chronology of events does not matter. It could have been a second or a decade or yet a century. They had no reason to hurry, it was all inevitable. The boy ripped the stick out of the ground. The wolf lunged at him. He brought the stick down on the head of the animal. It staggered then lunged once more, managing to graze the boy’s leg with its teeth. The boy hit the wolf with the stick again. The wolf managed to bite down on the wood as it ripped the weapon out of the boy’s hands. It prepared to deliver justice. It was ready. Then. It had an arrow in its heart. The boy pushed the thin piece of wood deep into the skin, feeling the warm breath of the creature, the saliva dripping down his clothes slowly turning into blood. That was that, it was dead, a fact which he corroborated by closing the creatures eyes. He left. He did not take anything. An original sin is needed in all acts of creation. All the meaningful ones at least. Creation being the greatest sin of all.
Years later, when the boy crossed the grasslands with his wife, looking for a spot to place their tent. He would walk the ground under which his mother lay and the ground on which the corpse of his father rested. It was never buried, had he walked a few meters to the right the boy would have tripped over the withered remains. Alas he passed with no awareness finding him, for no graves littered the land. Love would never leave the boy. He carried on the traditions which his father had loved, for he carried with him all that the man had loved. Even the burial tradition. Graves were for the living. He would live. Even when his very being was an injustice. Survival was his mistress, all other loves secondary. Then he died, and his family did not bury him.
END.