Note: Tuesday night was prompt night at the Write-On Writing Group. The prompts were all related to summer or summer activities. I ended up veering a bit off those and writing something centered around the solstice. I think there's some interesting parts here. If I were to decide to build on this, I'd probably spend some time learning more about the solstice, solstice rituals, witchcraft, aging, and develop the characters of Gareth, Hector and Olivia more. Let me know what you think, if you feel so inclined.
Dawn
A younger man might have been described as folded neatly under
the canopy of a dull purple sky. Gareth wasn’t a younger man, though, and he
resembled more a pile of bones stacked next to a ring of perfectly round stones
with a dying fire in the middle. His left eye was blind, something he was used
to by now, most of his teeth were gone, and the few hairs still scattered on
his pocked-skin dome were wiry gray tangles. His back was to the rising sun,
his mind slogged in ages of fog, and his heartbeat softly and slowly in an
uneven rhythm. Tap. Tap…Tap…Tap.Tap…..Tap.
He couldn’t count the number of solstices he had walked
anymore. A hundred. A thousand. He used to know. Kept a ledger, a diary, if you
will, of all these years, all these lifetimes, but eventually the pages weren’t
filled and his desire for knowing nil.
When Gareth was a young man, a real young man, not the kind
he’ll be in twelve hours, his father said. “A boy, who make a vow is foolish. A
boy, who keeps a vow is a man.”
Behind him the sun’s first strokes of brilliance penetrated
the horizon, a few birds began a simple, old tune, and the longest day started.
Gareth’s duty was to walk. His knees popped; his bones were no more than
slightly bonded particles of dust, and his skin sagged like thin bread dough
from his ill-suited, decaying frame.
He shuffled forward, his heels and toes barely leaving the
dust.
Three hours later
A bus motored past on his right, kicking up stones and dirt,
and Gareth raised a finger, not caring if it was a bus was filled with
prepubescent kids. Likely they’d seen and heard worse from their idiot mothers
and fathers at the dinner table. Gareth considered biting his thumb, but he
figured that Shakespearean gesture would be lost on this generation. That
gesture had been lost on many when Shakespeare was putting on his little plays
with all their nasty barbs at critics, ex-lovers, and royalty hidden in his
iambic pentameter lines. Gods, what a snot that man had been.
“Give me, Elliot, any day,” Gareth said. “I’ll show you fear
in a handful of dust,” that’s some real shit. “To be or not to be?” Cripes. Make
a choice, and live with it. I sure did.”
“What did that cost you?” Olivia’s voice echoed from
somewhere.
His strides were better now, he could see from both eyes,
and the sun was draped on his pointed shoulders. His knees and hips hurt from
walking, but not as bad as when he started. His heart was more dependable, not
quite a Ringo Starr sturdy beat, but you could sing a tune to it, sort of.
The bus went over the rise, the kids were probably still
tittering about getting flicked off by some crazy old guy on the side of the
road. He was happy to give them something to talk about.
High Noon
“You there,” the police officer waved him to approach the
cruiser.
“I have to keep going,” Gareth said.
The officer’s belly spilled over his belt, and he probably wanted
to avoid vacating his seat. The officer sidled the cruiser along the curb, his
foot ever so gently on the pedal to keep pace with Gareth, who was booking
along at a pretty good clip.
“You come from out of town?” The officer asked, pointed back
toward the direction Gareth had come.
“Yes.”
“You see another fella in a robe like yours?” The officer
asked. “Maybe twenty years older, scraggy gray beard, bald on top, kind of
stooped over? Heard he was being obscene toward some kids.”
“No,” Gareth wasn’t lying, after all, he had seen no one
else in a robe. “It’s just been me.”
The officer was perplexed, but also didn’t seem all that
interested in pursuing the matter anymore. Kids made up stories, after all. He
pulled away from the curb. Gareth remembered when the law had been more brutal,
not necessarily more effective, but they sure did pursue things with more
vigor. Hector Alaster, for instance. He wouldn’t let that thing with Olivia go.
Claimed she was a witch. If Hector had galloped off that morning on the road to
town instead of confronting her, Gareth wouldn’t be here now, alive, and
walking back time.
He passed a store window for a grocery; his reflection
didn’t even cause him to stop. His back wasn’t stooped. His once bald dome was
covered with a light brown hair, and his skin was taut and a healthy bronze.
“Fear in a handful of dust,” Gareth muttered.
Midafternoon
Gareth had lain with many women since Olivia, growing
younger on the solstice every year brought urges that he could not repel for
millennium nor satisfy with his hand forever, but none of them had been like
her. When they made love, there were no such things as fireworks or even
explosions other than thunder. The strongest spark in their village was sparks
from campfire. The lovemaking between Gareth and Olivia had filled the night
sky with dancing sparks, so bright that it caught the attention of a certain,
jealous nobleman’s son.
Gareth was out of city limits again, along a stony backroad
that cut between two fields, and he was about thirty years old. At times, he
broke into jogs, enjoying the limberness of his joints and the strength of his
muscles again.
They had run down a similar road, he and Olivia, when they
were children, shouting and jumping. Olivia’s voice was higher, almost like the
birds, and the beasts of the field always took notice of her. The worst beast
was Hector Alaster.
“If he ever touches you, I’ll kill him,” Gareth said that
night before the solstice all those many generations ago.
“You’ll do no such thing,” Olivia said.
“I will.”
“You won’t, promise me.”
Gareth stared into her green eyes, her red hair spilling
down to her naked shoulders. He couldn’t disagree with her long.
“Fine, I promise.”
“Not good, enough. Vow, you’ll not touch Hector, or you’ll
walk a million summer solstices on this earth without me.”
Gareth spoke the vow, not forgetting his father’s words. “A
boy, who makes a vow is foolish. A boy, who keeps a vow is a man.”
Evening
The sun was still well above the horizon, and Gareth was
nearly that boy of twenty-two again, the one that made a foolish vow the night
before the Summer Solstice all those years ago. His heart was more like a John
Bonham blitz now, tap.tap.tap.tap.tap. No wonder he’d said such stupid words
back then, how could he think over such noise?
He was on an incline toward where his village once stood.
This road was old, Hector had caught Olivia on that Solstice morning, walking
home after a night in Gareth’s arms. Hector had watched them after all and seen
the sparks they sent into the ether. No normal woman could cause such a
spectacle. Hector in his jealousy and anger, accused her of witchcraft, took
her to his noble father, who was all too happy to tie her to a stake. Gareth was
miles away, walking to a pasture to bring in his father’s sheep. He’d offered
to walk her home that morning, but she declined. Now, he walked every solstice,
hoping to catch her before Hector arrived.
Gareth broke his vow when he found out about what Hector had
done, he hunted his rival down, forgetting his vow, and smashed in Hector’s face
with a stone. Gareth ran, escaping punishment and mourning his lost love. He
still mourns, and he still walks, thinking about all the ways he let her down.
Sunset
Gareth dropped to another set of stones as the sun dropped
below the horizon. A young man, twenty-two. He disrobed, his naked body firm and
strong under the moon’s light. The aging would begin again soon, two years or
so every week until the next Summer Solstice, when he’d walk back his ago once
more.
“I vow someday my walk will end,” he said to no one. He had
said it before and would say it again. Someday it would be true.
