I get to my feet to go and find the Sky.
I walk down the river road, deeper into our camp, the night’s full blackness held back by campfires. Wet spray from the rushing river throws up mist, and the light from the fires gives everything a low glow. The Land watches me as I weave through them, their faces friendly, if weary from the battle, their voices open.
The Sky? I show with my voice as I walk. Which way to the Sky?
In answer, they show me the way among the campfires and secreted bivouacs, the feeding crèches and the paddocks for the battlemores–
Battlemore, I hear whispered just out of sight, whispered with no small shock and even disgust, as the word is not a word in the language of the Land, it is a word from the language of the enemy, of the Clearing, and so I make my voice even louder to cover it and I show The Sky?
The Land keeps showing me the way.
But behind their helpfulness, do I hear their doubts?
For who am I, after all?
Am I hero? Am I saviour?
Or am I broken? Am I danger?
Am I beginning or end?
Am I truly of the Land?
If I am honest, I do not know the answers either.
And so they show me the way to the Sky as I move through them up the road and I feel like a leaf floating on the river, above it, on it.
But perhaps not of it.
And then they begin to send ahead news of my coming.
The Return approaches, they show, one to the other. The Return approaches.
For that is their name for me. The Return.
But I have another name, too.
I have had to learn what the Land calls things, pulling words from their wordless language, from the great single voice of the Land, so that I can understand them. The Land is what they call themselves, have always called themselves, for are they not the very Land of this world? With the Sky watching over them?
Men do not call them the Land. They invented a name based on a mistaken first attempt at communication and were never curious enough to fix it. Maybe that was where all the problems began.
“The Clearing” is the Land’s name for men, the parasites who came from nowhere and sought to make this world a nowhere of their own, killing the Land in huge numbers until a truce forced a separation, the Land and the Clearing for ever apart.
Except, that is, for the Land that was left behind. The Land that remained as slaves to the Clearing as a concession to peace. The Land that ceased being called the Land, the Land that ceased being the Land, forced even to take on the language of the Clearing. The Land that was left behind was a great shame for the Land, a shame that came to be called the Burden.
Until that Burden was erased by the Clearing in a single afternoon of killing.
And then there is me, the Return. So called not only because I am the single survivor returned from the Burden, but because my return has caused the Land to return here to this hilltop, after the years of truce, poised and ready above the Clearing, with better weapons, with better numbers, with a better Sky.
All brought here by the Return. By me.
But no longer attacking.
The Return approaches, shows the Sky when I find him, his back to me. He is addressing the Pathways, who sit in a semicircle in front of him. He shows them messages to take throughout the Land, messages which pass by so quickly I have difficulty reading them.
The Return will relearn the language of the Land, shows the Sky, finishing with the Pathways and coming over to me. In time.
They understand my words, I show back, looking out at the Land who watch me as I speak to the Sky. They use them themselves when they speak of me.
The words of the Clearing are in the memory of the Land, the Sky shows, taking me by the arm and walking me away. The Land never forgets.
You forgot about us, I show him, heat behind my words that I cannot suppress. We waited for you. We waited for you until our deaths.
The Land is here now, he shows.
The Land has retreated, I show, with greater heat. The Land sits on a hilltop when it could be destroying the Clearing now, right now, this very night. We outnumber them. Even with their new weapons, we–
You are young, he shows to me. You have seen much, too much, but you are not even fully grown. You have never lived among the Land. The heart of the Land weeps that it was too late to save the Burden–
I interrupt him, a rudeness unheard of in the Land, You did not even know–
But the Land rejoices that the Return was saved, he continues as if I had shown nothing. The Land rejoices that it can avenge the memory of the Burden.
No one is avenging anything!
And my memories spill into my voice, and it is only here, now, when the pain of them grows too great, when I am unable to speak the language of the Burden, it is only now I speak the true language of the Land, wordless and felt and pouring out of me all at once. I am unable to stop from showing them my loss, from showing how the Clearing treated us like animals, how they regarded their voices and ours as curses, as something to be cured, and I cannot stop from showing the Land my memories of the Burden dying at the hands of the Clearing, of the bullets and the blades and the silent screaming, of the field of bodies piled high–
Of the one I lost in particular.
The Sky shows me comfort in his voice, as do all of the Land around us, until I find I am swimming in a river of voices reaching out and touching mine to soothe it and calm it, and I have never felt so much a part of the Land, I have never felt so at home, so comforted, so at one with the single joined voice of the Land–
And I blink as I realize that this only happens when I feel so much pain I forget myself.
But that will pass, shows the Sky. You will grow and heal. You will find it easier to be among the Land–
I will find it easier, I show, when the Clearing are gone from here for ever.
You speak the language of the Burden, he shows. Which is also the language of the Clearing, of the men we fight, and though we welcome you as a brother returned to the Land, the first thing you must learn – even as I tell it to you in language you will understand – is that there is no I and there is no you. There is only the Land.
I show nothing to him in response.
You sought the Sky? he finally asks.
I look up again into his eyes, small for the Land – though nothing like the hideous smallness of the eyes of the Clearing, small, mean eyes that hide and hide and hide – but the eyes of the Sky are still big enough to reflect the moons, the firelight, me looking into them.
And I know that he waits for me.
For I have lived my life among the Clearing and I have learned much from them.