The Message
© 2008 Andrew S. Fuller
I trapped a crow today. He eyes me now in the candlelight, one leg tethered to my chair. And the only remaining wild hope I have is that when I release him, he doesn’t immediately fly beyond the hills, that he chooses instead the only tree in the valley. That the branch he chooses many hundreds of cubits above the ground is within your reach. That he perches long enough and allows you to untie this message from his leg.
You were always the one for me. This is what I wanted you to know.
If you ever, in forty years’ time, living alone way up in that tree without anyone to speak to, ever doubted for the briefest moment whether I’d forgotten you. Please know that I still love you. I’ve loved you from when we were children, and I never wanted to be with anyone else.
You were always the one. So on your fourteenth birthday when they chose you and they tore us out of each others’ arms and put you in the hoist seat, I knew that I would be alone for the rest of my life. My body felt nothing when they beat me back and pinned my head in the dirt, but my heart howled as your cries climbed and diminished. For a month after, your wailing rode the wind. And I still hear it.
I’m not sure whether you can see from that elevation what happens in the village, or any longer care to, but I never married. I ran with the hunting parties until my thirtieth-year, and then I worked in the mines for twenty-four more until my lungs coughed blood and my eyesight dimmed. But I missed you and thought of you always. Every night I schemed to climb that rope. Every day I walked through town at noontime, grinding my teeth like millstones, not looking up because of the law, glancing at the ring of sentries around the Great Tree, plotting to overtake them, to dodge their halberds and scimitars and flails, perhaps distract them when the sacred chefs raised your daily food basket with the pulley or when the official janitors removed your waste items.
Now I live in the small shack on the edge of town. My hair is all but gone, and I’m sure that my remaining days are few. Which isn’t why I broke the law.
I broke the law because I had to see you.
Today I climbed the highest hill. After forty years of missing you and wondering if your hair was gray, if you would recognize me, if you were even alive or just propaganda maintained by the elders, I climbed to forbidden heights so I could be level with that damn tree and finally look into your house, if only to catch a glimpse of you.
They’ll be here soon. They may approach with torches and screaming for my blood, or send a few of the bigger men, barefooted with rope. They’ll lash me to the base of the Great Tree, and everyone will gather at dawn and stone me to death. According to the law. Then this very crow may pick at my corpse in the sun.
I hate their laws. Old, rigid things that they refuse to change. The ones that said we should cut down every tree in sight, save one and build a village around it. The ones that said no one could leave the valley. The ones that said no more books could be written, lest the laws be tainted. The ones that said once in every generation a virgin maiden must be raised into the sky as an offering, and not return to earth without a god for a husband and a seed planted in her toward a new race of better men.
The climb was long and difficult, and took me all day. On my wheezing ascent, I saw people in the village pointing at me and shouting. When I reached the hilltop, I didn’t care to look over and learn what lay outside our land. Maybe other villages, or immense screaming beasts. Maybe endless green forests. I simply turned and looked for you. I could barely make out the structure of the Holiest of Holies, that tree house constructed centuries ago by the founders.
I was content to perish on that hill, closer to you. And I knew what punishment awaited me back in the village. But I had to write you this message. I had to break another law. I made this paper and ink from field grass and flowers. I caught the crow. For the message. Because my eyesight is worse than I thought.
From the hill, I looked and looked. But I could not discern that far into the high branches of the tree.
I could not see you.
I jumped and waved my arms, calling your name.
Did you see me?
