Gone the Tides of Earth

The crone’s glazed gaze washed o’er in a celestial tide - water sliding off folds of silk - eyes fixating upon mine with clean, bittersweet transparency.

She swept ahead, forward, starting away from the lookout point. I watched her slowly go down the hill, stale grey breeze gentling inside the fabric of her dress. Wooden and rigid, branches of the olive trees fidgeted in rushes of gale, tremulous, pointing out across the scape like the skeletal fingers of deformed sentries. Down at the abandoned orchard I noticed aspect of the trees, mere fractures of semblance, theirs a depleted currency of withered haloed bones and bled paper-machete timber. They were entirely sapped through gouges in the trunks, deteriorated bark inkless, stained darkly as if in demise wept venomous black tears - a hushed silence like the very air in lungs was siphoned, collapsed within chest and exhaled plumes of hot incandescent breath, until once again rejoining the living.

Stricken, I remained upon the ridge, the crone still winding way in the sands. The listless trees were made starker in languor as each were buried several feet at the base - as I noticed this, an impression quickly dawned upon me: this orchard of groves, desolate and decayed below us, had at one point in time been meticulously cultivated. Concealed rake lines ran underneath the sand throughout, clumped over with bulges of debris, eroded. Frailly thin, trunks were matted with beards of lichen, fungi.

In a deadly heat I began descent to where the crone waited below, idly looking up at the leafless tops. Final steps seemed to sway in dissolution before me - bidden forth on soft sand as if a conveyor slid underfoot. Up at the edge of ravaged trees I ceased moving, sea spray moist and salty perfume reeking.

‘This place is ancient. It was a symbol of home, sacred to my people.’

A faint bit of air escaped my lips as they parted for speak, no words following.

‘Long it’s been since we worshipped at Delphi and besought oracles for wisdom, yet day never came when we no longer suffered rule of demagogues. What a greater cause of this cruelty than the power-thirst of evil, war-mongering men?’

I looked where the trunks were stained black, ran fingers along a crevice and felt over smooth, dried-up sap, which had lost all texture.

The crone beckoned me away, mawkish gleam in the eyes. She led on a thin trail, throughout the middle of grove where the soil had undergone maintenance more recently. We went upon it, lighter brown and each tree rotted, sorrowful, hanging overhead like ominous clouts. This trail went the whole way betwixt orchard, ground arched and running up toward the water, well above sea-level.

‘See here, up above.’

There was a passage to the top of rise lain with mulch long ago, spotted with sagebrush, withered shrubbery. Atop was a spectacular tree, more massive than any other, not brown but jet like the painted sap, its trunk cut with deep gouges and roots bulging. Though not dead it too was streaked with sap, coated dense and dark as tar.

‘A Moria of old,’ the crone said, hint of wonder in her voice. ‘Part of the fabric of Hellas itself … gift of the divine … bounty of the Pallas goddess.’

‘I know of the legend. It’s a beautiful tree.’

‘Yes, too placed by the warrior-goddess Athena.’ She ran her palm along the unyielding trunk, traced fingers over the branches which were like obsidian. ‘It is sad seeing it here, among the others.’

‘I wish it weren’t. It shouldn’t bear the same fate as the rest.’

‘Resilience is a virtue for the living, Henry,’ she told me. ‘Come here, look.’

We sidled around towards the back of the tree, tender slope falling away beneath our feet. At first consumed up to the knees, sinking closer were able to grip on, regain ourselves and shift about. The rolling, grey-threaded waves broke shore below the dune, and together behind the grand tree gazed up.

‘You see even now it blooms.’

Its black roots were in firm command of Earth below, green leaves on branches like tender, supple flakes, and twig-like brambles shooting off harder, stout branches laced and dotted with olives, bright green and darker, some aged better, dozens that were pruned which resembled sun-ripened raisins. Wind swept through the leaved twigs, rustled the branches like a comb smoothing hair.

While the crone picked olives - collecting even amounts of the fresh growths, ripe, well ripe and pruned - I indulge watching the flush of turquoise waves on gold sand, the sea spraying in the blistering winds whilst the sky cleared, blue casting out grey.

‘We mustn’t take more than we need. There may be others who arrive here in dire need, requiring nourishment more than us.’

We walked back through the orchard beneath the trees. The hard heat was eerie within the shade, modulated rays coming through treetop snares.

‘I always feel out of comfort here,’ she said, as we went. ‘Oh it is place to be, without any doubt. ‘Though what my mind attributes to being here, well what for me is a morbid association borne at the beginning of the great dark. Back then was as if a universal deceit was spelled for me - I still recall like it happened yesterday.

‘Alone, with dark clouds hiding the sun it struck me, the dualities - revelation and concealment - and mind you then the orchard was somewhat bountiful. I’d thought of something to do with the old ways - treachery, greed - that what was worse than all else that the demagogues brought unto this Earth, Henry?’

Prism swollen shut, her mind lapsed into a spat of fury, solemnity, seldom did she get like this - in these moments all feeling turned for intensity. Eyes narrow, sharp, mental honing radical. It was a sort of ingenuity that was all hers, a war in herself brokered in the cleft between subjective reality and metaphysical interior - fabrics that bind which binds us all. Waiting, I knew somehow that when she gave clarification would feel better.

‘Ready for the answer?’

‘Go on.’

‘Demagogues,’ she said boisterous aloud, channeling the vocal intensity dramatic of a peplum-narrator of old - she knelt, reached down to clench a handful of soil, squeezing so that it ran out between fingers. ‘Worlds beneath our own, amid the same soils. Do not these. Do not seek it.’

When her voice stopped working the face lightened, levity returned, she grinned thinly - simple as that the melodramatic flair subsided. I saw her eyes of green glean, twinkling in the emerging sunlight.

‘It will not be sought,’ I said.

‘Promise me, Henry?’

‘I promise,’ I told her.

‘And yet the fickle vanities of a young man’s heart and mind must brew choice to their own accord,’ she said, and like that we were without from inside the orchard, back on the winding golden lanes we had come.

It was becoming nighttime when we got back to the Grecian village, built into the great rock edifice of the stony cliffside. By twilight it was a sublime thing, something straight out of the olden Hollywood pictures with their larger than life set constructions and computer-generated imagery.

‘Thus, comes the time for the owls and wolves,’ she said, with a smile and weary curl of the lips.

Up above, pale gloom of the moon radiated and stars full out, ringed immaculately about the supple heavens, glinted like glittering wreaths of silver-blue diamonds.

‘Sparkling cosmic jewels,’ I fancied.

Down a few flights in the village, I escorted her to chambers, bid farewell and she offered goodnight. After went in through a huge bronze double-door, I left off up a stair and above an old side street shop where was once a market. There I stood, looked out on the sky at the darkened horizon, faint wisps of grey-violet light shining upon dark washes of calm tide. Until full dark I stayed, wondering to myself how the crone’s home looked inside.

Taken by weariness I head for the semi-circle stair, scale a level down to mine own accommodation. A spiral staircase off a main staircase curls below to the threshold of the chamber: a long-forgotten cabin built into ancient stone in a rectangular form. The door is thick oakwood coated with red paint, knob a circular brass bullhead.

Gentle, I turn it and go inside. Aroma of frankincense lingers in the room. There are two open-concept windows, whitewashed smooth, dyed blue. Empty cupboards, a pantry door ajar. Walls are stained blue as well, the ceiling low and a small bed in the far corner. Against that wall one of the holes which allowed a distant view out over the sea, other side of room a pinewood desk with drawers between each of its front legs. Desktop itself is littered with papers, parchment, maps, pencils, pens, ink basins, quills. Candles in an archipelago litter the fringe of the desk, to the wall; many candles spent, waxes stained and seeped all over, congealed like festered mould.

I sat down on fragile wicker chair, preparing myself and utilities. All day I felt adamant to get at letters. For I was a writer you see, or would have been, granted another life. Writing possessed a heart which was not to be found anywhere else anymore, not in the organic sense of it. Left to us was the worst of what we imagined. Writing was passion and rage like only war, adventure, true love and the fury of great storms invoked, solace and peace such as the sight of a far green country awaking with dawn. Foremost, it kept me going - nourished thine spirit through any darkness.

The dark was something coming not only by the night - at least not only with the crepuscular. Darkness that broiled up, seeped in, raged about. Fumed. Devoured. Consolidated. Ever not only after dusk. As such it had dawned herein this night, with the fell pitching of blackness.

Mine own tended to as well.