Gone the Tides of Earth

In shelter of the forest I best ably tend her maladies. We are within a sort of alcove that once was a cultivated bower, the surrounding trees very tall and canopy thick, permeable only in gaps to effervescent moonlight. The stars out, shine bright and blue in dense bunches of clusters, air cold and clear.

Gashes and boils cover the skin and body. Cleanse them in turn with rubbing alcohol, daub cream of a topical ointment and wrap sets of bandages. Throughout most of it she stays asleep, pain awful she winces, several times cries aloud, droning of the woods met in attempt to drown her out. Afterward as the threshold breaks she implodes, shouting ceases, her passed out amid the flora. Regardless of any effort would be wont for infection, despite the filth she was so cold I dared not wash her. In lieu I burrowed in my pack, found some smaller clothes, stripped her of the soiled robe - loins darker, differentiable shades where she’d urinated, defecated, bled – and dress her in the fresh garb, bundling in multiples layers of sweatpants and sweaters.

The frame of the body emaciated, fragile as an anorexia patient. There was no longer smoothness nor softness to the skin, broken and cut. The hair of head, that might have once sheened with lustre, frays under fingertips like threadbare cloth. Both hands, feet are of nails yellow, clawed and the enamel of teeth blackened with grime.

As I finish clothing her, rolling aside the girl makes slight convulsive movements, flipping back, her eyelids begin flickering as her lips part. In a spasm they appear to be trying speech, hardly a wisp of air escaping; I lean closer, listen hard.

‘Ahmed,’ she exhales, slurring, barely a whisper. ‘My love.’

Close by I take hold of her underneath the shoulder-blades, shaking delicately. She does not wake, when I withdrew any pressure the legs and arms draw in; she fidgets, tenses, balled up into the fetal position where lain. Alas, I knew she was not in death for now. Too I noticed again, the feet were bare, chill as ice. Delving back in the rucksack I extracted a pair of warm woolens. On the ground I shuffle opposite, seeing into the sallow face, features grim in dull moonlight, and pillow my hiking jacket beneath her head. Once at that polarity, I take one of the ankles and lay it across my lap. The socks unfurled, I shake off any sand, dirt, grass. She shivers, rolling and her legs start withdrawing anew. As the foot went in, I stretch open the sock and pull it over deftly. She swoops down at it, rubs the wool, then again becomes limp, resumes armadillo.

‘My love,’ she whispered, delirious. ‘Dead. Dead. Ahmed.’

On an ankle I saw the black ink of a tattoo; there was some writing scrawled in Arabic, overarched by an Egyptian cross.

‘Who was Ahmed?’ I ask the broken girl, knowing there might never be an answer. ‘Who are you?’

Away I lay down in the base of a broad tree root, the rucksack lashed shut and placed below head as a pillow. As ready for slumber, I hear the girl murmur, rustle in her bed of dead reeds. Off my eyelids faint rays of starlight play, darkness that swarms now blacker collapsed in mine head, and deepens till it feels heavier.

During morn that follows the girl is awake for the first time, we are trapped, inadvertently held in position by a marshalling of soldiers in the wood.

Hidden in undergrowth fringed on a clearing, since dawn I watched Hellenes march along a footpath going south. For the most part I witnessed the muster alone, tucked behind matted boulders with the girl curled below. A couple hours past daybreak she woke, through the foliage saw to the path, and at who went there. Before the scream could have been differentiable from a birdcall I caught hold of her lips, hand clamped like a vice held. The heat of her breath made moist, she opposed with a futile brush of tongue and scrape of grimy teeth. Praying, desperate for dear life, holding, I came to realize with what indelicacy I cradled the head of a mere babe. Eyes searched finicky across me - hers a terrified expression which cannot be captured by words. Weakly she beat fists, clawed at me until subduing herself - I made sure to hold long as it felt vital.

‘I’m not an enemy,’ I said, staring into her eyes, as they faded. ‘I am your friend; we must stay quiet.’

When I let go on impulse, feared that she might shout. Her breathing picked up like her lungs expelled toxic fumes, during that detox and depletion the haunting eyes, green-brown now I realized, inspected over me more voraciously than prior. Broken spirits and unmettled mind were doing battle, and for any result, I awaited.

‘Ahmed,’ she implored, in a whisper, clutch ferocious. ‘Where is he? Where is my love? Dead. He is dead.’

As volume started rising, steadily rising the madness flared anew. There were no soldiers, they could not have gone too far yet. Her fingers fumbled, writhed like they could not find a good grasp, claws digging into skin through torn fabric, bleeding me. Anxious, I waited for her to relax, prepared to do what I must. Then again, I saw within those fraught eyes a hysteria akin to that of yesterday, same as when she had tried to shout.

‘They killed him!’ staring into my eyes, discreet as if was a secret we only just found out. Erratic breathing and the voice rising, ‘Ahmed! My love!’

For sheer sake of survival, I clamped my hand whilst trying to maintain a gentleness; mouth shuttered the lashes flickered madly, eyes lolling like balls in water. All the crazed features stiffer and then sagging; strength becoming deflated and catatonic, voice still tried to work on its own, until the effort faltered. At a loss I collapsed back, letting another hour pass before finally deciding to start out.

Upon this hour, the sporadic movement of soldiers ceased in procession. Getting off I learned, past the clearing the path was old and well beaten. Settling dust sparkled in the sunlight, that their champing formations had raised, trees dusty as well and many trunks chopped down to stumps. In total, I reckon several score of troops had went past. Girl in arms I moved with haste, kept low, having borne her so long felt much heavier than really was. Lucky enough she slept the time being, it would be folly to count on her incapacitation too long. We went half an hour unto the shade of a wetland riverbed under beech trees, I was hoping to nap yet only succeeded in resting eyes.

Midday there was no longer afear of being caught, not one more soldier spotted in the deeper woods. Throughout afternoon we scaled a piney escarpment above a ravine, rushing brooks crossed with tumbled deadfall. A labyrinth of pines and hills abundant, ground cooked brown, dotted with sun-toasted shrubs. Following a stream in the lowing wood, ambled across a beach and clear lake of pebbles. Boulders in the water, its level metres beneath the ground like a quarry. Her I lighted in shade under a scrum of olive trees, myself stripping at the water’s edge, dipping a foot below.

Both arms extended, I reached up to the sky, stretched, let them go limp. Within foliage the intricate, delicate natural materials twining fauna, leaves and tendrils of branches, I gazed the radiant sky, in its white clarity a voyage of clouds floating like stellar-inverse aerial ships. This during golden hour, soft warmth on the green pines and deciduous petals, illumining the canopy ichorous, and in sun-salutation raised both arms again circumferential, stepped forth and plunged in a dive.

Resurfacing, breakers splashed about my head, displaced water lapped up on the stone. The feeble drop-off of a stream undulated the surface, humming, tickling constant. In the pure water temperature was pleasant, soothed my aching muscles. I swam around a bit, waded up to the edges where I stood, Earth underfoot claylike and moist, schools of minnows swarming the shallows. From the far end I paddled to the lowest edge, coming close enough to see the girl’s face. It was pale and illumed, all else hid in the dark in the shade. Swimming nearer, in faster strokes and getting to the brink, noticed something of a new development: a soldier crept there.

Hunched over, stooping appeared to be checking the girl’s vitals. Of nothing was I capable, nor could I do anything to help her. Lashed across his back the automatic rifle slung loosely, accessible. What else, we stared at each other across the water’s edge. I quickly realized him to be most startled, kept quiet and peered at him silently, an intimidated fawn with his dear-in-the-headlights expression. Once on my own two feet I read the fear full on his face, emblazoned rouge as the insignia on his coat. He was young and reminded me what a boy-scout of old might resemble, those troopers they had back home. Except that they never carried guns like child soldiers. Scared of what he saw in front of himself, or perhaps the burden of responsibility, he backed away with our checked gazes locked, predator-prey. Soon after the young Greek boy soldier was gone, fled before speaking a word, so it was time for us to go as well double-fast.

After having lifted myself out I burrowed inside the pack, into the contents of the bundle that the crone provided me. Clutching with a hardy, firmed grip I wrenched out a loaded pistol, steely cool in hand, and for a moment holding it before my vision. Mind lapsed back into that frenzied state bore me earlier, I picked up the girl and started farther, deeper into the gizzard of the dusking wood.