After a reign of three thousand moons, the giants from the stars, many-handed and many-footed, returned from whence they had come, strode back to their native planets and asteroids. They had grown weary of being in one place, which they could traverse from end to end in the space of one day. When they came, they had found the earth boiling, an enormous geyser – a vast, seething, spluttering volcano – a thick, searing ocean bed.
Yet they had moved the winds and the ice up and down from the poles, made things solid. They had tempered the earth, and made things grow upon it. They had made the seeds of men from volcanic lava, even as they put out all the great volcanoes, one by one, with the power of their soothing cold. After three thousand moons of walking awestruck in the tracks of their footsteps (which remained for aeons after their departure), always keeping their distance lest one of the giants might still be near, Rang’s people could now live out their lives for themselves, in peace. At last their elders decreed that they were free from danger, and no longer needed to pay homage or tribute to the giants.
Yet the giants had left many things behind them which were to last forever, as guides and symbols for Rang’s people. They left their footprints, in whose hollows – once foci of fear, there grew strong trees, rich pastures and deep, fresh lakes – full of plenty to sustain the people with grass and berries, fish and flesh. The land on which the giants had not trodden was desert.
The elders agreed that the giants must have been benign, and had left the earth of their own free will, smiling down with beaming sunlight after they had departed from the earth. And so the people of Rang smiled up at the stars, and offered them their blessings at the time of each full moon.
* * *
The red sun rising changed the colours of the sharp stones as Rang trod warily between them, and put them through the entire spectrum that he knew. Pale greys turned into bright yellows and blues, reds into blazing, strident purples. The patches of colour furthest away were shrouded in a thick haze. Rang turned his glances towards those things which were closest to him. He picked up two thin stones which he saw lying in the sand and, taking one in each hand, struck the two pieces against each other. The softer one threw off splinters to give it a sharp tip and a straight edge – with which to cut and pierce; to be winged – through shaft and throwing-stick; faster and keener than the teeth of living creatures, living on as soft tools after their flesh had passed on its life to the people of Rang.
Rang went wading into a lake in search of fish. In its water he was lost; yet in its water, he found himself. He had tried many times to plunge into the darkness of the lake, to see if he could catch a glimpse, on its bed, of a giant’s footprint, and find the secret of everlasting life. Yet however often he tried to do this, however long he held on to each attempt to do so, something pulled him right back into the air and light, replenished him with buoyancy, made him aware of many things glinting below. Concurrently with his submergence desires, Rang was immersed in the pool of the big eye-star, which forced him to fix his gaze upwards, and point towards many stars where he thought that the giants might dwell. Sometimes it felt as if the giants were approaching, and to look into the eye where Rang had thought himself to be immersed.
Or was there another eye behind the one which contained Rang? Could what seemed to be above him really be behind him? Now Rang’s inner eye turned into the limb of some giant animal, disconnected from the body, yet fully living and mobile. From all that he had hitherto used, from all the beasts, birds and fish that he had hunted, Rang felt that there had been one pair of eyes made from many other eyes looking at him; one eye was domed on the outside, the other cupped on the inside, sinking like a gully and a cavern from lofty heights down to the underworld.
* * *
Rang felt he was a limb, wrenched from a living body, but no longer in need of the rest of that body, like an earthworm – which lived on after being cut in two. All the directions of straight lines were known to Rang. All points were ends of lines for him, like the lines that all the spears took when they missed their quarry. Rang’s eyes followed what had been thrown off from and eye which once belonged to a total body, and made him look at the stones once again. He saw that some resisted him more strongly than others did. Some were dulled, and did not at once throw back, into his eye, the day-eye-point. They yielded to the touch of his hand, and crumbled into granules. Some pieces told Rang that something was there, which could be known, both by him and by the elders. Some parts of the harder stones seemed similar to the small parts which he had made by turning his hand in upon itself. He held two hard, chipped stones in his hand and shook them. They squeaked and rattled – like a snake and a mouse struggling for sustenance and survival. Then he held them, one in each hand, and struck them together.
A point rose, like the small pupil of an eye, made an arc high above him, as tall as one of those giants of whom the elders had told him. The point faded and disappeared. He recognised then and there that he had found something which the giants had left behind, some of which were already known, some still to be unearthed, near or far in the future, things which would nourish, enlighten and protect his people for countless generations. Now Rang felt the truth in the words of the elders.
* * *
As he pondered on this revelation, a cracking limb from a living star lurched down from the heavens as he stood, in the middle of the dark cave turned upside-down. Its finger-ends urged Rang to run up a high hill, to a place of thin grass, of loose, dull stones and dry, rotten, shredded roots of dead trees thrusting through the topsoil . . . and yet it looked rather like the moon. Had it come from the moon? In the moon was the milk of the giants; but this milk was made of the hardest stone, sometimes melted and spilt upon men to make them understand things, force them to open their eyes.
Now he, Rang, was the first of his people to recognise that. The elders had told him about the mountains of the moon, where all giants could be preserved in ice, only to crumble to dust if a giant on a star should will their destruction. Over the mountains, only the moon and its splintered pieces had power. The sun shone harshly on them, but did not rule them or break them. They took from the sun its life, heat, strength and colour, gave nothing in return – and grew hard and splendid.
As for the stars, the elders had told Rang that they were splinters chipped off from the surface of the moon, smaller than the moon, smaller than the snake-limb. But he, Rang, knew that the elders had been deceived: they were greater than any of those things, greater than the sun itself.
The limb spoke to Rang loudly, sharply, straightly, threateningly – seeming to change the round form of all the eyes – change night into day, destroy all the knowledge possessed by Rang’s people, threaten their very lives.
* * *
Upon the ground made iridescent by a star-giant’s voice working with water, lay two hard chips of stone. The voice of a giant shouted at Rang: ‘Clutch those two stones!’ This Rang did, then struck them together. The small star struck some dead branches, then threw them upwards, into wavering, red-tinged life. Rang felt that the tongue and cavernous mouth of a huge beast was facing him. He threw the two stones at it. Everything around him was intensely heated – a lasting, glowing dull red, preserving light inside shells of darkness, and day inside caverns of night – at last to pour forth small serpent shapes akin to those which had swept down from above – and yet perfectly rounded, seeming to writhe in the heat of the shimmering sun, but really quite motionless. He saw that a new body had come, separated from all other things, as close as life, suddenly put together, coming from the soft stone and yet, like the hard stone, pointing towards Rang like the limb from above, telling Rang that his people would grow in stature and in numbers, and that he would grow in importance to them even as they grew.
Rang looked back up at the place where he had been. With his prayers he gave his thanks to his token animals, imitating them with patterns of waving, writhing movements – and in his own voice, now like a child, now like a grown man – knowing that his beginning, and the growth of his people towards numbers and power were present, here, now, all around him. During the time he had spent alone, Rang had seen many things. He ran back in triumph to his people’s village, bearing the fruits of his foraging expedition. Although he could not tell people in words of all those things he had witnessed, the people sensed, when they heard his footsteps, that he had found something unknown to any others – even the elders. The people always gathered together when the sun stood at its zenith in the middle of the year. They formed a circle; a fire was kindled in their midst as the dry, soft, crumbling wood met the coarse-grained hard wood. Rang knew now that only the sky-limbs could bring it into the air, into his view.
The sacred thong of the elders, dangling from a painted branch, traced and retraced its path. It was fed with crumbling dead wood and wizened, gold-shot leaves. The flames at first were tiny, and the pall of smoke above them widespread and thick. The elders, with hard poles, proof against the power of the flames, drew out lumps of ash from the midst of the pyre, and with them made patterns in the sandy ground – between the fire and the circle of people gathered round it.
The hunters crept forward, clutching small stones, closed their eyes, cast them on the ground and trod them into the ash. Stones, ash and earth were filled with the knowledge which Rang had found for his people, and the position of one stone, sharp and thin, gave the people an omen of Rang’s impending doom. It stood out, stronger and sharper than the others, like the brightest luminary in a star-clustered night.
* * *
Rang was to be turned out from the shelters of the tribe until many signs, put together when the shining twig would dance again through the sky to tell him he would return to his people, to become an elder.
Big strength had never been with the people when they all stayed close together in the village. They had warmth, safety and shelter, and could prevail against the wild beasts. But they clung firmly to the ways of old: they feared to look too closely at the depths and edges of the waters. With the forked willow, they had found the springs of life, and had remained happy with the ways they had always known.
Since his initiation as a hunter, Rang was possessed by a burning desire to wander off alone, away from the elders and his fellow-hunters. He was the keenest and fastest hunter among his people. His spear, flying from his spear-thrower, was more deadly accurate than that thrown by any hunter for the last seven generations of the people.
He told the elders that ways would be found of saving the lives of many of the newborn who now died young from sickness and weakness, heat or cold, draught or drowning. In times to come, they would take and use for themselves things their fellows had made, bigger and more intricate than the bodies of the biggest beasts they knew, more than all their flesh in power and substance, stronger than all their sinews – deeper too, beyond the roots, fruits, stems and leaves of all the plants they knew. They would make covers of rock for themselves all over the surface of the land, beyond all horizons, and would live in mighty shelters, higher than the hills, thicker and deeper than the forests.
* * *
Rang’s words of prophecy struck terror into the hearts of the elders. One of them cried out that, if Rang’s words were true, all the people would be swallowed up by the giants. Because it would only be made manifest after their own lifetimes – this truth was evil! So great grew their fear of what had been said that, after a full night of talking beneath a full moon, they elected to banish Rang again from the shelters of his tribe, only to return this time when he could bring things to be seen and touched by all the people, which could match the words of his prophecy. They gave him a robe and a blanket of hide, tools and weapons. They pointed to the setting sun and told him he must follow the sun over the brow of the earth. Their signs told them that Rang would never return, would never survive his quest.
* * *
Rang wandered far and wide over hills, through forests, until he came to a mountain, so high that no trees or grass could grow at its peak. He followed the last line of the snake-limbs, throwing the sunbeams closely into his eyes. A stream, gushing out at its source near the summit, stopped him in his tracks. If he were to go further, he would have to jump across it. The speed of its movement frightened Rang, and yet he kept walking, his toes stabbing into the ground like spears when they were tired of flight, until a sheer rock, smooth and slippery, stopped him from going any further. He went downhill until he found the stream flowing ever more slowly. He followed the bank downstream for a whole day, until he came to a ford. He waded across the stream, walked on through the night.
As the sun rose, he climbed again onto higher ground. He found a pine-covered ridge. Beyond the highest point of the ridge, spread out before him, was a valley, sparse in grass but rich in shrubs and bushes, glowing with the sunlight blazing on its shining leaves.
He sensed the truth in the words which he had to say to his people lay at the bottom of that valley. Things he could find there would make him their leader, greater than all the elders and shamans in the shared memory of the tribe. The snake-limbs which he once met – he could find down there, take them in his hands, as his own. He knew he could find one. It would be easy to pick one out from the sand, unlike the one hew had seen embedded in the rock. He picked up a broken branch, and with it made circles in the sand – until he found that hard thing he was looking for. He seized it and ran back to the top of the ridge.
Standing on the crest of the ridge, he cried out for all the people to gather round him and hear his tidings. His voice was pitched so high that it echoed through the valley, capped those hills which he had crossed so hardily, back to the point form which he had started his journey of exile. He ran back over the path of his journey, following his footprints to their source, waving his snake-limb in the air. It caught the light of the rising sun and made a beam of the sun’s light flash, like a spear from the skies, to that same point.
The people responded to that signal as one person. They felt some of the pains of death, which was coming to Rang, flowing through their own veins and bones. They had visions of their descendants walking with the strides of the giants. Hunting was halted; flensing, tanning and cooking were stopped. The entire tribe began to walk forwards in a series of crescents. In the biggest crescent, in the rear, walked the women and children. In the middle walked the hunters, in the front the elders. The movement was slow, inexorable.
* * *
The sun stood high in the sky as the people caught sight of Rang. Hunters rushed forward, running through lines of elders, seized Rang and bound him with thongs of hide. They tied his wrists so tightly that he held the snake-limbs, quite rigid, motionless. The act struck terror into the hearts of the people. Their faces rose in awe and wonder as they gazed at the snake-limb. Something akin to both animal and plant had been drawn up from a core of hard stone.
They could not guess how this had come to be – nor what it could mean, according to the signs and omens that they knew. It was something harder than the forked willow, yet softer than the sharp stones. They feared it – and their fears were well-founded, for they centred on something that could be seen and touched, though Rang was the only one to touch it. Rang himself had not been destroyed when he touched it. He had brought something to his people from far beyond the noises which he had made in his throat. Through what had happened to him, he knew that his people, and the things they owned, would cover the entire earth – and that he, Rang, was an opening through which new strength and new, greater numbers of the people could be poured, as if into a vast lake.
As the snake from the sky came close and strong, it turned Rang’s body into a column of clear light, so that all his people could see through his body, even through his bones – could see volcanoes, torrents, moons and stars between his skin and his bones, throbbing through his arteries.
The snake-limb in his hands made a writhing movement, then blew forth fumes from its top. It flew upwards – brighter now than any sky-limb had ever been. But its tiny source remained in view, quite solid. None of the people watching the spectacle lost sight of it. The limb surged towards the moon, and seemed to touch it, lightly. With a violent shaking of the earth, the land was plunged out of the blackness of midnight into the broad light of noon. The people felt that the earth had been turned upside down. Now they were looking downwards into the sky. They felt that the sun would double back across its tracks, no longer to follow the simple lines which they knew, nor go through the colour changes that they knew. They were stricken with fear, knowing their lives could no longer be simple.
The elders decreed that Rang should be sacrificed to the giants – for they held that giants’ blood flowed through Rang’s veins. He should, in effect, be sent out to exile for a third time – to find out still more, tell still more to his people. But this time he would not be a free mover. Now he would be bound to a place where his people could always visit him in the spirit, and the shamans could trace his remains through the shapes of the star-clusters.
The hunters took him again to the crest of the ridge and bound him to a thick outcrop of rock, fixing his hands high above his head, with the snake-limb set quite firmly between his two palms. After a full, round day, with the sun bare of cloud cover and the moon still full in daylight, round and yet pointed, slowly flooding his eyes, the sky-limb came to visit him. Pure and sharp, it flooded the snake-limb, and went right thought he core of Rang, while all the people looked up at him from the bottom of the ridge.
* * *
Only Kon, a newly-initiated hunter, was blinded by what he saw. The rest of the people could see exactly where they were to go – following the paths which Rang had set, to his remains. Kon returned after the ceremony, groping his way over the spear-sharp rocks. He walked in a circle round Rang’s remains. He knew that they would rise above the soil, as trees would rise from their seeds to form great circles around that centre when it had sunk into the earth. In times to come, mighty things of stone would be erected above that centre. Lines offered themselves as guides for his feet, until wet ashes clogged his walking movements. The things he touched were fixed and rooted, except for many round, crumbling rocks – like sand and pebbles moulded together. Kon found that his feet could move the encrusted pebbles, and make them roll – until they touched the slippery roots of the trees further down the ridge. He picked up some of the pebbles and broke the encrusted sand away from them. The pebbles were quite new to him, unlike the shells which he carried round with him.
As he held the stone, Kon felt that his feet had been lent the power to venture into that centre – which he felt had been turned to nothing by the death of Rang. In the midst of the thin, feathery ashes which he had touched with his bare feet, Kon was aware of something stabbing at him in his blindness. He felt a sudden, searing pain – then found that his eyesight had been restored to him. His new-live eyes fixed upon fixed upon Rang’s snake-limb, lying unscathed on the remains – the snake without roughness on its skin, the snake which (he knew) could give a piece of the sun to any man who touched it. In shock, Kon dropped his pebbles on the ground. They rolled towards the snake and hit it – each one in turn; they stuck to it. Kon bent down and picked up the snake, the pebbles clustered round it. He tried to pick off the pebbles, but found a mighty power held the cluster together, binding each pebble to the snake.
The snake pointed its mouth towards the biggest stone; there was something inside this stone which the snake had to find and know. It seemed to be truly alive, though it did not move, and to yearn for its unknown, unbroken centre, in the stars or in the centre of the earth. The binding and the search-probe came together, showing Kon what his people’s future would be like. Kon was terrified by what he saw, and by what he felt. With that same strength which could hold the pebbles to its body, the snake could grow – and devour the world.
* * *
Kon wandered off, further than he had ever been before, and found a patch of sand near a rocky pool. He found a stone in the sand, and put the snake near it. The snake rushed straight at the stone and held it. Kon looked up from the flash of the snake’s path, and saw masses of sharp, straight-edged rocks. His people, driven by the power of the snakes, would set those great rocks up in lines, like piles of spears. They would be covered, clustered by the multitudes of his people, teeming like ants.
He felt that he was jumping over the sun, even as it moved. Now that he knew so much, he felt completely lost.
Why did the courier bear the lodestone and the glistening iron bar? Where did he bear them? What purpose did they serve when they were borne together, jostling in a mass of coarse fibre? In substance they were one and the same thing, but their friction had no effect, save that of making their carrier persevere in his path, as he bore the omens of the pilgrimage of knowledge.
Lichens bent beneath him, slurring his footing as he aimed his toes sharply. Crags narrowed their tips to pierce his slurred steps – searing bubbles pricking through swamps, dashing off geysers and luring him to their sources. The swamps themselves moved, yawned open to tempt him, quicksand-velvetly. As he trod on, his trials tripped him and held him up, pitched him down and picked him up.
According to the decree of his mission, Kon was forbidden the use of all leather satchels, anything save his own hands and armpits to keep his own personal tangles away from an infinite mass of tangles of roots and thorns, which faced him at every step he took. The sight of ice-velvet lichens lent him a perfect sense of tightrope-footing, so that he kept a sense of balance all along his path. Fluting winds, all deeply abased, vaulted his lofty desires yet further. Oaths and missiles of abuse, clinging to his memory since the time of his departure, seeped through the cheering wind which travelled with him, and kept their clarity in all those places where people had allowed him no rest. They lived on in him, stored inside him.
* * *
All the deepest human passions, so long submerged, were hurled at him quite openly as people watched him pass through their villages, saw him in the streets and marketplaces, for he had to cross the boundaries of many small states which were constantly warring. His blessed burden was his only shield of safety from sword, spear, knife, arrow or sling-stone. The mere sight of his burden called an instant halt to all jeering and all violence. It could make any soldier, brigand or runaway slave cast his weapons aside, and show the bearer to the nearest place of rest and shelter.
He lost count of the number of states and cities through which he had to pass on his journey. They were more than the days of his wanderings. He felt quite lost, dominated exclusively by his overwhelming sense of direction. He felt that he had spanned mighty gulfs of time, and dreamed of the millennia he had brushed against. All was quite clear in his mind, and yet he felt quite weak – incapable of controlling his actions. He jumped over many centuries in his dream-ridden wanderings, for he felt he was traversing time as well as space – to the time of here and now – knowing that the present only lasted for a split second, but hurt him deeply while it lasted.
* * *
Now he had come to the third millennium’s beginning, where he found armed policemen helping him on his way to subterranean garage-sanctuaries – cold, safe and luminous. As soon as they saw his identity-disc, the police were totally cooperative. There he was given food, rest and medical attention, and transported by helicopter to the next stretch of open country. He travelled so fast that he felt he went one day back in time for each day forward he travelled in space.
Yet Kon was free to linger where he wished, beat his pebbles. His ground grew rutted, then flooded in marshes as he neared the coast, with the brine scumming the inky depths and the sky. The wind scummed the ground, breezing past every buffer and cushion of foliage, grass and flowers.
He heard a rattling sound pitched high above his footsteps. The two sounds fanned out to mingle with the wind and the waves, slithering along their paths. As he walked on, it seemed that all movement was a form of bending, that he was part of a flexible plane, the crest of its rumple, but well-rooted. All things around him looked like loose crests – all their big bending-frames single, like tiny particles.
On pain of death, he had been compelled to keep his load suspended as he walked, never to let it touch the ground. Should he fail, torture and execution awaited him in his native city. He knew nothing about the person to whom he was to pass on his load, apart from signs inscribed on the medallion which that person would wear.
* * *
It was fear that kept Kon moving. Following the sun, he moved to higher ground. The trees shrank and dwindled, finally to give way to lichen. Snow formed drifts beneath him, slowing down his footsteps. He staggered on until he reached an outcrop of rock, which he could clutch, and on which he could pause in safety with his load – with no feelings of guilt or despair.
When he started off again, his feet sank deep into the drifts. It was now just as hard to move his foot as it was to move his whole body. Dazed but still awake, he struggled on – until cramp alerted him. Unable to keep his balance, he fell forward, and went on all fours, his stomach smoothing his path. His hand touched a piece of wood, half-buried in the drift. He seized it, and tugged at it with all his strength, until a sledge emerged. Some travellers must have taken this path before, and had collapsed and perished. Or maybe they had abandoned the sledge because they wanted to travel lighter. He climbed on the sledge and smacked it hard on the surface of the drift. He tore some strips off his leather thong, and bound his feet to the runners. He swept forward, following the sun when it rose again.
Slowly, he passed out of the cold region into the warm one. The snowdrifts melted into slush and sweeping floods, to merge into a morass of mud. As he proceeded, back came the tundra – then grass and trees returned, growing ever taller as he moved forward. Had he kept on following the sun in a straight line, or had he gone due north, due south – or simply over a mountain range in a circular movement? He had not bothered to look at the shape of the mountains. At any point in time, he could only look a short distance ahead. Now he saw a river, flowing fast and choppy. Finding a large, lush tree with an overhanging branch on which he could balance his load, he did so, and untied his feet from the sledge. When he reached the river, he threw the sledge into it – to watch it float downstream, out of sight.
* * *
He picked up his load again, tired and frightened. He needed to cross the river, but was afraid that its muddy, slippery bed might make him lose hold of his load and send it downstream – to be lost forever in the boundless ocean. So, although he was not keeping to the straight line of his direction, he followed the river’s course downstream (since that seemed to him a natural direction) towards his goal. He kept as close to the bank as he could without slipping into the water – although he felt that the direction of his former steps had called him across to the opposite bank. He went on until he found a fallen tree, a mighty oak which had been split and blown down in a gale. No human implements could have torn its trunk and roots so raggedly. He sat down on its flattened trunk and then, on observing it more closely – discovered that it was hollow, big enough for him to climb inside it and rest. This he did, clutching his load closely.
Kon slept well, but after he had begun to stir, he was aware of a powerful movement all around him. He climbed out of his dark nest and found that the uprooted tree was floating down the river.
Since it was a very large tree, Kon felt safe inside it. The trunk was rich in sap, and watertight; the branches and foliage shrouded him comfortably. He climbed out of his nest, rocking the tree but not capsizing it, observing the scenery around him. There were low hills, rich in pine trees and ferns, ranged on smooth slopes before him. In the distance were higher, steeper hills. He looked round at the things nearest to him, and at the river which was sweeping him along. The water was clouded; he could see very little but the tops of a few water-weeds. Looking up, he saw that many other trees had been swept from the bank nearby and were floating, before him and behind him, in a mighty procession. As dusk fell, the floating trees merged together, thrusting against each other – a vast, agglomerated mass.
Kon looked ahead – to see a large cluster of rocks covered in moss and slime, which was obstructing their progress. He felt that something very important must have been happening in the world – very small to begin with, and yet so capable of expansion and acceleration that it made him recall, within a split second, everything which had affected him most deeply in his past life, all those factors which had made him the chosen one, on parole, on pain of death, for his mission – after a frenzy of dancing and prophecy in the market square of his city. He had defied the city fathers, and denounced them as liars, so that they had chosen him to carry out their mission.
They condemned him as a lunatic and a traitor. Only the successful completion of his mission would cure him of his madness and allow him to return to the city – exonerated, sacred and charmed.
* * *
Now Kon dreamed that at some point in his journey he would have to slide down a glacier, clutching his precious burden, and then wrestle with a giant worm which he felt would spring to growth from his diseased lung. He thought of his return to the city, being replete with rights, restored to home and friends. He could hear their voices, saying how much they loved him, and had missed him.
But he was stuck fast in a hear and now. The mass of trees grew ever more compact, until it would not be contained on one plane within the bounds of a steep river bank. The broken trees began to pile up. The branch which stemmed from the hollow trunk of his tree began to crack, and all his reveries were cut short by a violent shaking of the trunk. His sack, suspended on a wavering branch, began to swing back and forth. Kon snatched it down and clutched at it. Beneath his body, the tree rocked; a violent current threw it into an upright position. He was thrown from his perch into the middle of a mass of smaller tree trunks. Kon fell flat on his back, and saw his big tree roll onto the opposite bank.
The tree trunks were two or three deep under him; Kon found he could walk along them quite easily. On reaching the other bank, he surveyed the chaotic scene that he had just left. His tree had gone aground on the bank, while all the other trees had been stopped, short of it, by each other – and by a cluster of slippery rocks in midstream. He felt that the other trees would return to their element on dry land; something would prevent them from reaching the sea. He saw one tree rolling over another, and had a vision of the future of his people, represented in its rolling movements. Looking up at the sky, he saw the rolling, tumbling tree-trunks pushing some of their number aloft, lifting them to the highest heavens, and spreading the seeds of his people’s destiny broadcast with the winds. He had a split-second vision of a small cairn, which he was to find and touch – in token of something – while he was still carrying his load.
Now Kon was confident that he would reach his destination, and be exonerated as a citizen – for he knew that he had been through the worst of all the elements. They had been more dangerous than any human menaces. The stars told him that he had covered half of his route, and that the rest would be easy.
***
David Russell is a resident of the UK. He writes poetry, literary criticism, speculative fiction, and romance. His poetry includes the collection Prickling Counterpoints (1998); various poems published in online International Times; and the eco-poetry collection An Ever River, published by The Palewell Press, 2018. His speculative works include High Wired On (2002) and Rock Bottom (2005). He translated the Spanish epic La Araucana, Amazon 2013. His romances include Dreamtime Sensuality I & II: Explorations; Further Explorations; Pearlman, Self’s Blossom– all available on Amazon. He self-published a collection of erotic poetry and artwork called Sensual Rhapsody, 2015. David is also a singer-songwriter/guitarist. His main CD albums are Bacteria Shrapnel and Kaleidoscope Concentrate. Many of his tracks can be found on YouTube under “Dave Russell.” He’s the editor of the online magazine Poetry Express Newsletter, produced by Survivors Poetry and Music.
