Hills of mist
First came the wind, carrying the smell of spices.
The boy, still asleep, saw his grandmother, standing in the kitchen, while she bruised the roasted cardamom and other seeds in the mortar, adding olive oil, then thyme and rosemary, then garlic, more oil.
Sometimes, at this stage, his grandmother would call him inside and watch approvingly how he, with his bare hands, rubbed the lamb roast with this mixture of spices, herbs and oil.
Then, they would sing one of the songs that the old woman had learned from her own grandmother. Time was held close to the chest on the island, and always passed along with care.
The meat would go into the oven with vegetables, fresh from the garden - with a lemon with ten cloves stuck into its skin, two glasses of red wine and a bit more olive oil.
The smells that filled the kitchen when the oven door was opened a few hours later was the smell on the wind that now touched the hills.
The boy who was supposed to tend his uncle’s goats woke up and tasted the wind on his lips. It touched his hair like his grandmother’s hand used to do, before he went to sleep each night, when he’d been much smaller.
He was ten years’ old now - which was old enough to be astonished and mildly afraid, when confronted with the unknown.
Then came the sound of a flute, hesitant at first, like the early spring, but then fuller, more assured. Sound became melody, almost a soft singing. The boy stretched, then stood up slowly: sleep still held his legs. His head was still filled with scraps of dreams.
He looked around, automatically counting the goats. All was as it ever was - except for the wind, except for the music.
He crossed himself, muttered an old incantation that he’d learnt on his grandmother’s knee. Words from way before the Christos, way before the churches came and littered the island: small, stone churches that remained pleasantly cool during the summer, full of shadows and filled with the smoke of candles and incense.
Yet the land, the stones, and even some of the olive trees were much older than these small churches. There were even older things, and far different creatures on the island, neither understood nor acknowledged by the priests and their Bibles, their new rituals and incantations.
The Virgin was not always the mother of the Christos. She had different, older names - and she had not always been a virgin or a mother; not always a welcome, and a mercy. The boy had learnt all the old stories and the old incantations from his grandmother.
Once more, he looked around him - still somewhat suspicious. Above him the sun, as of yet not burning with the full force of summer, around him the goats and the old olive trees - but now, as well, a low mist that seemed to rise up from the many big and small, scattered old stones.
The smells and the music now drifted on the mist that surrounded the boy and his goats. Then, in front of him but still some distance away he saw the stars. A cloud of stars which danced like moths along the treetops on red-rimmed summer evenings, vibrating like the air itself and waiting for the hunger of birds and bats.
How many stars made this dancing cloud: twenty, fifty, a hundred? It was impossible to say - impossible also to judge how high, or how far away from him this dance took place.
Without understanding but no longer afraid the boy looked at the cloud of stars. The mist reached now almost chest-high. The goats had disappeared. The branches of the olive trees were now the arms and fingers of strange creatures that reached for him but couldn’t touch him.
The boy started walking towards the dancing stars. The meadow, no, a road now slowly led upwards. The boy didn’t even notice that his feet no longer touched the moss, the stones and the sparse grass. He smelled the wind. He breathed in the music and he watched the stars dance, still some unknown distance away from him.
The mist reached even higher now, higher than the olive trees and the top of the worn-down hills but didn’t reach higher than the boy’s ankles. He walked on and on. The mist now formed the hills: new hills or much, much older ones.
There were trees of mist, villages of mist and sometimes sailing ships of mist that slowly moved in the wind that still smelled of the old kitchen, when the roast was put on the table, with the rice and the bread, the cheese and the olives, and the harsh, red wine.
The wind smelled of the safe enclosure of Sunday evenings at home, when outside the goats softly bleated and the green, stone-strewn hills guarded their small village. The music now seemed to be the only thing that kept the world in balance and it spoke of the calm and coolness of night, the closure and abandoning of day. The stars danced: so wondrous, so still.
The boy now stood on top of a hill of mist. In front of him, right in front of him now, the stars danced. Beneath him was a lake. Beneath him she waited.
She sang the music. She was the wind. She called down the stars that danced in her hair. She was unearthly beautiful. She was naked. Her flesh was the colour of old marble. Her breasts were young and glistened. Her belly was all soft curves, the promise and the beginning of all. Her long hair was black as the night where the stars danced. Her eyes were closed.
The boy stood on the hill of mist and drank her in, and ate her, and danced with her.
She opened her arms, she opened his heart. His flesh and blood disappeared inside her. How long did he stand there? how long did she wait for him to come down to her?
The mist disappeared. The boy opened his eyes. He could still feel her closed eyes upon him. He counted the goats as if in a dream, walked off in a dream, got older in a dream. Time and again he walked the mist, in search of her.
He followed the wind and the music and he got older.
He did not marry. He did not dance at the summer feasts. He did not come to the village anymore. Everything was a dream: the years going by, and the smell of herbs on the wind. Only she was more than dream.
Time moved on and he stood upon the hill of mist. He watched her bathe. He heard her call and welcome him with open arms. And she was always naked. Her eyes were always closed. And the stars always danced in her long, black hair.
He became older. She did not. One last summer, one last climb and what was his age now: sixty, eighty, a hundred years old? Everything was a dream. Everything had gone by so fast. He stood on top of the mist, his back bent low but with the same hunger, the same thirst.
And now, for the first time, she opened her eyes, where the true night was waiting. They told him to come.
He came.
****** ****** ******
That same evening the food cooled off slowly on the kitchen table. The old woman walked to the door repeatedly. She went to the window, and looked out, towards the hills.
Later, hours later, they found the goats that still were grazing peacefully on the hill. The food that the old woman had prepared for her grandson that morning lay untouched under one of the olive trees, next to the chain with its small silver cross, that she had given him many years ago: the dubious protection of a weak, young God.
“Janos, oh Janos.” the old woman whispered.
The hills and the stones were silent. The boy’s uncle led the goats down the hill. The old woman bent down and picked up the chain with the useless, silver cross. She spoke an old curse and then she walked back to the village, back home, where the kitchen was warm and smelled of spices and the where the roast of lamb was on the table, still uncut.