Land of Nod

He was David, son of William, son of Jakub, son of Szymon, and he walked.

His hair was dark and wild, matted with many turnings of the Earth, and his beard was likewise unkempt.

And he walked.

His robes were torn and tattered, his feet bare and black, and he walked.

His body was strong and wiry, pared down to his very bones, but his stride was uneven for he bore a withered leg that dragged a half-step behind, always a half-step behind.

He walked with the help of a stout stick of ironwood, as dusty and dirt-encrusted as his robes, and his only companion as he walked was the stick. Sometimes he would talk to it as to a living companion, but its silence made him weary and so he became as silent as the stick.

When the sun was high and merciless, he walked; when the moon was cold and distant, he curled up in his robes and slept upon the barren, salted ground of his existence.

Sometimes, when he awoke, he would find creatures of the land had come to lend him heat as he slept; sometimes a wolf, sometimes a lamb, but as soon as his eyes opened, they would take their leave without ever once meeting his eyes.

It had been long passed when he had ceased begging them to stay.

As he walked, he learned that the land, while barren, still held some strange power. When he hungered, a root or carcass would appear from which to take his repast. When he thirsted, a cool, shimmering pool would glint among the endless sand and slake his thirst.

He learned never to look into the pool while he was drinking, for the fierce, wild face that stared back at him made him tremble and grow cold within.

And so he walked.

Days unto days without end, he walked. Nights unto nights without end, he slept, and awoke to walk again.

He knew not the beginning nor the end to his time here. He knew not where he was, where he had been nor where he was to be. He knew only this barren land, free of the creatures that walked upon the earth, crawled beneath it, or flew above it, except in his dreams, or those few nighttime visitations which left him more bereft than comforted.

His dreams were strange, frightening things; scenes without meaning, sounds without words, sights of red and black and smells of smoke and death. He had no love for the dreams and was glad that they only chose to visit him infrequently.

One day, after many, uncounted settings and risings of the sun, as he walked, a new thing appeared. It was far off, near where the horizon seemed to bend through the dust and dirt in the air. It was bright. Too bright to look upon, like the sun, and only grew brighter as it grew closer.

At first, he tried to alter his path to avoid the bright thing which came, but no matter where he turned, it was there, before him as iron before a lodestone, and so he kept to his straightest path, determined to meet with what would be.

In the length of a long time passing, it resolved itself into the form of a man, or what he took to be a man, it still being too bright a thing to look upon directly.

From the corner of his sight, he could detect the man—if indeed it was a man—was supremely fair, upright and steadfast as his own walking stick, wearing robes as white and clean as the sun-bleached bones he sometimes came upon in his walking. His sandals and girdle were of the brightest gold, which matched the long hair which swept, shimmering, from his high brow.

His eyes were as blue as the desert sky in summer, and upon his head sat a brilliant crown, and upon that crown sat seven points, and upon those seven points sat seven stars, each as brilliant as the being itself, as brilliant as the sun above.

And clean.

As clean and as white as David was dirty and dark.

Untouched and pure to his vile filth.

And his face, when it could finally be seen, was so filled with wondrous beauty that it made David afraid to look upon.

But he carried his bravery on the weight of his name and in the fullness of his heart, and so he looked, and as he looked, he saw compassion, and caring, and a great and abiding love that shone from those eyes as if from the center of the heart of the sun itself.

And even above this, he saw adoration, and he shrank from that for he knew that such adoration could not be directed at one so lowly as he: the One Cast Out into this Land of Nod.

“I have found you,” the man—for he was indeed a man—said finally, and his voice was like the voices of angels singing upon high, or the wind, gentle, just as the sun breathes her last before settling down to sleep, and David again turned away, for it hurt him to hear such beauty bathing his filthy, feted soul.

“Have I been lost?” he asked, his own voice softly hissing, like the snake sidewinding through the hard-packed desert sand. “Truly?”

“For a long time,” the angels chorused.

“I’ve been walking.”

“I will walk with you.”

“I am allowed no companions,” he felt the need to explain, for he was an honest man who spoke with his whole heart, even if it was then to be rent asunder.

“I will walk with you,” the man repeated calmly, as if this were of no consequence.

And they began to walk together, their footsteps matching in the sand, step for step, stride for stride.

And after a long time walking, David turned to the man directly. He was much easier to see now. And he asked, “Are you Cast Out, too?” He felt much shame in asking, and yet his nature was a curious one, and he was always true to it.

The man thought for a long span of time, and then nodded his regal head. “Perhaps. Yes, perhaps I am.”

“But why?” David asked with true distress, for the man was so pure and so fair that he could not think of a thing that would blight so noble a soul as this.

“I think it was my pride.”

“Your pride?”

David knew of pride, but it was just a word to him now, his own left long ago, perhaps before he had awakened here in this blighted land. No later than that, surely.

“My pride.” The man steepled his fingers and looked down into them. A furrow curved between his brows and his lips turned downward. “I had a thing of great price. Invaluable to me. And that thing of great price was…was lost to me.”

“Lost? Were you stripped of your prize because you felt pride in the keeping of it?”

The frown upon the fair face deepened. “Perhaps. If so, it was just payment, for my other sin was much worse.”

David’s brows raised. “Worse? But how? I don’t understand.”

And the man turned to him and smiled. And the smile lifted David as on the wings of eagles and he felt exalted.

“Because the thing of great price was a man, a close and dear and beloved companion, but my pride, you see, my pride sealed my lips against what speech was in my heart to make. And by the time I was ready to let my heart have its words heard, he was taken from me, his ears forever shut to the song in my soul.”

David thought on this for a long moment before turning back to the man. “This man, this companion, did he like your music?”

The smile was so sad, angels would surely weep upon the hearing of it. “He said he didn’t, but I believe he did.”

David nodded. “Then perhaps…perhaps he heard you anyway? Not from your lips, but from your heart? That song which he secretly loved?”

This time the man turned away, and David felt again bereft. “It has always been my hope that he did, for he was good at reading what was beneath the surface of my self. But isn’t that also pride? Isn’t pride, too, the believing that he heard from my heart what my lips refused to gift to him?”

David thought upon this again. He looked at the ground as he spoke. “Maybe it was pride, but maybe it was pride for your friend? That he would know you and care for you enough to see what you could not say? Perhaps, even, that he could understand why your lips could not sing the song your heart held for him?”

The man sighed with great sadness. “If that were only true. If that were only true, I would break the chains of Prometheus Himself to be given the chance to say with my lips what my pride stole from them, and from me. Were I granted one wish in all the world, it would be that. To tell my companion that he was well and truly loved. To sing to him. One last time.”

“Is it too late?”

The brilliant eyes sorrowed. “It has been far too late for far too long.” Two tears trailed down his beautiful face and fell to the blighted sand, which immediately scorched black and smoking.

“Why do you cry?” David asked, reaching up to catch the tears with his fingers. “Don’t…don’t cry. Please—“

“Don’t!” the man shouted, lifting one hand to ward off even as he jerked his face away.

And David shrunk into himself again, swallowed up in his soul. “I’m sorry. My foulness has—“

“No! Don’t say that! Never say such a thing! You…YOU are a wondrous thing, a beauty beyond compare, a heart more courageous than anything that walks upon the earth or crawls beneath it. Foulness dare not claim you, for you are utmost pure!”

“I am none of those things!” David shouted back. “Look at me! Look upon this withered leg! Look upon this ravaged face!” He tore open his tattered robes to bare his chest. “Look at this!!”

The man’s countenance immediately changed, like night turning to day turning to night. He took a step closer, and long, clean fingers hovered over the damaged chest. “Does it…d-do they hurt?”

Unwilling to be touched by so fair a hand, David stepped away. “No. Not often, not badly, and not for a very long time. In the beginning, yes. When…when I first awoke here, they hurt terribly, and bled. I thought…I thought I must have displeased someone very badly. Perhaps I was…whipped?”

He looked down at the marks which crisscrossed his chest and abdomen. “I fear I must have angered some Master very badly to be so harshly whipped and left here to live, or to die, as Fate would will it.”

More tears fell from the man, a river of them, leaving a deep, pitted blackness in the barren desert. “You were not whipped. And you were never abandoned. Never,” he whispered.

“No?”

David thought to ask more, but his thoughts turned to mist and he looked down at his withered leg. “When I…awakened here, and the Fates would not decide my course for me, I decided to live. I could not walk, at first, so I crawled. I crawled like a beast for many, many turns of the Earth until I could crawl no more. And then I found a stick, this very stick, and used it to stand and, eventually, to walk. And walking is all I have done since then, and it is all I will ever do until whatever end there may be for me. If there ever is to be an end. Perhaps there won’t be, and I shall walk and walk and walk and there will never be another thing but walking for me.”

His dark head ducked deeper, like a turtle to its shell. “I wish….”

“What do you wish?” Those words, those words, spoken so gently, like the brush of a wingtip across an upturned face. Or a Mother’s kiss.

“I wish…I wish I had your heart, to know, even for a second, what it is like to love someone so much that you cannot even speak of it aloud. It would be worth, I think, the losing of that love if only to have felt it just once in my life.” He nodded, as if to himself. “Yes, if *I* had one wish, it would be that, and only that, if even for a second.”

“David,” the man whispered, long fingers reaching out to touch, his lips, his brow, his jaw, “my David. That heart has always been yours, from the very moment of your birth to the very moment of your death, and beyond. So very far beyond, and countless beyond that, even so.”

David gasped, as much from the tender touch as the speaking of his name. “You know my name?”

“I have always known it,” the man promised him. “Always. It is forever imprinted on my heart. It beats within me even as it beats for myself. It is the rhythm to which I’ve lived this life, ever searching, ever hoping. And grieving.”

“For me? You grieve for me?”

“Always.”

“Then the man….”

“Is you.”

David looked at him in awe. “Myself? Truly?”

The man’s smile returned, a hundredfold, a thousandfold, until the sun shrunk against its bounty. “Truly. Forever, truly.”

The man moved closer and his head descended, bright crown with its bright stars shining, shining, and he pressed his lips, cool and pure as a fresh, clear pool, first upon David’s brow, and then upon his nose, and then upon his lips, where he lingered, finally whispering the words his heart had always known.

And David was borne once again upon the wings of eagles, and was exalted, and tears fell from two sets of eyes, and where those tears fell, life grew: a blade of grass, a seedling, a newborn lamb and a wolf pup, a river, a canyon, a forest, a mountain, a glade filled with flowers and insects and things which breathed and moved and loved.

And when David opened his eyes again and looked down, he saw a wizened old man, with a gray, dirty beard dragging along the dirt which surrounded only him. His gold sandals had tarnished to black as had his girdle and crown, and the stars upon the points of that crown had likewise grown cold and dead, but the man’s eyes were happy and more beautiful than anything David had yet seen created.

And he reached down with a hand suddenly young and strong, and lifted the wizened old man up with a laugh that made the choirs of heaven laugh in return. And he returned the kisses he had been given, to the brow, to the nose, and finally to the lips, where he lingered, whispering his own words that his heart had been too timid to speak aloud.

And the man grew young and pure and incredibly beautiful again, and his smile was like the newest dawn, and David said the only words left in his heart. “Welcome home, Hutch,” he said.

And they embraced.

And there they remained, for their walking was over.