Chapter
My head felt heavy like a huge stone, paining me. At normal time, that would have made me wonder if stones could feel pain too, but it was neither a normal time nor place. Behind me was a tree that broke my neck while looking at its length extent. Up there on one branch was a blue bird. It was upside-down, if my head was still sane, and its bill foraged something that I could not figure out what. Whatever, what mattered was why I was lying in a forest. If not mistaken, it must be the forest at the back of the village, where no one ever stepped foot. The reason was some myth about witches.
I needed to leave the forest as fast as I could. From the village, the forest was located on a hill so the logic path back to the village was going downhill. Running downward was never an easy task. With roots of trees hanging out, I fell about three or four times. None of them caused a significant injury, just scratches. I felt like I was floating even though I still could hear my footsteps. Footsteps that were louder than a thunderstorm. I was spacing out in my pace that I only noticed I got out the forest when fell ashore a river.
‘River.’ My voice was echoing. There was, and had never been a river between the village and the forest. Before my eyes, on the shore across the river laid a wooden house. It had a door but no windows. It gave off a scent like a tomb. I, although it was not the best decision, rushed back in the forest. My feet took me as far as they could until I fell.
When I woke up, without any sense of time, a blue bird was up there hanging downward on a branch again. Same tree, same surrounding, perhaps same bird. I was closely in the same situation as I was hours ago, except that this time, there was an old man standing near the tree in front of me.
“You finally woke up.” His voice was stormy, contradicting his skinny body. “I missed your first waking up ritual.”
“Who might you be?”
“Just an old man chasing after you.”
I had just reached the speed of light that I lost sense of whatever had happened around me. “So, you know what brought me here in the first place, right?”
“Yes. You got kicked out of the village, just like the others that you will see here.”
“The witches?”
He laughed, stepping closer. “The witches? They have never existed. It’s just how the villagers call people they expelled. Now, why were you expelled?”
No matter how I far I looked in the past, there was always that blank part that my brain could never bring back. I lost memory of what had been going on for the last couple of days.
The man touched my chest with his walking stick. “That’s because you have been given a drug that could cause you a loss of memory. Of course, you will remember about it soon or later but by then, allow me to take care of you.”
With more incomprehensible words, the old man could convince me. And what would it cost me to visit another village after all.
We went back to the wooden house. There was no comment put on it. To its left we travelled, along the shore. I was like a countryside man setting foot in the city for the first time. Our road was deserted, the flow of the river started to quicken, and the sky was in crimson. We could not have the full sunset in view at my village, meaning that the old man and I moved to the West, distancing that rotten village.
The sunset was beautiful but soon it faded to let the stars rule. I was in love with the starry night although I could only name a few Constellations like the Crux, Orion, Centaurus. I was admiring them in a yard of a small house, waiting for the old man to come back.
“Your neck will break if you keep looking up there. Why not focus on what is happening down here?” said a man whom I had not noticed in the dim yard.
“Down here is hopeless, Heaven must be in between those stars.”
His face appeared. “In search of Heaven, you lose the fun of living.”
I sipped the drink the old man had given me, not to enjoy drinking but to have time to think of an answer to what that arrogant man had spouted. “Are you having fun now? Your face doesn’t look so.”
“Although judging on face expression and judging on appearance are two different things, both are not to consider at the very first time you see someone. And guess what, it’s fun to watch you slowly dying, tightening that bottle with poisoned alcohol.” His lips flexed.
