To Dust You Shall Return

To Dust You Shall Return

  By Sean Melican

  Copyright 2012 Sean Melican

  Photo Credit: Devra Cooper

  Tiocfaidh an dúchas trí na crúbaidh agus leanfaidh an chú giorria.

  Heredity will come through the claws, and the hound will pursue the hare.

  -- Irish saying

  Winter is coming early. The leaves have turned but have not fallen, yet already the wind cuts like a cold knife. Your shadow is a thin and long and black thing stretched across the whispering grasses.

  A flock of loons erupts from the small green and blue islands. Their cry is comforting for it is familiar, but they sound frightened. A ship is coming across the green foamed water. It is so far in the distance it is necessary to put a hand over your eyes to see it. The sails are black. The sky is an empty blue save for a single black cloud that shrouds the boat in darkness.

  With a hand you pull your cloak tight against the chill. The priest called them demons. He said they were black, soulless things. Once people, he said, who had been turned. They want only blood. No honor, no rules. Blood only and however they can get it.

  Cuan’s red cloak is visible to the north against the green and gray of the world. It is easy to say the word love but it is only a word. Fear is also easy to say, and more common, but strangely, it is said less often. Yet he is tall and strong and his mustache tickles when he kisses. He will not die today. A few words are whispered to the Morrigan that neither his blood nor the blood of Tadhg be washed in her stream today. You pray but not to the Christ despite the priest’s wishes. His is a strange weak god.

  Yet the demons fear what he calls a cross. One such hangs on a chain: heavy and cold. The heavy and cold wind, which has been silent for a moment, slices through cloak and armor.

  Your sword is light and easy to heft. It is covered in holy water mixed with honey, which is why the air is thick with black insects. The water kills the demons, the priest said. Cut the head off or pierce the heart; all else only angers them.

  It comes suddenly that the cloud is not a cloud but a great mass of black birds. The dying sunlight slips from their oily feathers. They look for a moment like a terrible rainbow. Their eyes are red. Their thin, sharp beaks are a foul yellow color tipped with red. They cry. The loons that had settled behind take flight once more with a great ruffling of wings. They are afraid.

  The birds attack as the sun disappears. They care nothing for dying. Swooping fast and low, they peck at the eyes or, when that fails, any piece of skin. The beaks are sharp. They take bits of skin. They are almost too fast and always go for the eyes. Though soon enough they are nearly all dead. The ground is littered with their black and red bodies. They are not all dead, for they strike at the legs even as you step on their heads.

  That is when the demons choose to strike, when everyone is wandering thigh deep among the birds. They move across the ground. They are black and utterly silent except for the slight rustle of grass as they pass over it. Like the birds, their eyes are a uniform crimson. They don’t seem to blink, and then there is a flicker of black over the crimson so fast it appears to be only an illusion.

  The nearest stands twice as tall as any man. Black clothing or maybe skin flutters in the sudden breeze. It screams: it sounds like a thousand tortured souls. But they are soulless so the screams must be something else. Its breath is fetid, a mixture of turned earth and rotted meat. Your sword cuts clean through its neck. There is, now, only a pile of thick ash that swirls and disappears. It is sickening to think of all of this killing and nothing to show for it.

  They are everywhere. There is no time to think. Only time to fight.