~-o0O0o-~
Then I heard it, a high clear tenor singing the song.
The worldly race may riches chase,
And riches still may fly them, O,
And tho' at last they catch them fast,
Their hearts can ne'er enjoy them, O.
I followed the sound, and entered a cemetery, an old one by the feel of it, with overgrown rose bushes and ivy encrusted walls. The song stopped as soon as I stepped into the grounds. There was a figure, a bent, hunched over, man in the left-hand corner. I called out to him.
"Hello?"
There was no reply. I heard a noise, crackling and a rustling, but there was no sign that I had been heard. I moved closer, noticing that the figure was the one I had been following. He was stocky, with a mass of bushy hair and even bushier beard. In the light under the trees he looked almost green.
"Probably the gardener," I thought. As I got within five yards I spoke again.
"Hello?"
But there was still no reply. I went to the figure’s side and touched his shoulder, then stood back as he turned round. He just didn’t look green. He was green, his skin more like the bark of a tree than flesh, his beard bristling and firm like new pine needles. Two deep black eyes were sunk into hollows but they sparkled with life.
The worst thing was the mouth - I couldn’t take my eyes off it. The lips were thin, almost non-existent and they were pulled back over red, feverish gums in which three brown teeth sat, spaced at intervals in the rotting tissue. The tongue that popped out when he looked up at me was also green and somehow slimy.
I looked down at the rest of him. Suddenly I found it hard to breathe and the world swam mistily around me. I had to shake my head, hard, and look again, just to make sure.
In his left hand the man had a pointed stick of black, moss encrusted wood. He pointed at a leaf, a brown leaf from last year’s fall. As I watched it started to go green, from the edges first, a yellowing then a darkening spreading inwards along the veins, crackling and rustling as the leaf unfurled and stretched, before falling to the ground. I looked down to see roots running in frenzy at my feet like a slithering nest of snakes. All around us new growth rose up from the dead brown soil.
The stick pointed again, this time at a rose bush. Leaves sprouted and opened. I didn’t know why, but I found that I was crying. When I looked up again the squat figure had wandered off, over into the center of the cemetery.
I followed. As I got closer I saw that the figure had bent over a pool. I heard cooing noises coming from the festering hole which passed as a mouth. I saw a fish glide in the water and the man point the stick.
"No" I shouted, just before my world changed.
He looked round at me, and pointed at my chest. I felt emotion well up inside me, and unbidden, the song came. I stood there in the middle of the cemetery and sang until my heart seemed to bleed.
There's nought but care on every hand,
In every hour that passes.
The green man waved the stick in time, as if conducting me in the song, and smiled a huge grin that showed his teeth as I finished. Then he did something even more remarkable than anything I had already seen. He pointed the stick at himself, then at me, and repeated the action. Every time he did so, I felt emotion rise and fall inside me, like the swell of the ocean.
He pointed at the green shoots on the ground, then at me, backward and forward, and he raised a bushy eyebrow in a question.
I was not exactly sure what was being asked of me, but I knew one thing and knew it well; I wanted to feel that swelling, that life…I wanted it more than anything.
I nodded.