Across

The Vagrant King and The Mountain Queen

During the past couple days the greenery had started becoming brighter, livelier. The underside of the broader leaves gave a translucent shade of yellow he often gazed at while taking refuge against the midday sun. Behind him, the grey peaks receded ever further into the distance. Now, the skirts of the mountain range, still boasting commendable heights, acted as his night-bound embrace and dawn’s caress.

The abandoned tracks ventured long into the west; he followed. On his tattered jacket’s front pocket, a stitched patch: “KING” displayed in bold letters, “Denim C.O” in a smaller and lighter font. To the few who knew, or had known him, that had become his name, one given to him by the road, by the years of vagrancy. In the ever-onward trail from one town to another —and with an unyielding reluctance to speak much about his past— that patch had become the moniker used to recount the tales of his character by his fellow drifters, lovers, paymasters, bartenders, wagon companions; fugitives and bailiffs. Occasionally found as well in the sparse botched bonds or contracts he had once signed: King. A name spoken only so often, and by only so many before it would call only to memories evoked in his absence.

He hadn’t been this far west before. Word had it, a sailing company based at a small, distant port town was looking for crew men —an opportunity for work, as well as a chance to sate his longing for the sight of foreign lands. Or, perhaps more incisively, yet another instance of the same pull that during younger years had led him to the life on the road —the search for the unreachable self. However, the stretch towards the town was longer and more solitary than any other he had ever taken on foot. Eastwards, he was familiar with the dirt roads, the encampments and jungles, the trails and the steads. But around him, these lands were all new, these wilds felt different, vast and exciting.

The peaks behind him marked the limit between the old and the new. They had proven a harsher challenge to overcome than he was originally told by a grizzled old folk holding camp at the eastern foothills. It took many days of traversing grueling, harsh terrain, and many nights of daunting frigid endurance, before he would be able to exhale the warmer air of his now colorful and tender surroundings. And perhaps rekindled by the subdued rebirth he underwent while surmounting such an ordeal, his wondrous spirit had now resurfaced, once again buoyant, curious and young, as it hadn’t been in years.
  
It is so that during one of his midday breaks, a time spent carefully dividing and eating what was left of his canned rations —as well as whatever berries, roots or bulbs he had picked along the way— while checking his map for the nearest waterways, something caught his eye. As he looked up, the faint sight of a smoke column behind the mountains north of the tracks surprised and intrigued him. By his calculations, the port town was still a week or so away, and the last outpost whence he came was far beyond the peaks. He was deep at nature’s realm, or at least, he was supposed to. This sight, it beckoned him.

After having taken a quick trek to a nearby creek and back, he sat at the edge of the railside gravel patch for a couple of hours . Something had grabbed a hold of him, a pull, an arousing force seeping in through the ground. Even so, doubtful, he looked left at the spot where the tracks disappeared into the distance. He pondered, then turned his eyes forward again, facing the column of smoke, fixated. The sudden spirit of adventure had already taken roots. It started to take control, asserting itself above the rest. He remained somewhat pensive until an almost transactional thought dissipated all apprehension. The ship wouldn’t launch for another couple of weeks according to his source —enough time. And after all, he could always be a day late or two. A sufficient excuse. So, after the sun had become tamer, with his water skins refilled and still enough rations to account for the extra days, he broke from the tracks and deepened into the brush, disappearing beyond the tree line, heading north in the direction of the smoke.

Hours passed while hiking towards the crest, and after having crossed the first ridge, he was met with the realization that the source for the smoke was further than he had originally imagined. Ahead of him lay another set of highlands preceded by a narrow, steep valley. Behind them, the smoke column was starting to become thinner and fainter. By that time the sun was already approaching its western repose. He knew that as he descended into the crease, he would have to rest, resuming only at first light the next day. So, he noted the smoke’s cardinal location, and with a clear view of the mountainside, he roughly planned out the possible trails for the day to come, only then descending into the valley. As he entered the fragrant, humid grounds at the bottom, with their fading silence, cicadas announced sundown. For a couple minutes, it felt to him as if he had just dived into a lake, everything was still, like an oil painting. But within the vacuum left in their quietude, the growing sounds of a myriad nocturnal dwellers breathing life into the dark mantle, lulled King into his first night beyond the tracks.

A dream came to him that night: A rumbling premonition building up above the ocean in the distance. A colossal figure meandering at the horizon behind the cumuli. A hand that came down arresting all winds within its grasp. A sailboat at full draw, but unmoving. The foam of the seas still blooming. The salt mist transforming into pollen and rushing the land. A coiled serpent hidden within the shade of the soil’s fruits. And a far peak behind it all in, awaiting, once again.


Next morning he was up before dawn. After eating some orange and red berries he had found the day before —and a swift clean up— making sure all of his belongings were packed tight in his backpack, readied as he was, the hike continued. The slope was steep, as expected. He had to go the long route, contouring the incline sideways, but without a line of sight to the position of the smoke —if there was still any— he was at the mercy of his memory. The moment came when he had crossed a crease and encountered in front of him an open silt and tuff rock face he couldn’t have possibly surveyed the day before. It lay hidden between the folds of the mountain and separated him from the crest. Emboldened by his previous conquests, and intoxicated with a giddy sense of thrill, he didn’t think of it as much of a challenge. He sat for a minute or two observing the cliff until he could preview a clear through-line that seemed safe enough, requiring very little to no vertical climbing at all. He proceeded.

The dry, dusty, porous stone clung to his skin with each grasp and footstep forwards. Its bright white surface shone like a gas lamp under the orange hued early dawn light, casting a timid glow onto the forest below —a breathtaking still coalescing in front of him. The rousing sensorial experience and the slight feeling of trepidation created by the increasing verticality of the cliff, led him to a moment of rapture. Faced with the wide panorama that sat above the tree tops, he stopped. The suffocating need to take it all in had become too much, and so he acquiesced. The mountainous furrowed earth stretched south-west into the horizon, lowering in heights and jaggedness as it distanced. Over there, somewhere behind the rising sun hid the port town, far away from everything King had ever known. He saw the world unfurling before him, he felt as if he’d escaped his body —he was but a point in time and space suspended right between a promise and the massive unyielding slab of stone behind him.

Time had stopped, and his sense of “self” briefly melted down into the earth. A true moment of oneness — now gone. He sighed softly, and still somewhat doused in contemplation, he turned around to continue crossing the cliff. Though, not having left entirely his entranced state, the slightest of miscalculations caused him to lose his footing, and in an instant, with a crack and the skittering sound of tumbling tuff, King found himself precipitously falling down the wall. Without time for thought, he desperately threw his hands at the rock aiming for anything he could grab onto, but his right hand landed at a sharp, pointed formation. A swallowed scream echoed through the valley. The stone had pierced him deeply, leaving an incisive cut going from the side of his wrist all the way up to the palm of his hand, while also momentarily stopping the fall. But the downward momentum swung him rightward like a pendulum hung from its wounded hand, and with nothing to hold with his left, once again, gravity’s pull had him plunging towards the forest below. Amidst the lancing pain, he kept flailing his hands at the wall. His head bounced against the rock. His knees scraped and tore. His clothes shredded. Then suddenly, a miraculous lifeline: the old roots of a tree poking through the silt intersected his trajectory. Mangled as he was, still, he clutched with all of his might —and aided by a small ledge down the cliff— he was able to avert what would have otherwise been a drastically more severe conclusion.

Still under the effects of the adrenaline rushing through his veins, hastily —almost as if on their own—, his arms and legs found the fissures, nooks and holds necessary to lead him sideways toward the softer ground at the cliff’s outer lateral boundary. He panted as he crawled out of the cliff, kneeling on all fours clutching the ground. Minutes passed as he gathered his breath until the feeling of the warm, dripping blood running down his arm and seeping into the soft dark soil snapped him back into consciousness. Trembling, he inspected his arm and hand, and even though it was covered in blood and quite bruised, the cut wasn’t as deep or threatening as he had briefly imagined. Relief! Luck may have it, the stone probably didn’t touch any arteries. He reached behind his back to get a pack of loose cloth he had in one of his backpack’s outer pockets, but it was only then he realized he wasn’t holding onto it anymore. He peeked out of the cliff: he could see what looked like the remains of one of the straps hanging from a crevice on the wall, but no other signs of it in the stone or the canopy about 50 meters below him at the base of the cliff. Disconsolate, he slowly walked towards a shady patch next to some bushes and small trees and sat next to them. He tore up a piece of cloth from the ankle of his cotton duck pants that had already been partly ripped by the fall, and used it to bandage the wound. He stared at the horizon for a while as he regained his composure. The pull toward the smoke and its custodian was no longer just a whim of curiosity and childlike adventure. Now his options were but two, and one of them lay dangerously out of reach at the foot of the cliff. He stood, not without difficulty, and continued his way upward.

By the time he was able to cross the second ridge, he was greeted by the sound of running water in the distance, a most welcome presence. At high ground he tried to locate the smoke column, but couldn’t find any clear sign of it. He then made the choice of following the sound of water, assuming both it and the smoke’s source couldn’t be far apart. The descent into the glen was serene and light footed. Even though he was injured and somewhat physically diminished, he was invaded by a sense of harmonicity that became stronger as he furthered down the ridge. There was a mysterious aspect that seemed to inhabit the surrounding hollow. All sounds merged and seemed as one, all moving things appeared choreographed and playful—as if with purpose. The stage broke and fragmented in front of him. He poked through curtains. He felt as if the ground was moving forward underneath his feet and he was both static and on his way. As he advanced through the brush the sound of water became ever more present, and after about an hour of hiking his assumptions were proven right. The smoke was visible again, now slightly darker, subdued and rising to lower heights. It appeared clear beyond the top branches of the canopy as he approached a crag. The trees cleared and the ground abruptly plunged into the flowing water.

Finally in sight: a weathered cabin just below him, on the other side of a fast-moving stream.

Outside the cabin, at the far end, a wooden A-frame with rags and vestments hanging out to dry near a wide patch of earth deliberately planted with tubers, roots and herbs. A bit further, away from the shade of the trees, a tanning rack drying a sizeable hide. On the opposite side of the cabin: a crude wooden bench, various tools, knives, and cleaver stabbed at the flat side of a stub. A few steps north, between the cabin’s front and the river bank, lay on the ground the carcass remains of an animal beside a covered wooden structure placed over a smoldering firepit —the culprit for the smoke, preserving such prized nourishment.

King sat on a rounded boulder that rested directly above the stream, attentively staring, stomach starting to rumble, but wondrousness aloft. In his fixated state, the forest’s overture was felt gradually swelling, closing unto its culmination. It wasn’t long before the door opened; the theme’s first notes — she emerged: as rugged and fierce as the ridges, crests and cliffs that surrounded them, but of a lilting beauty, just as the stream between them.

She stood tall —her frame, sturdy and defined; her stance, severe and purposeful. Yet, like a dance, her motions, wave-like, alluring and somehow succinct. Her feet crusty and dirty, seasoned and thickened, yet feather-like, as if they hadn’t dragged or fumbled even once. She wore old, stained canvas trousers covered with clear signs of heavy use and what seemed like thin leather strands strung together, holding her pants above her lightly protruding hip bones. She donned no upper body garments. Her lower abdomen displayed patchy red smudges and spatters —as did her hairy forearms and wrists— while her hands, from fingers to palms, were fully dyed by the same vivid color. Her chest, naked and scarred —as if surfacing veins of tourmaline ore played and hid within the folds of her small breasts. Her physique had been engraved by the whims of the wild. Her face, statuesque, of a stoic bushy brow, a slightly bent nose, and a soft contour encasing a thin-lipped smile. Her gaze, serene; her eyes, honey-brown. And her hair, thick, copperish —though sparsely greyed and discolored— unkemptly braided, and bearing a distinct crown of dried branches, pretty weeds and delicate wildflowers.

The landscape of her skin shifted with every stretching and contraction of her limbs as she walked towards her bench. To King’s eyes: an imposingly enchanting manifestation. As she arrived at the table, with a single swipe she dispersed the flies and gnats that skittered all over the animal remains that lay atop —along with some wild carrots, radishes and bulbs still covered in dirt. She looked around. Clutching the bench with one arm, she crouched slightly in the direction of the tree stump, reaching for it with the other. Then —cleaver in hand— with a forceful and echoing “whack!”, she hacked at a thick bone with small scraps of meat still attached: one of the remains from the menagerie of hide, flesh and organs strewn across the scene. She did so multiple times, each strike no less loud than the last, until the bone was reduced to smaller manageable chunks. Then, she proceeded to roughly chop the vegetables, and lastly, with a smaller crude knife, sliced the bigger pieces of organ flesh that would have otherwise been discarded at the kitchens that King had known. The muscle meats, now hanging in the smoker, perfumed the air with an inescapably enticing aroma. She dropped the bone chunks and vegetables into a dented and warped tin pot. Then, all the remaining giblets and fat strands that still lay at her bench, she scraped —juices and all— into a smaller pot. She placed the pots at the bench and turned around in the direction of the cabin, but after a contemplative second, she turned back to the smaller one and gracefully scooped out with her fingers a chopped piece of glistening, purplish organ meat adorned with hanging slimy white strings.

By then, the morning sun had risen just enough to shine from behind the ridge where King stood. It showered the riverbed with a subtle light that delicately etched amber glimmers reflecting all over her figure —which in counter-light, defined her silhouette in golden lining just as she placed her bloody fingers holding the raw flesh inside her mouth. Her cracked lips, now tinted of the same vivid red hue that covered her hands, glistened as much as the morsel she had just consumed. It was feral. She swallowed after only a couple of chews and then under the same hazy golden light proceeded to slowly lick her fingers. She swiped the rest of the red muck on the side of her belly, scratched her neck for a second, and then picked between her teeth with her fingernails as if scavenging for more. A resolute effort. Her tongue scanned and undulated underneath her lips and cheeks. She stopped as she pulled out to look at what she had found, and with a careless flicker of her wrist, flung it at the ground.

She stood for a moment, as if posing for King. She stretched her back, accentuating her womanly attributes in serpentine shapes —all of her visceral beauty softly washed by the sun. Then she resumed her path towards the cabin, slipping out of sight once again as she entered.

He found himself captivated. Lost in the enactment of her brusque play, bewildered by her hardened topography, enchanted by her boundlessness. She was a most refined expression of natural cohesion. She seemed to him but an extension of the stream, or, as if the abrasive bark that garbed the red oak —and its rot, and its fungi, and its seed. She seemed grand and out of reach, like soaring heights whose weeping sorrow both eroded and allowed for all that’s green. She was the same stone that sang the current’s calming verse, and cut the earth —shattered— carving bedrock deep beneath her feet . She was the shadow of the hunter and the growl of the beast. She was the embodied expression of the mountain’s sovereign will, both its child, thunderous, while solemnly whisperful, its queen. 

The spell broke as she started coarsely humming a strange tune from within the cabin. The odd melody brought King back to his senses —it plucked him, plummeting right back at the boulder. Regardless, he kept on watching, immobile, as by now his intrigue had become excitement and infatuation.

She exited once again, this time holding in her right hand another pot, the biggest one so far. She headed in the direction of the water. She walked almost perfectly in line towards the boulder where King sat as she approached the riverbank. She kneeled in front of the water and proceeded to fill the pot; her song having transformed by then into a soft, tender murmur. With the pot half-filled she started standing up, when abruptly, with the sound of the tin hitting the pebbles at the shore, her tune got swallowed by a startled silence —Right there, across the middle of stream, like two crashing bodies, her eyes and King’s had finally met.