Return to Innocence

by Ram V

[box] S’watha hasn’t visited earth for a thousand years now, thanks to the callous attitude of mankind to exploit the most valuable resource that was available to it. And now, it’s a little boy who holds the key to S’watha’s return. Ram V writes a story that will make you think deeply – a story that shares a beautiful message, “A new world is not built upon regret. Life often seeks no apology, only a return to innocence.” Read on.[/box]

“It comes from the sky, Jargo!” The old man’s wiry hands reached up into the air and waved around in convulsive gestures as the grey pupils of his blind eyes darted around randomly.

“I’ve seen it, Chapa! It is misty and it burns to touch!” The boy refuted old Chapa’s wild claims.

“No! That is poison! It comes from the sky of man with its black clouds and awful smells! You listen to me and you listen well, foolish boy!” The old man pulled firmly on the tuft of white hair that grew in unruly spindles from his chin.

“The true S’watha comes from the sky of Gods, which flies above the sky of man. He is clear unlike the poison and he tastes of pureness. Do you understand?” Chapa’s jaw quivered and his brow furrowed into a frown.

The boy nodded, wide-eyed and slack-jawed. The blind old man did not see him, but he didn’t have to.

“What you have found is very precious, Jargo! Show it to no one and keep it from the burning stare of Ra’wah!” The old man pointed a skeletal finger to the red sun in the sky.

Once again the boy nodded and carefully tucked the little ivory box that he held in his hand deeper into the leather bag that was slung at his waist.

“Long before the ground turned to dust and the sky blackened, S’watha used to roam the earth. He was everywhere all at once for he was life itself! And all things grew and flourished at his touch.”

Jargo stared wide-eyed at the old man’s story. It was hard to believe that anything could possibly grow in the desert; not just survive like they did, but grow and flourish.

“We dug into the earth and made it bleed, with monstrosities that drilled deep. We poisoned the oceans with things we didn’t need and warmed the air, burning everything. So callous we were.” The old man looked downcast.

“There were signs but we continued undeterred, for ours was a thirst for power.”

The boy did not understand but he nodded anyway.

“Until one day, S’watha left us. He turned away from us and said, till you learn of real thirst, I shall not return. Till you learn to value life, I shall be gone. And then there was the great draught – thousand years it has been since S’watha was seen. Now, we can only dig up what is left of him, from the deep places of the earth, and steal S’watha from the plants and beasts when we can. Oil and gold lie scattered in disuse and we wage war over what was once most abundant. Men’s skin has turned to leathery hide, all things that take root grow only with thorns and the only constant is the rasping of dust, forever.” The old man ended with a decisive nod.

“Were you there, Chapa? Have you seen S’watha?” Jargo mumbled his question at the old man, who answered with an annoyed frown.

“A thousand years ago? I’d be dead now and my bones would be dust! Of course not! But this story has been told by my father to me just as he heard it from his father, in the hope that one day, when we have thirsted enough, we may plead to S’watha to return and he may take pity on us.”  The old man stretched out a hand in the general direction of the boy and beckoned with his fingers.

“Come now. Describe it to me!”

The boy nervously pulled out the ivory box in his hand and opened it.

“It is thin and slender.” He looked up at the old man hoping that he knew what it was.

“Go on … go on.” The old man nodded fervently.

“It sprung forth from the dust.”

The old man rubbed his jaw and frowned, before asking.

“What colour is it boy?”

The boy looked down at the thing in the box. It was a colour he had never seen, deep and intense. He had no word for it and no way to describe what he saw.

“I don’t know,” the boy finally declared, much to the anger of the old man.

“What do you mean you don’t know? I am the blind one here. You have two eyes in your head, don’t you?” The old man grumbled his annoyance at Jargo.

“I do! But I have never seen this colour before.” Jargo frowned at being admonished.

“Bah! Very well. How does it smell?” Chapa leaned forward and poked his nose out.

Jargo held the box up to his nose and breathed carefully. Mostly he smelled dust – the same dust that flew everywhere and brought on the cough and wheeze. But there was a different smell. It was subtle and new, but noticeable, and it made Jargo smile for some reason.

“It smells …”

“Like what?” The old man jutted out his lower jaw in impatience.

“Like newness.” Jargo smiled at his own answer.

“Huh?” Chapa pulled at his beard frantically.

“You know how old things smell? Like the halls of broken buildings? Like the sand that never comes out of your shoes? Like hunger that never goes away?” the boy paused long enough for the old man to nod.

“Well, this smells the opposite of that!” Jargo declared, mightily pleased with himself.

The old man only grumbled under his own breath in response, before speaking again.

“Keep it sheltered, Jargo, and listen well.”

The boy quickly returned the box to its hiding place and leaned in intently.

“You must travel far, but only by night – for in the day, the sun is unforgiving. Travel quietly and stop for no one. After seven nights, you will come to the mountain of Cherap; the only crag that has not yet turned to dust. Once there, you must climb the mountain, through the poison mists and above, where you may touch the sky of Gods.” Chapa raised his hands in reverence.

Jargo stared up at the sky, awed by the task set in front of him.

“Will you go with me, Chapa?” The boy asked sheepishly.

Chapa only smiled and shook his head. “I am too old, Jargo, and all dried up inside.” He pointed to his heart and the boy frowned, for he didn’t quite understand what the old man meant.

“No. You alone must go there, for you are a child and there is hope in your words yet.” Chapa nodded, agreeing with his own wisdom.

“When you are there, speak into the sky – speak kindly. Show Him what you carry and say we are sorry – tell him that we understand now what thirst truly is and tell him a world without S’watha is a world of dust – a world without hope.” The old man’s voice crumbled into little whimpers in the end, and he cried but tears did not come. There had been no tears for a thousand years.

Jargo hugged Chapa and they both said nothing. The old man stroked the boy’s matted hair in silence, save for the rasping whispers of the desert wind.

* * *

 Jargo set out on his journey at sun down. He carried a loaf of hard bread for food and cuts of desert cactus to chew on, so he may quench his thirst. He carried no other possessions with him, for fear of attracting thieves. The one precious thing he did bring along was inside the ivory box, tucked away within his sack, hidden within his food.

He told his Ama and Pah that he was walking to the Lost Lands – running errands for Chapa. His parents did not suspect anything. It was the norm for the younger ones in the tribes to travel to the Lost Lands in search of scrap and metal.

He had never been this far out of the settlement before. He had heard stories of The Lost Lands – remnants of some long gone civilization, broken buildings and empty places being their only remaining legacy. This was his first time actually seeing them.

He saw metal birds that lay on the ground, wings outstretched and noses pointed at the sky, baking in the sun. Perhaps they had flown once, but it had been a long time ago. The birds had not rusted – not many things rust in the dry desert. The metal had however, eroded under the patient work of sand, leaving gaping holes in their bodies.

Even though the wind howled at night, he did not take shelter inside the metal birds, for they smelled of an eerie emptiness that made Jargo nervous. When he awoke in the morning, there was a layer of sand covering him. It was everywhere, in his ears, stinging his eyes and leaving the dead taste of dryness in his mouth. He looked around and the world had sunk into the sands by another inch or two.

In the days that followed, Jargo walked through the cities of old, where great buildings of stone and iron towered on either side of him. They were all broken, now rising only partly to the heights they must have touched in their time. Their tops had crumbled, exposing the twisted iron bars that lay within. They reminded Jargo of the bones of half eaten animals in the desert.

Inside these buildings, there was neither light nor any sound, but Jargo had heard stories of people who feared walking into the sun, people who stayed inside these old structures and stalked their empty corridors. The boy kept his distance and quickened his pace.

It was on the fifth day that he first saw the mountain of Cherap. As the remnants of old cities fell away once again to give way to the ever expanding desert, far in the horizon, partly hidden by the haze of sand, rose the giant, Cherap – the last of the peaks. Jargo could not see the top of the mountain for it was hidden far above the blackened sky, where it supposedly touched the sky of Gods, as Chapa had told him.

The old man had been right. It took Jargo two whole days to reach the base of the mountain. He had run out of food and was left with the last cut of cactus, which was of no use to him because it had dried out during his travel. There at the foot of Cherap, the climb seemed that much more intimidating as he faced a seemingly unending slope that reached beyond where the eye could see. Still, Jargo would have only a day’s worth of walking to do before he reached the top, by the old man’s estimations.

Jargo’s journey onward was laborious. The sand storms and dry air had turned to clouds of soot and acid that burned Jargo’s lungs each time he breathed in. He stumbled onward through the poison clouds, gasping for air, willing his legs to drag him onward. This was the sky of man. It seemed endless, as if all the malevolence of a thousand years of thirsting for power and conquest had gathered there, hanging over the heads of humanity for years to come. But it was not endless, no.

The poison did finally clear and Jargo collapsed onto the ground in front of him. He gasped and smiled to himself with relief as breathable air flooded into his lungs. It was cool and soothing, unlike any air he had breathed before. He knew then that he had reached the top of Cherap and touched the sky of Gods.

* * *

When he had caught his breath, Jargo recollected Chapa’s words. “Speak into the sky – speak kindly.”

But Jargo was a child, and he knew little of kind words, so he did his best to call on S’watha.

“I have brought you something precious and I wanted to say we’re sorry…” But he didn’t quite understand what he was sorry for and he didn’t know why what he carried was precious and he knew least of all why he was talking into the air at no one in particular. For a while his words were only answered with the quiet calm of the mountain top, but soon he heard a voice behind him.

“What are you yelling about? What are you doing here? And why are you sorry?”

Jargo turned, startled, and caught sight of a man behind him.

At first sight the man seemed a little strange to him. He was dressed in clothes made of dried leaves and bark and his eyes were the colour of the sky of Gods, another colour the boy did not know the name of. The man’s hair was dark and heavy but still floated wisp-like in the air.

“Who are you?” Jargo mumbled in response.

“Do you always answer questions with one of your own?” The man asked. His voice was like a gentle rustle and he smiled with a kind of mischief that Jargo had seen only in little children.

“I was sent here by Chapa of the Westfolk tribe – to talk to S’watha and show him what I have found.” Jargo finally relented. “Also to say we are sorry …” he paused “… for what, I do not know.” He stared down at the ground a little embarrassed.

The man chuckled and sat down by Jargo.

“May I see it?”

Jargo held the sack close to his chest. “No! I am to show it to no one!”

“Very well, I will not see it. I shall turn away and you may describe it to me.” Saying so, the stranger turned aside and closed his eyes.

When Jargo was convinced the man with sky-coloured eyes was no longer looking, he opened the box and looked inside.

“It is long and slender and it sprouts from the dust. It smells the opposite of everything old and it is a colour I do not know of.”

The man nodded with his eyes still closed and smiled.

“It is a blade of grass and it sprouts from soil, not dust. It smells like life and growing things. And the colour you seek the name for, is green!”

“How do you know this?” The boy asked wide eyed, but the man ignored this question.

“When you came here you said you were sorry, but you did not know what for.”

The boy nodded and the man did not see, but he knew.

“A new world is not built upon regret. Life often seeks no apology, only a return to innocence.”

Jargo turned to look at the man, but only found himself looking into the sky. The stranger had disappeared from his side.

“Wait! Where do I find S’watha? How do I ask him to come back?” Jargo shouted into the air to no avail.

He cast glances all around him, searching frantically for the man. His breath choked in his throat, and Jargo felt distressed. At that very moment he felt an electric chill on his palm. He jerked his hand back and tumbled backward. The box with the blade of grass spilled from his hand on to the ground.

Jargo stared at the back of his palm in shock. A single wet patch had formed and a clear drop of water snaked down his arm. Then there was another on his forehead and another on his leg, on his arm on the back of neck. Cold, crisp and playful – the drops fell from the sky.

Jargo looked around at the ground, where a pattern of wet spots had begun to form. With each passing second, the pattern grew darker and heavier. Then all of a sudden, the smell of wet earth lifted into the air and it was sweeter than anything he had ever smelled. It rose up into his nose and swelled his lungs, intoxicating his mind as it coursed through him.

The pattering of drops rose to a steady hiss of rain. Jargo smiled as the drops now drummed steadily on his face. He smiled as he felt the cold trickle down through his matted hair and on to his head. In a thousand years no one had seen such a sight – S’watha had not come down from the skies and the world had thirsted for life. Now, as the cold rain trickled down Jargo’s body he did not feel proud, nor did he feel a sense of accomplishment for having done that which no one else had, in a millennium. His was a much simpler feeling –he just felt happy.

He stretched his arms and laughed and then screamed and cried like a mad boy. His eyes ached at first, unable to contain his joy. He cried and laughed, and touched his eyes in shock as tears burst forth and streamed down his face, falling on to his tongue – crisp, tangy, yet salty and wet.

He turned his eyes to the blade of grass that had spilled from the box and on to the ground. It danced to the rhythm of drops pelting it with life, as the earth below the grass transformed from loose dust to wet, muddy soil. The blade of grass shone in the sun, an intense green, and Jargo smiled even wider.

Far away in the lost cities, the dark dwellers huddled in the shadowy corners of their world. The rain drops beat upon their empty buildings like a great assault on the stone and concrete. Fear gripped them as water trickled onto their floors and began to pool. They had never seen such a sight – the water snaked along the ground and coalesced and conspired to corner them. The bravest and most curious of them – mostly children – dared to touch the water and when they felt its cold, soothing wetness, they laughed with joy. Soon, the children even dared to put their hands out of the windows and feel the rain on their arms.

The drops that fell on the empty metal birds outside, created a loud drumming sound as the rain impinged on to the hollow metal. It was a sound that was heard far; a sound that was music to the ears of an old blind man, who sat alone upon a sand dune and felt hope falling out of the sky.

Ram is a fibbing child turned writer, who has kept his love for concocting tall tales alive despite being warned against it! His short stories have appeared in fantasy and sci-fi publications and he is currently authoring a graphic novel. When he isn’t writing, Ram spends his time with books, film and music or generally wondering about everything

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