The One Who Went Back
Tho set one hand on the cave wall. He smeared the red pigment all around it, then took his hand away and admired his work. What he saw made him excited. It was his hand, right there, and he had never seen it this way before.
Finally, his turn had come to carry out the tradition. This place had served them well. He turned around in a circle and looked about him. Their history was evident everywhere: the soot smears on the walls, the pottery shards, the bones of discarded meals, the broken tools.
When they first arrived, Tho had been nearly too young to remember. And now they were leaving for no other reason than it seemed an important thing to do. They could have stayed here forever. But they would not. It was impossible to stay anywhere too long. And for what reason, since there were new places they hadn’t seen yet?
Leaving the cave was an ordinary act. But had grown in significance. The present notion of it was vast and filled Tho’s imagination with dark and swirling things. He looked back. Into the dark of the cave, the safe cradle that had kept them alive, and found that among his thoughts, something was severed. The cave had ceased being their home. Shelter was somewhere else. They only needed to find it.
The others were waiting for him at the edge of the pool. Its smooth and glacial surface reflected the piercing lights of the heavens. Far in the distance, something moaned. It was the world sighing, waking up to yet another day. The sun blazed between the mountains, penetrating their spines, as an evidentiary of homes and handprints lay abandoned behind them, the way they had come.
Tho told them it was done. It was time to leave. And they set off, hoofing over frosted grass and sharp stones. As the sun continued its ascent, it cast splinters of ghost-light over the region that lay ahead; the homeland of the future. Tho had been staring at that territory for so long. And now they were finally going there. It wasn’t far off, a tiny distance compared to what they had already covered, but there would be many tribulations along the path. Tho and his people would have to face them all, and he knew it was likely some of them would die; while it was also inevitable that many would survive.
The land ahead was especially beautiful today, the sky bursting with light, then transformed to spectral blue. The city of glass shone in the glare of the sun, reflecting brilliantly, multiplying every ray that struck. It was, to Tho and everyone else, the future. But there was, at least in Tho’s young imagination, a dazzling certainty that it would not be the final future. There was more beyond. And to see it all, they only had to reach the city of glass, to climb its highest point, and look out. And this summit was very high indeed, far greater than the mountains. Tho could almost picture it; an unobstructed view to a dozen further futures, a vision that extended even beyond the horizon.
The group walked all that warm day. Whenever they passed a place that looked like it might be a suitable home, no one bothered to stop and examine it. They only glanced.
Afternoon, under the broiling sun at its apex, the group stopped to rest in a new kind of cave. This one was made of wood. It had a door and windows. It didn’t seem to be occupied.
As they sat in the house and ate in its dusty shadows, Tho wandered over to one of the windows and looked toward the future. It was brighter than he had ever seen it, as if the environment was ready to catch fire.
The light started to hurt his eyes. He turned them away, so that the city stood at the edge of his sight. In doing so, he became aware of a dark shape out there. Something that stood between
Tho and the city. After watching for a moment and letting the image resolve in his brain, he realized what he was looking at.
He turned to the others. He shouted, “Someone is coming!”
They did not seem worried. One woman got up, went to the door, and leaned out, looking back into the past. Naturally, it was the direction a stranger would be coming from. She used a hand to shade her eyes. Then looked back at Tho with a furrowed brow.
“Not that way,” Tho told her. “That way.”
The woman looked to the future. And she, too, began to shout.
“Someone coming! Someone coming back!”
They abandoned their shaded meal and rushed out across the sand. The person was close. And as he approached, they slowed down. The group was confused. For a moment, Tho felt uncertain about what sort of creature he was looking at. Then the creature saw them, and its face changed. It was a man. But a very strange one. He was tall and narrow, and his face was red. Other parts of his skin, those not covered by the odd clothing he wore, were white as a cloud. His hair was the color of the sun-bleached sand. Tho had never seen anyone like him. The man spoke to the group. He grabbed them, one by one, and said things that none of them understood. There was some great trouble, Tho could tell. Whatever the man was trying to communicate, it was something bad. Something that made his eyes bulge, and made spit fly from his mouth. He kept pointing, back the way he had come, at the city of glass. Finally, Tho had had enough of it. He left the others and climbed up on a little hill, using the thin desert grass to haul himself along. At the top, he shaded his eyes and looked into the future.