It is not an easy thing to know. It's been more than 800 years since the world began. In that time, people have shifted things, moved passages, made walls, torn them out. Most people live in an odd shaped room with a partly open roof for all their lives, rarely going beyond the courtyard they share with two hundred others.
I was in a place like that the first time I heard of Ey. It was told the same way, always. A few words here and there in groups of three or four boys. The Well. The Onion Heads. General Round Mouth. The death of Ey and the beginning of the world.
Every courtyard I visit, every knot of boys rubbing one word of Ey against another, they always whisper a little louder when I am around. I see their glances at me, as if to confirm that the story they tell is right, is true.
The lights flicker and they run inside, making room for another other family or a young couple or a wedding or a viewing.
That could have been my life, too. Most of the time, I wish it was.
No comments:
Post a Comment