Stories told by Earth of emigrant German farmers, Cherokee Indians and African slaves connect America’s “Trail of Tears” and South Africa’s “Great Trek.”
Water frozen into stone. Land and ocean merging, finding unity. Even air falls to the ground as crystals white with stolen sun. We find embrace and rest while human growth is stopped, cut off, immobilized. We reach a death where we are reconciled with air and ocean. Though life is sacrificed, in blood it seeks new birth, like melting ice in spring. While Thembinkosi slept beside the great river choked with ice, men were stirring by a little stream in Africa where mist was rising from the lush green grass.
Like rounded stones rolling in a flood, they had come in darkness to the river. Covered with their ox hide shields they had lain for hours in the grass. Their fluids merged with ours. A locust easily could cross the space between them and the men behind the wagon wheels. Small lights like fireflies danced on poles above the canvas tops.
Bare feet clenched the grass. We felt the muscled frames stand up. Percussive blasts ripped the air apart. Bodies were falling on the ground, giving up their blood to us. Feet were running, lifting in the air, pounding down upon us, on men becoming earth again. The air was turned to smoke. The bright sun hid its eyes, then opened them to see the bodies twisted like cut grass. Metal clashed on wood and stone as white shields and black covered up the grass, the banks along the river, the bodies still upon the land. Their blood was seeping into us, mixing in the river like a fertile field washing to the sea. The blood bore salt like tears. The sun was high when the shooting stopped. Moaning rose like smoke from fire the lightning brings. The breath of bodies flushed into us, punctuated by the hooves of horses following feet in flight.
“Go after them! Don’t let them regroup! Chase them all the way to Dingane if you have to!”
Riders radiated from the bloody place beside the river. The smoke cleared above the groaning of the dying men.
“I can’t believe it, Fortius. Thousands of them against less than five hundred of us. It’s a miracle.”
“Guns, it was our guns. And the weather. Clear sun. It kept the powder dry. We were lucky.”
“No, Fortius, God. God gave us the victory. The land is ours now. They will never recover.”
“Nor will we, Karel. Nor will we.”
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Copyright 2008 William Everett. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.
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