Prologue
“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.” Charles Darwin
While walking across the barren fields, I rub the soft skin of my belly. I know that the baby is well in there. She is growing, getting stronger, waiting for the day when it is safe to come out. I will take her back home to the little house in the valleys. Soon, I will start to talk to her. I will tell her everything that my father taught me. I will explain to her the things that her father did for me. And I will show her how to survive in this place, alone.
Idly, I trace the thin blue-purple line that emanates from the scabbed forefinger on my right hand. It has grown again; from my wrist, it now extends around the swell of my upper forearm, past a mole on my elbow and up, between the meat of my tricep and bicep towards my armpit. The skin surrounding it is slightly puffy, and sensitive. Maybe it really is a mark – a sign of some description, a measure of the journey that is finally taking us home.
As I leave the fields and push deep into the heavily overgrown woodland heading north, I have the dizzying sense of movement all about me. Nothing is entirely still. Blinding light flickers through swaying branches and shadows shift from shape to shape. The world around me is fuzzy and indistinct. This place is alive in a way that no town or city ever could be. It is a daunting thought that everything here is breathing, growing and dying, all at once – and all in competition. Even the soft, mossy ground appears to shift and sway subtly beneath my feet. But it feels safe and soft in comparison to the maze of concrete and steel that stands ruined behind us.
The foliage closes in around me. Any sign of the past existence of people has been eradicated, rubbed away as though we never existed. My clothes, my mismatched shoes and the possessions on my back are alien, and do not belong here any more. But as I duck between branches, moving from space to space amongst the cramped undergrowth, I tell myself that I am home.
VOCÊ ESTÁ LENDO
The Fall of Man
Ficção GeralSo much for an easy way to go. After thirty nine long years, each squandered day chained inexorably and uneventfully to the next, this is how it ends. How appropriate. Blinking back tears, Joanna shakes out another handful of pills into the palm of...
