Episode 30: Seen on a Battlefield

Intro music

Episode 30: Seen on a Battlefield

Music fades

*Click*

*We hear the sound of night air, the sound of bees buzzing, and the whirring of a recorder*

Voncid: I had intended to speak with you, Emea, but I can see you are on the other side at the moment, or maybe in the hive?  Such a fascinating craft you have… I don’t know if I have mentioned to you how kindred I feel we are… the last of our kind?  You tending to the last hive and I the last… I have discussed this idea with you before haven't I?  If I am repeating myself I apologize, my memory issues have improved… putting my remembrances in the wax rather than trying to keep them all in my head has been a great relief, but I suppose I was kidding myself that it would be anything but a temporary solution…  I would love to see the inside of the hive again, they are such wondrous creatures… I have a good number of them crawling over my hands now, so gentle and trusting… *a bee buzzes particularly close. Voncid continues in a melancholy and thoughtful tone* All it would take is one sting… Is that why I’ve come?  Am I secretly hoping they will finally give me the peaceful sleep?

Charlie: Mr. Voncid?  Is that you?

Voncid: *clears his throat, startled* Yes, hello, it is.

Charlie: Sorry if I’m interrupting anything, I just couldn’t sleep and it's so late, I didn’t think anyone would be up.

Voncid: Oh, nothing to worry about, the courtyard is not restricted.

Charlie: Kind of surprising what with the bee colony.

Voncid: They don’t sting.  Unless it’s your time of course.

*Bees buzzing*

Charlie: I’ll stay over here if that’s all right.

Voncid: *Almost to himself* They will find us all eventually.

Charlie: Sorry?

Voncid: I apologize, I came here to see my friend, she’s the Apiarist, but she is… not here at the moment.

Charlie: Oh yeah, I’ve seen her around I think.

Voncid: I apologize again, my memory is not as sharp as it once was, you are … You were being followed by eyes?

Charlie: Yeah, I’m Charles. Charlie. Baybridge. You said they were called Peekers?  

Voncid: Just an in-house term, we aren’t sure exactly what they are yet.

Charlie: Still?  I was kind of hoping there had been some progress.

Voncid: I’m sorry, it’s been a very busy time.

Charlie: The plague of nightmares?

Voncid: Hmm?

Charlie: I hear things.  I can’t leave, so I’m always here… so I hear things.

Voncid: Yes, and again, I am so sorry about that.

Charlie: You can stop apologizing.  You saved my life.

Voncid: Hm, very well… oh, I should warn you we are being recorded.

Charlie: Yeah, I saw the recorder, I’ve actually been working with those.  I’ve been transcribing paper copies.

Voncid: Oh, yes, well, that is very helpful. I hope you have not been too adversely affected by the unpleasant stories you’ve heard.

Charlie: Maybe, but part of me is grateful that it turns out being followed and stalked by eyeball creatures wasn’t as bad as it gets.

Voncid: No I suppose not… I…umm..well,  it’s late, I should retire.

Charlie: Were you recording the bees?

Voncid: No, I was going to record a message for Emea, the apiarist, show her how incredible her hive’s wax is at capturing remembrances.

Charlie: Those are… what?

Voncid: Memories manifest.

Charlie: That sounds really amazing.

Voncid: It is. But, sadly, in The Order we do not have the luxury of space to hold many gentle or pleasant ones. We seek to protect this world from the horrors without and those already within so... Nightmares are prioritized. 

Charlie: You were going to put a “remembrance” in the wax?

Voncid: I was.

Charlie: Could you still? I don’t mean to pry… it's just… I want to know more about what's happening, since it’s happening to me too.

Voncid: Yes… *stumbles, trying to decide how to respond* I see… I… well I suppose I have a story I have been meaning to put down.  There are some elements you may find somewhat familiar, but I warn you, it is a deeply nightmarish tale.

Charlie: I enjoy putting things in perspective.

*Bees buzzing*

Voncid: Well, stop me if it becomes too much… it takes place in another time, in a conflict that would become known as the War of the Roses, 1461 in a place called Towton…

*Whispers of wind and magic as the memory is called. When Voncid continues his voice is changed–deeper, with an English accent. The sound of a crowd–jostling, yelling–can be heard distantly beneath his words*

I died face down in the mud for men who never knew my name.  

A war of succession brought on as a divine test, they said. I felt no hint of this divinity.  I heard no ethereal chorus, only the cries of the killing and the dying. I smelled no divine censer held aloft by some angelic hand, only crisp, sharp blood and my own opened bowel.  

A pikeman had thrust his bent instrument into my belly. It punched through chain and leather and only stopped when it hit my spine. Cold shivers went through my legs and I spilled out into the mud at my feet, my vitae and humours mixing with that of the half dozen men I’d killed that same day.

I gripped the haft of my murderer's weapon and met his eye.  He was a boy.  Freckled cheeks and beautiful green eyes wide in terror.  He was no older than my son.

Thoughts of vengeance faded.  I tried to stay on my feet, but I could not. I tried to pray, but the words died in my throat. Resentment boiled up instead, bitter as bile. The cause I had died for was a farce. The boy or the Duke or a pig in purple, it was all the same to me now.  

Had I thought I would live? I had been wading through carnage all day.  The snow fell, but would not stay. The delicate white flakes melted into a red slick that ran everywhere, collecting in pools and puddles of gore on an earth saturated with death.   

I lay on my side, my ear to the ground. *A deep gurgling noise begins and builds*  I heard the strangest sound. From below me came the sound of gulping. Deep, heavy, shuddering swallows as if one who had been dying of thirst now sucked in the liquid that would save them. It was a greedy, sickening sound, so full of perverse pleasure I could barely stand it.  If I could have turned my head or raised my hand to shut it out I would have, but as it was I could only listen in horror as the earth gorged itself on the blood of the dying.  

As it gorged on me.

*The gurgling begins to fade and the sound of the crowd returns*

Men in plate grappled one another and fell into the mud beside me, knocking me onto my back. I heard a piteous, high scream raise to even higher pitch as one drove a long blade through the visor of the other’s helm. Tears filled my eyes, now cast up towards the sky.

My heart was slowing, but still it jumped at what I saw above. A long black line stretched across the heavens, arcing its way through the heavy grey clouds. The line looked wet and alive, but before I had time to ponder it further, it opened.

An eye.

A huge, shivering, eye.

The pupil was dilated in grotesque excitement, shifting here and there, unable to decide among the cornucopia of the carnage below. I thought of my child’s eyes at the carnival, flitting about rapidly, trying to take it all in at once. The eye above held the same greedy excitement. I watched as it rolled up into an immense unseen head, quivering in obscene gratification before snapping back to the scene below. 

The soldiers, fighting and killing though they were, could not have missed the eye, so immense was it. But they fought on, seemingly unaware of the monstrosity above them.  Perhaps, I thought, perhaps it is because you cross now through the realm of death.  Perhaps it is an angel of war, here to guide the hands of the victors, or a demon from hell, come to collect the damned.

Another of the fallen, barely visible in the corner of my vision, stretched a hand toward the sky and screamed.

*A man yells out twice*

“What is it?  What is it, my God please, no, help me my Lord!” he screamed and screamed until a horse thundered over him and ran off, wearing the man’s pot-helm as a boot for a few paces.

The thing in the sky turned, scanning the ground below until it focused down where the man had screamed.  I could not believe it, but the monstrous eye seemed to have heard him and taken an interest.

Its iris caught the light, a shocking shade of red, like the glint of rubies on the boy king’s robe as it had caught the torchlight. How proud I had been to stand in the room to see such a sight. How pathetic I felt now. 

The eye caught my own. Its pupil dilated wider still. I pressed my eyes shut, fear from beyond our world coursing through my mind like white fire. *Speaking with increasing desperation* So horrific was the sight that I willed myself to die, I begged my heart to beat no more to spare me the thing’s intentions.

“Die, you fool,” I prayed. “Just die.”

I do not know how long I held still that way, hoping to slip away in the dark veil of death, praying that the terrible thing in the sky would not reach down and take me. 

When I hazarded to open my eyes once more the field around me was still. *The sound of the crowd is gone. Only the whirring of the recorder is heard under the voice*  I thought perhaps the fighting had moved farther down the hill, but I could hear no sound of it. I raised my hand to my ear and snapped a few times, *fingers snapping*  thinking perhaps my hearing had gone, but heard the clicks clearly.

I realised belatedly that my arms now responded to my commands.  I tentatively fumbled towards the wound in my stomach. Perhaps it had not been as dire as I imagined. Perhaps I would live after all. 

The hole was enormous and deep. I tested the edges of the wounds but found no pain there. Out of some macabre fascination I explored further, prodding my fingers between the ruined organs in my belly until I found the hard bone of my spine. As I contacted the column of my back, silver shivers ran down my sides and my legs, but still there was no hurt.

I hazarded an attempt to sit up. By some miracle my body responded and curled into a seated position. My armour creaked and several other bodies of men that had fallen partially a top me rolled away.  I squinted at the colours of the tabards draped across their mail but I did not recognize them.

When I closed my eyes the battlefield had been a sea of red and blue fields littered with gold lions and roses. Now it seemed the standards were of every colour and bore all manner of animals, shapes and designs.  

“The colours are altered by mud and blood,” I told myself. “You are grievously wounded, your eyes cannot be trusted, not to decipher the shade of cloth that hung from the bodies, certainly not to have seen a monstrous eye rake across the battlefield. You cannot have heard a dying man cry out to the abomination in the sky anymore than you could have heard a terrible drinking from below.”

I decided it was best not to argue with myself and focused on my situation at hand.  Certainly I would not survive my injuries much longer, but I wanted to take this opportunity to die on my feet, not down in the mud, so I decided to try and rise.

Of all the strangeness I had seen that day, my body responding to my command and rising was perhaps the strangest yet. My armour creaked as if with rust. Grime had caked upon me as if baked there by the sun. Had I fallen asleep? Had I drifted off and missed the battle, the arrival of these reinforcements in their unfamiliar heraldry?

I cast my eyes about for my hammer, but did not see it. Instead I picked up a long heavy sword, tall enough that I could lean upon it. Though I was not tired I imagined it was only a matter of time before my injury caught up with me.

I scanned the sea of corpses around me. Every inch of ground was covered by gauntleted limbs or armoured torsos. I saw nowhere to step and so steeled myself against the disrespect and plodded atop the broken bodies of dead men. A mound had piled particularly high nearby. Perhaps from atop it I could see where the battle had gone, or where the encampments now were.

I checked the sky for the sun, hoping to gauge the length of my unconsciousness, but could not find it. Only a dimly glowing grey haze shone down. It was startlingly uniform, as if made from one long unbroken cloud. I saw no sign of the eye and so even that unnatural sky was a welcome sight.

Even as the chainmail and studded leather hauberks of the dead crunched softly beneath my feet I let myself have a moment of optimism. I thought of Livitha. I thought of her beautiful auburn hair tangled gently between my fingers. I imagined a time soon ahead where she would lay sleeping quietly beside me and how I would resolve yet again to never tell her of the things I had seen on this field. My children would ask of the battle and of my miraculous escape, but I would smile and keep these horrors from them.  

The hungry ground and the sky’s greedy eye would be stories buried with me. I imagined that this act was a kind one. That I would protect others from knowing of them and that simple thing would so greatly improve their lives.

I let myself believe that these things were behind me as I crested the hill.

A coil of flesh a mile deep *sound of waves begins and continues* curled into the earth before me. A pit of pink and red tissue quivered as an impossible sinkhole wrenched out of the very earth. Another step and I might have slid down into it. *The sound of gurgling begins again*  Bodies dangled around its edges even as fleshy protuberances lapped over the sides trying to pull them just a bit further, like a tongue trying to push a seed loose from between two teeth.   Slabs of bone undulated like a caterpillar's legs along the pit's sides, pulling the dead down into the orifice. These slabs were more numerous farther down and ground bodies that fell within to paste.

Around the edge of this hellish edifice *the sound of horn calls begin and continue* massive men and women, giants, strapped in barding like beasts of burden laboured to hurl the bodies down, aiding in the feast. *The horns cease* They stood as large as ten men as muscled as blacksmiths standing side by side, but, impossibly, all belonging to one being. Their faces were hidden within cages or sealed within boxes or sewn into sacks.

The giant nearest to me reached down with a grunt and hefted a dead horse from beneath the very pile I stood upon causing my hill to shift beneath my feet.

I let myself fall backwards, anything to be farther from that gaping hellish mouth.  I landed hard and slid back down the way I had come. I lay still, my mind straining beneath the weight of what I had seen.

Then came a grunt from over the hill of the dead.

*A deep call of some unknown creature*

I froze in terror at the deep, guttural sound.  My mind filled with panic.  Had my fall been heard by the giant?  A massive hand reached for purchase atop the mound of corpses and began to heft its mass up behind it.

Suddenly I was a child, helpless and soft. I could hear my father beating my mother in the other room before, in a drunken fury, storming down the hall to where I slept. As the door swung open I would go still as a baby hare, knowing that my any movement, even the rising and falling of my chest, might draw his ire.

The horrible memory saved me. I closed my eyes, let my body go limp as the dead around me.  I had not survived all this carnage only to be pulled limb from limb by this simple minded servant of evil.

*The regular sound of waves continues*

I knew now what lay before me. Evil. Hell. The damned shovelling the damned down into the hungry mouth of perdition. To try and escape this fate allotted to me may have been blasphemous. If God had seen fit to cast me here, perhaps I only further condemned myself to try and flee, but I am just a man. How could I have done else upon seeing such a nightmare?  

I wanted to see my wife and my children.  

I was so afraid.

I held as still as I could and listened to the giant huff the air through the iron box affixed to its face. After a few moments it seemed it could not discern me from the inanimate dead around me, or perhaps it was unsure it had heard anything amiss after all. A few moments passed, a few terrible, endless moments, before the beast rumbled and lurched back to the pit and its grim work. Soon I could hear the wet sounds and clattering of dead men in armour being thrown down and chewed up again.

I am not too proud to say I cried there. I had never felt so alone in all my life. Forsaken by God, by life, by the very world itself.

What had I done to be so damned?

I had heeded the Church. I had answered the holy call of the rightful king. I had fought valiantly in His name, distinguished myself on the field of battle. I was a brutal, effective instrument of the Lord.  I killed near a score of the pretender’s soldiers. I laid about divine violence with my hammer.

Only now, laying here at the mouth of perdition, did I pause to think of them. Of the men I had killed. Some had been easy, a crack over the head with my hammer and they went down like a sow to slaughter and moved no more. 

 “Others though, others were not so simple were they?” I asked myself. “Some quailed and panicked.  Some cried the very same tears you cry now. Some you strangled with your own hands, some you struck again and again to still them.  Some you left, unable to rise, but not yet dead, forced on by the fight. They died long, ugly deaths on the ground begging and suffering. You know they did.”

Something I thought long buried raised up in me and began to gnaw.

Guilt.

I thought I had killed my guilt long ago, but it seemed I was not the only one who had been resurrected in this unholy place.

The pile of bodies near me shifted again. I needed to move. I pushed down my misery and began to crawl. Hand over hand I made my way as quietly as the metal and chainmail all around would allow. I escaped an inch at a time, creeping over my fellow fallen soldiers. I tried not to look too long at the dead men I trampled, but I could not keep my eyes from them. Their faces, I now saw, were all manner of race.  I saw Moors and Saracens and other folk exotic to my eye among them, in armour and bearing weapons I had never seen.  It appeared we warriors, we killers, arrived here from all corners of the earth.

I slithered through the gore of a grey skinned war mount the size of a small cottage, which gave me pause.  I thought of the horse pulled from the bottom of the pile by the giant. Looking again I could see dead animals of war mixed in among the legion of dead men.  Why had these simple beasts been cast here to the edge of damnation?  What sin did they commit?  Such simple creatures as this had no soul to damn, did they?

“What do clergy know of the work of the beyond?” I asked myself. “There was never a sermon of a great mouth that devours the dead above the pit to hell, nor of bound giants who gather the fallen. They peddle simple gossamer.”

My throat tightened at such blasphemous thoughts, here of all places. Still, I could not deny that the Church had not prepared me for what I now saw. I was on my own.

When I could no longer hear the sound of the giants’ labours, I stood and hurried on foot.  I ran, stumbling and scrambling until I could no longer hear the cacophonous gurgling of the pit and its endless meal, after which time I slowed my pace and walked. I had not tired, but this in itself had begun to panic me and so I steadied my pace.

*The sound of wind and waves continues*

The sky did not change to mark the passage of time.  Even and grey and bright, as far as the eye could see. I saw birds wheeling in the sky. The sight comforted me, somehow, carrying thoughts of sea voyages of sailors rejoicing upon seeing birds as it signalled land nearby.  Perhaps I thought seeing these birds above meant that the world I knew was somewhere ahead.

I watched as one of these birds, a jet black crow, spiralled down out of the sky.  As it came into better view my feeling of relief evaporated. The birds were enormous, unnatural things. Human hands with long fingernails sprouted from the bottoms of their legs rather than claws and talons. One of the creatures opened its mouth to caw, revealing a pale, expressionless human face nestled within the flesh concealed inside the beak. The human face shouted loud clear tones *indecipherable yelling* in a language I did not know.

It was not long before I saw one of these birds alight on the ground. It was twice or more as tall as a man and its eyes were many eyes clustered together. It picked over the dead until it found something within one of the immobile, mouldering bodies lying beneath it. It snapped them up, pinching it in its beak and chewing lazily with its inner mouth.

I passed by as quickly as I could. I did not imagine that the creature cared much for me. With so much carrion around, why bother with prey that could defend itself? Indeed, it watched me go with its many eyes, regarding me placidly.

For a moment I almost thought to ask it for directions back to England. As the notion took me I very nearly burst out laughing aloud. *laughing to himself*  Despite my predicament the thought made me smile and, when I glanced up at the massive black feathered thing, *the laughter fades instantly* its beak was wide open and aimed in my direction. The face within was smiling back at me.

I lowered my gaze and picked up my pace.

I walked for what must have been hours. Still the sky showed no sign of changing, still my body felt no sign of fatigue. The armaments of the dead around me were no longer familiar, nor was their armour.

I saw many strange sights as I travelled. A pile of dead bodies rising and falling as if with breath. At a great distance, I saw a river of gore and blood pouring out of the sky from some unfathomable height above. I could faintly hear the bassy rumble of it cascading to earth. As I watched this ribbon of red cutting through the horizon my eye alighted on something else falling from the heavens. Some small shape, dark and flailing, plummeting freely from above.  

A Body. The countless fallen soldiers upon this seemingly endless field had fallen from the sky. My mind spun. Had I too fallen? I had no memory of such an event, no injuries beyond those that I took upon the field at Towton.

I had no way to answer these queries and so I pushed on, looking up only now and then to be sure no armoured corpses fell upon me.

Farther on I found a smaller pit of skin and muscle, lined with teeth like the great gash in the earth I had fled. This one was not attended by giants or other horrors and simply whimpered like a small, hungry child. It put me in mind of the sad sounds my own children had made when they wanted to nurse. *Deep gurgling begins* The sound triggered some insane sympathy within me and I very nearly went to feed the dead to the hole. *The gurgling ends suddenly*  If the ground nearby had not been so treacherously slippery nearby, *pauses, as if he cannot believe it himself* I just may have.  

I knew that I was going mad here.  I comforted myself with the thought that I was still aware enough to see my own impending lunacy. I was so rattled in my thought that I nearly waved away the sound of a human shouting in the distance as part of my delusion. After all, I had heard many strange voices and cries from beasts and demons in this place. Why would I pay this new sound any more heed?

It was a long while before I realised this voice cried out in the King’s own tongue.

*Voncid affects a somewhat higher voice, still with an English accent*

“Hello!” The voice called out. “Is anyone there?”

The voice was panicked and strained, but I would have been happy to hear any human sound at all.  As I cleared the next mound of bodies the voice’s owner came into view.

His tabard displayed red and blue, quartered, lined with gold lions of York. Even at this distance I could make out his freckles and his beautiful green eyes. Here among the dead, terrified and alone as I was, leaning on his bent pike, was the boy who’d killed me.

My heart filled with joy at the sight of him. I forgave him in an instant. I would have embraced him had I been near enough.

“Young man,” I called out, doing my best not to startle him. “Lad, I mean you no harm, but please lower your voice. This place crawls with unnatural creatures and we do not want to be heard.”

When he saw me clearly, fearful recognition passed over him.  He turned to run and began stumbling and staggering over the corpse piles to flee.

“No, boy, be not afraid,” I called after him. “All is forgiven!  You only did your duty as a soldier, as I did mine, but now we must make common cause.”

As the boy passed out of sight over a mound of banner covered dead, terrible, monstrous loneliness struck me. I had been walking too long, longer than my mind would let me comprehend. In this land of the warrior dead I might never see another soul. I might wander for eternity, all alone past these innumerable horrors. *With deep sadness* I couldn’t bear to be alone any longer.

“I forgive you! Boy, please!  I forgive you!  I am so sorry!” I was screaming now, practically hysterical, more panicked than even the boy had been. “Don’t go!”

I chased after him as quickly as I could. I twisted my ankle within the gaping mouth of a dead soldier, fell, rose again, pushed with all my might.

I heard a strange yelp from beyond the mound before me. Perhaps the boy had fallen too? Perhaps I could catch him now?

I rounded the hill and found myself eye to eye with the freckled boy and his beautiful green eyes. Only, they were upside down. His curly hair dangled loosely like vines, his expression wide with surprise.

Blood poured down, running up his nose and over his eyes, making them shudder. He dangled from the grip of a creature my eyes could hardly take in. Its wide drooping mouth chewed upon the boy’s legs, blood gushing over his torso and running off his face.

I howled.

My howl turned into a scream of grief and a battle cry of rage, both at once *voice nearly breaking with emotion*.  I swung wildly at the grotesquery with the long sword I’d carried with me since I’d left the pit. The beast was impossible to decipher. It was an amalgam of mangled bodies and wide wriggling flesh still half submerged beneath the mound of corpses it had sprung out from. I laid into it with my blade, shattering teeth and splitting its horrid lips.

“Let go, let go, let go” I screamed again and again.  My strikes broke its flesh, cracked its bone, and yet it did not slow.  It chewed and ground and swallowed.

“Please,” I began to beg the monster even as I struck it with all my might,  “Please, don’t.”

The boy’s shock had worn off. He screamed and clawed and tried to pry himself loose. I hacked deep into the side of the mouth and severed something within that sent a gush of blood issuing forth. The creature’s many eyes narrowed in nothing more than annoyance. With a sick convulsion a mass of its limbs struck out at me, shattering my sword, my armour, one of my arms, sending me careening away.

While one of its mouths continued to eat the boy another opened and spoke.  

*The voice that speaks is high and childlike, almost shuddering*

“It’s not our fault,” it said, the voice of a small child emitting from the mouth of a monstrosity.  

“It is your fault.”

The sound of its voice made me angry, shattered my mind like ice under a hammer.  I don’t think the boy heard it speak over the sound of his own screaming, which proved all the more lucky for him. The thing’s voice haunts me as much as any horrors I have seen.

In my madness though, I found a moment of brilliance and acted with deep clarity.  I took up my shattered blade in the arm that would respond to me and drove it into the waist of the boy where he dangled. Into the stomach, deep, down to the spine. The ironic parity did not register to me until later. I carved and pried with my blade. The boy tried to stop me, screaming. He didn’t see how brilliant my plan was, didn’t see I was saving him. Finally, with a snap, the top of the boy came loose and I bore him away from the beast even as his lower half disappeared down its monstrous gullet.

Though I only had one arm that worked, the young man was half as heavy as before. I hoisted him on my shoulder and carried him away from the beast's grasping mouths. It seemed hesitant to give chase after the wound I’d given it. Or perhaps it was simply full.

I do not know how long has passed now, but that was how the young man who killed me and I came to be best friends. We have put all that horrible business behind us. Now we travel together, trying to get clear of this place.  

As we go, he does not speak much. I don’t mind. I carry him and tell him of my home, my children and my beautiful wife. I tell him of the battles I’d fought before, of all the things I’d be so happy to do once we reached the end of this battlefield.

I talk. He listens.

I am just grateful not to be alone.

I think, perhaps, we once neared the field’s edge. The dead were not so numerous, their tangled broken forms were not piled nearly so high as before. In places we could even see what passed for ground in this forsaken place. Somehow even the sight of that shuddering meat beneath my feet  was very nearly comforting. It meant that this place did have some border. That its horrors were not endless. That we could find our way home.

I quickened my pace, hoisting the boy higher on my shoulder, racing to escape this hell. Even as I ran, a strange sound cut through the strange grey sky above and stopped me in my tracks. *the sound of waves intensifies, accompanied by wails and cries*  I could only weep and watch as the sky opened and a storm of the young, the poor and the low rained upon us, a torrent of broken bodies cascading down to the hungry, fleshy earth. I threw myself over the boy to shield him as we were buried beneath the corpses of those newly slaughtered. The field swelled and breathed *the waves swell as well*  like a thing satisfied.  

By the time I dug us out my hope had nearly died.  I nearly laid down to sleep among the rest.

Still, I walk. Still, I carry the boy. Still, I hope. 

One day the fighting will cease, and then we will be able to reach its edge, the end of this battlefield. One day soon it will stop growing and growing, stretching ever farther, faster than I can walk. On that day, we will reach its horizon. On that day we will leave this place.   

I’m sure. I’m sure.

I’m sure it will be some day very soon.

*The waves swell one final time. There is a moment of whirring, then a click as the recording ends*

*Outro music*