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The tall man scanned the horizon in all directions, in a desperate attempt to find even a single rain cloud. Only a few paces from his feet the dust swirled in a miniature sandstorm that signaled the arrival of yet another hot, dry day in the life of the simple farmer.
“Sim!” a voice called from beyond his sight.
“In a minute!” he shouted, not quite angry but slightly annoyed. “In a minute!”
He lowered his eyes from the cloudless sky and looked back to the mound of sand which he was using a shovel to scoop into a small pile.
“Bring it to me!” I’m just not done yet.” He looked up again and looked out over the endless plains.
“Move!”
The man shuffled his feet, lifting a small shovelful of sand, a shovelful a time, a shovelful at a time. He could feel the image of the monolith almost physical, almost real. If only he could get a clear view of it from the side, he thought. If only I could find a vantage point where I could get a better view. If only I could find a way to increase my power from this distance. But he could not. He could not change, and he could not get closer. And soon the very ground beneath his feet would get the taste of dust for the first time in a hundred years. The dry dust was rare these days, but it would be very hard to find a better alternative.
“Sim!”
“In a minute!”
“You have been cleared up to a hundred.”
He swallowed a lump in his throat. A hundred? Here?
“No hurry.”
He heard a voice from behind. An old voice. Was that his father? He shut his eyes. Deep down he knew, but he had always pushed it away, denied it had anything to do with him.
“It’s okay, son. I’m not gone yet.”
The answer took a moment to reach his ears, and he opened his eyes. He could see nothing at all, but his mind and his heart screamed to look down and see his father and mother and sister and brothers and everyone he had ever known and loved; all looking up to him looking down upon them.
“I’m still here. Don’t forget me.”
He swallowed hard. “You’re not here,” he said matter-of-factly, taking another step forward. He felt the sand pile against his feet, and with that his mouth went dry.
“I am here,” was the answer. A response, but not what he had expected.
He froze in place. “What?” he asked.
“I am here.”
The voice was deep and strong, like the voice of an iron wall forged by cold wind. Strong, but not as strong as he had always thought.
“Why now, now that you’re released, now after all these years?” he asked as he saw the image as well as his own reflection in the sand as the grains shifted and moved, as if they wanted to talk back to him.
“I have been released for a long time.”
“Come off it.” The sand was not a monolith after all, but a very large alligator, no, a long line of them, one behind the other, coming straight for him.
“You have been released from nothing.”
The man closed his eyes and swallowed hard. His mouth went dry, his vision greyed out, and suddenly he was stumbling, falling to the ground as his body convulsed from the pain.
“Open your eyes, look up, you have been released! You have been released as surely as I have been released from everything I have ever been!”
He opened his eyes again. The first thing he saw was a foot approaching him from above. He grabbed the shoe before it could reach him, taking hold of it with both hands, feeling a strong but not usually very strong foot.
Then the man laughed outright.
He let go of the foot and took a few steps backward, almost collapsing to his knees with silliness. The sun was shining brightly and the plains were so open, the red dirt so hard and so dry.
“I don’t understand,” he said with great sincerity.
“You will.”
The man stood and looked around. At first he thought he heard nothing, and then realized that the sounds all around him had changed.
“Their birds sing of rain and clouds!”
“They do not know that we have been released.”
It was quiet, very quiet. The birds had stopped singing, but they were still there.
“What do you mean nothing nothing?” The worst had happened.
“We have suffered nothing, they have suffered everything.”
“We have lost nothing…”
“What, they have?” He looked back down at the mound of sand behind him.
“I have lost nothing, everything has been given to me…”
“Me too.”
He squinted, rubbed his eyes, shook his head, clenched his fists. It was quiet. Everything was quiet. It was quiet. His mouth opened and closed, but no sounds escaped. He could only look down as the pile of sand got bigger and bigger.