Passages

by Tala Bar

The player Aug took the harp in his hands. His gnarled fingers passed gently over the strings; his blind eyes looked at unknown distances. He beat the strings.

Danah — a young, handsome woman — found herself in an endless plain. The forest was gone and with it the bonfire and all the members of her tribes who had been sitting around it. In the open field, the like of which she had never seen before, long yellow rows stretched to the horizon.

Danah had never seen yellow in such quantities. Where was all the green she had been so used to? She stood, wondering, with the terror gradually filling her heart. She had never been so lonely. Above her head, blue sky stretched to infinity, instead of the green forest dome. Strange emptiness filled the air, in place of the thicket of forest trees and the shrubs in between. Deep silence ruled everywhere, gone were all the forest noises — birds’ chirping, insects’ buzzing, animals’ growling — nothing...

From the silence a strange sound rose up and up, a monotonous mechanical noise she had never heard before. She turned her head and saw two enormous bodies moving slowly, decisively, toward her. She had never seen such monsters, which swallowed and crunched the yellow vegetation, emitting clouds of glolden dust that flew and scattered in the wind.

Gradually, the noisy monsters got closer to Danah, who stood rooted in her place, unable to move. The dust rose above her, floated and wrapped her completely. For a moment she felt suffocating, she gasped and sneezed, and in a flash she found herself back at the bonfire in the midst of the forest, among the members of her tribe.

They stared at her in amazement. “Where’ve you been? From where is that golden dust covering your body?” they asked in wonder. Danah shook her head in confusion.

Aug, the blind player, beat the strings again, and Riggel — a middle-aged man with much life experience — found himself standing among giant buildings, which threatened to fall on top of him. In place of the forest of trees and the members of his tribe around the bonfire, all around him heavy blocks rose with square, sharp sides; their tops filled the sky instead of the forest’s dome.

A terrible noise filled the air, very different from the lively sounds of the forest. It was a sharp, grating sound, which shook his body and blocked his mind until he was unable to think. Strange lights flashed among the buildings, dark cylinders, much higher than any tree he had ever known, emitted gray-black thick smoke that hid the sunlight. Heavy, suffocating smells surrounded him in place of the pleasant, intoxicating forest aromas. From a thick cylinder that burst out of one of the buildings, dark, murky liquid flew, unlike any stream of water he had ever seen.

A deafening whistle was suddenly heard, shaking Riggel, who jumped from where he was standing straight into a marshy area. His feet began to sink in the gooy mud, he breathed hard, shut his eyes and screamed. At once, he found himself sitting among the members of his tribe at the bonfire in the forest.

“Yuk!” they shrieked, blocking their noses, “where have you brought that stink from?” Riggel breathed in deeply the forests aroma and said nothing.

Aug beat the strings for the third time, and Suna and Shabban found themselves floating high in the air. The forest vanished along with the members of their tribe sitting around the bonfire.

“Ahhh,” Shaban uttered — he was a youngster on the threshold of puberty — stretching his arm to take hold of Suna, who was an elderly woman, one of the tribe’s sages. She only held her breath, looked around her with some apprehension, trying not to reveal her feeling to her mate. All she could see was complete darkness, strewn everywhere with distant, tiny sparks. The wonderful sight filled her whole surroundings — not only on all sides but even above and below them, as far as the eye could see.

“What did Aug mean by sending us here?” deamanded Shaban forcefully, having recovered somehow.

“I think,” Suna replied slowly, “this is only a place of passage, through which we must go before reaching another place — not like those where he sent Danah and Riggel.”

“Why do we have to leave the forest at all?” Shaban protested. “We can’t have a better life anywhere else!”

“You don’t know anywhere else, do you?” Suna chided, then continued, “If you noticed, the forest is not what it used to be. Strange people are coming who had never been there before. I even heard they cut down trees...”

“Cut down trees? How then they could live in it?”

“That I don’t know. But that is Aug’s task, to lead us to another place, where we could go back to our quiet life.”

Suna closed her eyes, thought of the forest and the members of the tribe sitting around the bonfire, and then she and Shaban were back there.

“Where have you been?” their mates asked in astonishment. “You brought with you a kind of chill, which is from another world!”

“Well,” Aug the player turned to the members of his tribe, “you saw the possibilities: the field, the city, and the space through which we can reach another planet. It seems to me there is only one choice to make.”

“But how can we live without the forest?” asked Suna.

“We don’t need to live without it. We can take it with us, in the same way I transferred each of you to another world. I’ve already made a choice of the planet suitable for us... Now, all of you, close your eyes — the children as well, small and big — that’s right, the hunters also, and the mothers, the elderly — all of you, concentrate with me in one thought — that’s it — now!”

He beat the strings...