“Why?” I say, alarmed. “What’s happened?”

“I’ve found your Answer.”

Before

(THE RETURN)

The sun is about to rise as I take some food from the cookfires. Members of the Land watch as I collect a pan and fill it with stew. Their voices are open – they could hardly be closed and still be members of the Land – so I can hear them discussing me, their thoughts spreading one to the other, forming one opinion, then a contrary one and back again, all so fast I can barely follow it.

And then they come to a decision. One of the Land rises to her feet to offer me a large bone spoon so that I do not merely have to drink the stew from the bowl, and behind her I can hear the Land’s voices, their voice, offering it to me in friendship.

I reach out to take it.

Thank you, I say, in the language of the Burden–

And there it is again, the slight discomfort at the language I speak, the distaste at something so alien, so individual, so representative of something shameful. It is quickly bundled away and argued against in the swirling voice, but it was definitely there for an instant.

I do not take the spoon. I hear their voices calling after me in apology as I walk away, but I do not turn around. Instead, I walk to a path I have found and start my way up the rocky hill by the side of the road.

The Land has mostly made its camp along the flat of the road, but I see others on the hillside as I climb, others from areas where the Land lives in mountains and who are more comfortable on the steepness. Likewise down below, there are those from where the Land lives near rivers who sleep in quickly made boats.

But then, the Land is all one, is it not? The Land has no others, it has no they or those.

There is only one Land.

And I am the one who stands outside it.

I reach a point where the hill becomes so steep I have to pull myself up. I see an outcropping where I can sit and look at the Land below me, much as the Land can look over the lip of the hill and see the Clearing.

A place where I can be alone.

I should not be alone.

My one in particular should be here with me, eating our meals together as the dawn slowly brightens, fighting off sleep, waiting for the next phase of the war side by side.

But my one in particular is not here.

Because my one in particular was killed by the Clearing as the Burden were first rounded up from back gardens and basements, from locked rooms and servant’s quarters. My one in particular and I were kept in a garden shed, and when the shed door was opened that night, my one in particular fought. Fought for me. Fought to keep them from taking me.

And was brought down by a heavy blade.

I was dragged away making the inadequate clicking sound the Clearing left us with after forcing us to take its “cure”, a sound that said nothing of what it was like to be torn from my one in particular and thrown into a gathered band of the Burden, who had to hold me down to keep me from running back to the shed.

To keep me from being cut down myself.

I hated the Burden for that. Hated them for not letting me die there and then, when my grief was not quite enough to kill me on its own. Hated them for the way they–

For the way we accepted our fates, the way we went where we were told, ate what we were told, slept where we were told. In all that time, we fought back once, only once. Against the Knife and the other one with him, the loud one who was bigger but seemed younger. We fought when the Knife’s friend strapped a band around one of our necks for pure, cruel fun.

For a moment, in silence, the Burden understood each other again. For a moment we were truly one again, connected.

Not alone.

And we fought.

And some of us died.

And we did not fight again.

Not when a group of the Clearing returned with rifles and blades. Not when they lined us up and began to kill us. Shooting us, hacking at us, making that high stuttering sound they call laughing. Killing the old and the young, mothers and babies, fathers and sons. If we tried to resist, we were killed. If we did not resist, we were killed. If we tried to run, we were killed. If we did not run, we were killed.

One after the other after the other after the other.

With no way to share our fear. No way to coordinate and try to protect ourselves. No way to be comforted as we died.

And so we died alone. Every one of us.

Everyone but one.

Everyone but 1017.

Before the killing began, they looked at our bands until they found me, and they dragged me to a wall and made me watch. Watch as the clicks of the Burden grew fewer and fewer, as the grass grew stickier with our blood, as at last I was the only Burden left alive on this entire world.

And then they clubbed me on the head and I awoke in a pile of bodies with faces that I recognized, hands that had touched mine in comfort, mouths that had shared their food, eyes that had tried to share their terror.

I woke up, alone among the dead, and they pressed on me, suffocated me.

And then the Knife was there.

Is here now–

Is pulling me from the bodies of the Burden–

And we tumble to the ground and I fall away from him–

We stare at each other, our breaths making clouds in the cold–

His voice is open wide with pain and horror at what he sees–

The pain and horror he always feels–

The pain and horror that always threatens to topple him over–

But never does.

“Yer alive,” he says, and he is so relieved, so happy, to see me in the middle of all that death where I am alone and alone and alone for ever, he is so happy that I vow to kill him–

And then he asks me about his own one in particular–

Asking if, among all the killing of my own kind, I have seen one of his–

And my vow becomes unbreakable–

I show him I will kill him–

In the weakness of my returning voice, I show him I will kill him–

And I will–

I will do it now, I will do it right now–

You are safe, says a voice–

I am on my feet, my fists swinging in panic.

They are caught easily by the Sky in his larger hands, and as I pull back from the shock of the dream, I nearly topple off the outcropping. He has to catch me again, but his hand grabs the band and I cry out as he pulls me upright, his voice instantly surrounding the pain in mine, wrapping it away, lessening it, holding it until the fire in my arm calms down.

It remains so painful? the Sky asks gently in the language of the Burden.

I am breathing heavily, from the surprise of being woken, from the surprise of finding the Sky near me, from the surprise of the pain. It does, is all I can show for the moment.

I am sorry we have been unable to heal it, he shows. The Land will redouble its efforts.

The Land’s efforts are better used elsewhere, I show. It is a poison of the Clearing, meant for their animals. It is probably only within their power to cure.

The Land learns much in the ways of the Clearing, the Sky shows. We hear their voice even when they do not hear ours. And we learn. His voice rises with real feeling. We will save the Return.

I do not need saving, I show.

You do not want saving, which is a different matter. One which will also occupy the Land.

The pain in my arm is easing and I rub my face, trying to wake myself up.

I did not mean to sleep, I show. I wish never to sleep until the Clearing are gone from here.

And only then will your dreams know peace? the Sky shows, bemused.

You do not understand, I show. You cannot.

Again, I feel the warmth of him encircling my voice. The Return is incorrect. The Sky can share the past in the Return’s voice, that is the nature of the voice of the Land, that all experience is as one, that nothing is forgotten, that all things are–