Once upon a time, there was a land where time had stopped. The slanted rays of an eternal afternoon hung heavy over hills of grass that stood as frozen as a picture. The people of this land walked listlessly through its territory. Unable to age, unable to change, they walked from here to there and back again. They would study every whirl and eddy across in the motionless streams. They walked over the hills, pushing their faces against gusts of wind frozen in mid-flight.
But in this land, something is happening. Something that none of its residents can recall ever seeing the like of. A great confluence of people is gathering, person following person, each curious to see where the rest are going until they reach the crowd spread around the house at the end of the lane. From this house came a steady stream of screams. The newcomers all had the same questions, for all been to this house, as they had all been all places in the land, and never before had they heard screaming.
Birth, they were told. The woman who lives in the house, the woman whose belly had always and always been swollen in pregnancy, was giving birth. Hearing this the newcomers could do nothing but turn to the house and stare, utterly absorbed in the sound of screaming. The sound that something, impossibly, was happening. Every now and then a few would try to push through the crowd, declaring with fanatical zeal their willingness to help, only to be pushed back. Told the house was already full of doctors, each struggling to recall their long unpracticed skills. Told nothing more could be done.
Then, the screaming stopped. Not a sound could be heard from the crowd outside. All waiting, not a single breath to stir the stale air, until from the house could be heard the plaintive cries of a newborn babe and a great roar of celebration erupted from the great mass of people. Into this cacophony the bedroom window of the house was opened, and from it a doctor unfurled a great white sheet emblazoned with the dull red stains of blood, so fresh it dripped and where it dropped it stained the eternal, unchanging ground upon which it fell.
Impossibly the people had a newborn among them. And though all in the land came to see eventually the commotion stopped, for it was merely another baby after all, and the mother was left alone.
Looking for advice and looking for camaraderie the mother went out and visited the other mothers of babes. But she found that all had put their unchanging babies aside. Their affection, which they had thought infinite, ground away by an eternity of incessant wails. With stony faces they would show her their children. In drawers and cabinets, in crawlspaces and the boles of trees or dropped to the bottom of wells. All still sleeping, or crying, or staring out at the world without comprehension or understanding. And thereafter the mother would cry as he held her baby. Cry for fear that someday she too would put him aside and try to forget.
But something happened even more impossible than the boy’s birth. He grew. And in what seemed the blink of an eye to a people who lived without time he was walking, and talking, and playing. And when he played he awakened in the children of the land their love of play, for long ago they had grown exhausted of games and play, and before the boy most had simply sat in a stupor staring at the unchanging yellows and reds of the evening sky. But again the boy grew, and soon the children with which he played could no longer follow the games he created or keep up with the speed of his legs.
He found new friends to play with. Older friends, though not in years for all among them had lived so long they could no longer recall having been a different age than what they were. These new friends showed him a thousand things within the land. Things they remembered enjoying age after age, but yet still had eventually turned away from in boredom, and they reveled in the boy’s newfound joy in these things.
But again the boy grew, and though they remained his friends a distance began to grow between them. They had a constant fascination for his changes. When he saw them they would eagerly examine his face and his hands, noting every new hair that had emerged. He hated it, for he wanted to be one of them and not apart.
So the boy went to his mother, and he asked her why he was different. Why he continued to grow and to change when no one else did.
Why, she could not say, but slowly, haltingly, for it was difficult to remember, she told him of how the world used to be. That once the sun had not stayed still but moved across the sky. That from where it stood now it would fall beneath the ground, plunging the whole world into darkness, only to rise up again on the other side of the horizon bathing the sky in brilliant gold and from there it would rise and rise until it stood at the top of the sky which would turn into a brilliant blue deeper than any lake in the land until again it would fall starting the whole thing over again. She told him that everyone used to be like him, starting little and growing through all the stages of life that he had seen among the people throughout the land.
And then what would happen to them, he asked, what would become of these people who never stopped changing after they had gone through these stages?
At this she looked away from him, not wanting to recall the answer, not until he pleaded with her that he must know.
They would die, she said at last, and she explained to him what it was to die. That with things that change there would always come time when they would cease to change, for they would cease to be at all. Then, seeing that still he did not understand, for how could he, she told him that she would show him. That she would take him to the dying man.
Together they walked through the land to its very outskirts, and there at the foot of the hill that marked the edge of the territory there was a house barely larger than a room, and inside that house there was a man on a bed and beside the bed a chair. The boy sat on the chair and watched the man. He was old, older than anyone the boy had ever seen, and he was moving his head, slowly but constantly, from left to right, as if searching for something, looking everywhere, though the boy could tell that he could scarcely see what he looked at, indeed seemed not even to notice that the two of them had entered the room and that he was no longer alone. And all the time he was muttering, muttering whispered words under his breath. The boy leaned over to listen closer. Most still he could not hear, but one thing he could hear clearly. The train, the train, the man was saying over and over, the train.
He is dying? The boy asked his mother.
Yes, she said. If the sun still moved he would be dead before it set.
And then he would no longer exist? Would disappear?
His body would still be here. But he would be no different from the bed on which he lays, or the chair on which you sit.
Where would the rest of him be? The boy asked. The part that makes him move?
It would be gone.
The boy sat and watched the man. And this will happen to me? He asked, turning to his mother.
It happens to everything that changes, she said.
Before he could respond, the dying man grabbed the boys arm. Turning to him the boy found the old man staring at him, alarm on his face. My bags, the dying man said, they’re all packed. My bags are all packed but the train won’t move. Then the alarm drained from the dying man’s face, and the focus left his eyes. Relaxing back into his bed he began once again to his eternal search, from left to right across the room he could not see.
The boy and his mother left the dying man’s house. She turned to walk back home, but he did not follow. What is it? She asked him.
I have to leave this place, the boy said.
You cannot.
I must, he said, taking her hands.
No, she said, you can’t.
I love you mother. I will remember you forever. He turned away from her and walked toward the hill that lay at the end of the land.
No, she cried after him, you won't. But I will.
He walked and walked. Longer
than he’d ever done anything he walked. But when he turned he saw his mother still standing there, waiting
for him besides the dying man’s house, so close it was like he’d never taken
more than a few steps.
He turned back to the hill and started walking again.
He walked and he walked and he walked. For an eternity he walked and then longer he walked. He walked until he could no longer remember anything but the walking and the need to continue walking.
He walked and he walked until the
shoes fell apart around his feet and the clothes rotted off his back and naked he continued to walk. He walked until
for the first time he felt pangs of hunger wrack his body but still he walked
up the hill he walked until he was over and on the other side he saw before him the glory
of the moon.