In Absence

There are many secrets in the world. There are the secrets that the Gods know, such as the fact that the stars are controlled by an ornery salamander from his burrow. There are the secrets that some people know, such as if you follow a yellow bird at night, you might find gold.And then there are the secrets that only the wind knows. But the wind does not keep those secrets to itself. No, the wind tells its secrets to the dead. The moon was half full on a night when a great and lonely wind rustled the long, thin grass and wove between a few sparse trees on its way towards Dolores. She had spent most of her night as she did every night. She sat on the hill below her village, above her desiccating remains. She had decayed enough that her cheek and arm were simply bone. But her spirit that hovered over her unintended gravesite felt like flesh to her, though she could not feel anything else. The dead do not always remember the past. They can hover if they are not given their last rites bundled in soft cloth to keep them warm beneath the earth. There is no sleep or peace for these dead as they lie in the cold. Dolores had been left with her thin dress in a shallow grave to the elements. Above her, illuminated by a half moon, was her village with its terraced farm lands and cramped houses. She remembered it was her village and not much else until the wind came. It tickled her hair. The wind could be playful and mischievous. It lived for its gossip and to cause trouble. The wind went through her and swirled around her until it whispered in her ear. I know who killed you, it said. And I will tell you who if you can give me a new secret. I know who killed youAnd I will tell you who if you can give me a new secret.“What good is my knowing? I cannot do anything about it.” Yes you can. The moon is half there and half not. You can be like the moon if you ask it. If I give you the secret, you must give me another. Yes you can. The moon is half there and half not. You can be like the moon if you ask it. If I give you the secret, you must give me another.Dolores ran her fingers through the breeze and let it tickle the memory of the tiny hairs on her knuckle. What consequence would it be to be indebted to the wind? She was already dead. “Fine. Tell me,” she answered. The wind whispered in her ear. Every step to the village brought her closer to the ground. Her steps were a prayer, a promise, a command to the moon to give weight. As the village grew closer, her limbs grew heavier, her body more solid. By the time she got there, she was able to disturb the dirt with her feet and push the long grass with her body. When she crossed into the village she could move the gates. Dolores was still a shadow, unseen, but able to push and move things much like the curious wind. There were people out drinking together in front of their homes, lit by the communal fires. It was a feasting day, she realized. What holiday, she could not tell you, as time had moved differently for her than the rest of the world. The smoke of the fires mixed with her own hazy entrance, until she appeared almost as a woman alive. As she looked around, she saw no familiar faces. Everyone was a stranger on this night, but she remembered places. There was a little garden where she and her friends picked vegetables. There was a small wall where she fell off and hurt her knee. There was the house of an old woman that used to make dulces for the children of the village. Dolores remembered the heavy wrinkles of her hands as they shaped melted sugar, fingers dulled to the heat from years of practice. Her bones were dust in the communal cemetery. Down at the end, past the stepped farming land, past where people were holding counsel by their fires and drinking rich beer, and past the little places where they might pray or where children might toss balls to one another, was the largest house in the village. The house was a sprawling thing, with walls built out as needed to accommodate the growing family. There was a large set of pens nearby with hearty cattle being watched over by a drowsy gaucho in the cold night in case one might break and escape. Her feet carried her to the house against her will. The entrance was a glowing, golden square as people were holding vigil inside and spilling outward. She slid by them all unnoticed, following the wailing sounds to where the crowd was clustered. In an ornate wooden bed at the center of a room was a withering old man on the verge of death. Her memory came in clumps like dirt that slid off a thatched roof. His nose, his chin, his eyes, even wrinkled as they were, she would recognize anywhere. Here was the son of her brother-in-law. When she had seen him alive he had only been a toddler and had a penchant for sticking rocks in his mouth. His face had aged by decades, away from the plumpness of childhood into features more pointed, and now softened in a wrinkled mass. The wind had told her not only of the creators of her current state, but also about the general vicinity of where her children and her husband were buried, their ghosts also wandering the earth from time to time, bodies strewn beneath rocks or on the banks of rivers. They had been scattered deliberately, and their deaths excused by bandits or witchcraft. Neither was true. And when Dolores looked at the dying man, his breathing shallow and low, she could only see the face of his father. They had come in the dead of night when there was no moon out and no spirits. Their faces were lit by torches, but they had gagged her, and she could not scream. They had bound her with rope that even still tied her bones together. She watched as they carted away her bound and gagged son wriggling his small body in their grasp. Her husband and daughters were nowhere to be found. She had been groggy. There had been a pain at the top of her head, and she could feel the blood pulsing against where a bruise had begun forming. They lifted her, put her on the back of an animal, she could not remember what kind, only the smell of wet fur as they took her from the village. It was a small comfort, but she did not remember how she died beneath that tree that night. Only the darkness of a moonless sky marked her new memories of it. But there was an image of her brother in law"s face, cold in the torchlight. Dolores saw it all, and then saw how he"d inherited their cattle and large home. The home’s history unfolding itself to her while she had lain, decaying in the sparse earth. Marriages, births, feasts, celebrations, and funerals. All that which had been denied her and her family, by what? Greed? Anger? Jealousy? Her brother-in-law was a dark stain floating throughout these memories. He was a shadowy figure along with his coconspirators, floating in and out of scenes before her. He had been on the deathbed decades ago, long before his own son now lay in the same place. This son whose own eyes were also beginning to glaze over. There would be no real vengeance and no justice. There never was in cases like this. The people who had massacred her and her family had gone on to live rich lives. They’d had full days filled with the mundane and the wondrous. The little victories and tragedies that make up the memories of any long-lived life. When you are dead, the seasons remain the same. The world may look different, but without a body to feel the change in temperature. Without a face, there was no way to feel the sun on it. She had been denied even the most simple pleasures and agonies. On the night of the half-moon, this was as close to life as she would get. Even now she could not savor the smell of food cooking at the village or hear the music playing above a whisper. They could never make peace, the living and the dead. Dolores moved herself out the front door again and walked down the ridged farmlands. A goat choked on something, bleating out to match the steady hum of conversation from outside. The land had changed in small ways. There were small collections of shrubs in new areas, others had been cut away. Some of the few gardening fields had gone farrow. Others had been built in their place. Dolores could see the ghost of what it had been. She could see her husband plowing with the gauchos corralling livestock. Her children sorted seeds as her oldest pulled one of the work goats. Herself sitting on the ground with a loom and her youngest at her hip. She could almost feel the wool on her fingertips as she wove the complex geometric panels. In the evenings, they would all sit around the fire. One of their hired hands would strum at a guitar while they all drank, sang, told jokes and stories. Those fires had died long ago, ashes on ashes of time. More than anything, she wanted to see them again. Perhaps she could conjure their ghosts if she knew where they lay. She walked back into the stuffy home, choking on the breaths of the gathered and candle smoke. The night was still young, the moon still angled in the sky, and her feet were more solid than before as she patted next to a person. She thought nothing of brushing past the nearest man, her half-there body had grazed him. She was only single-minded in her desire to know the final unrestful places of her family. That desire must have been stronger than she thought. The man she touched turned around and went outside. Dolores did not notice this, or any of the other people she touched as she pushed her way into her crowded former home. She thought that perhaps watching him pass would give her some sick comfort. The place began to empty, as those she touched walked out into the night. Some more people brushed past her, grazing her ghostly body, still mostly unfeeling, and then abruptly walking out. The lights had brightened as people left and their bodies stopped blocking the candles. She knelt next to him. His breaths were barely erratic whispers. To her annoyance, he looked peaceful, satisfied with whatever life he had been able to lead. All she had to do was wait and ask him what had happened to her family if he knew. She pondered if his ghost would appear right after his death. The air was still, there was no wind to ask. But Dolores knew something in the very pit of her soul: that if he was buried properly, she would have no chance to find out. He would achieve the restfulness she could not The candles burned lower. The mourners would come up to say their goodbyes, but accidentally touching Dolores as they did. Then they would turn around as if in a trance and walk out the door. Dolores was focused enough on her desire to learn of her family’s location, she did not register their disappearance. Instead she stewed in her resentfulness, cursing her nephew’s slowing breath, wishing it to cease. When the fire light was almost gone, Dolores looked around her to find that the house was empty. Her nephew still clung to life, but no one was there to set him on his way. In perhaps a small act of petulance, she unwrapped the blanket around him, leaving him to the night air. She walked outside. There had been no real guide to walking among the living. The wind had sent her on her way, telling her she was half-there, half-not. The fickle air had not told her how her touch might affect the living. Not that she was particularly remorseful as she looked out to the scene unfolding. Everyone who had been attending the vigil was spread out around the farmland, and each was digging. They had no tools, they dug with their hands. The young and old alike labored in the moonlight at a frenzied pace. They dug large pits around themselves. Even Dolores’s half-dead nose could smell the heavy scent of sweat in the dry air. They dug in desperation, looking for something. Dolores knew what they looked for. A few had found bones and pulled them out of the ground, placing them next to their pits with great care. Walking around them, careful not to disturb their work, Dolores could hear their heavy breathing and see their broken fingernails. She enjoyed the sight of their single-minded clawing at the earth. Perhaps if she touched them again, she could release them from their digging. She didn’t want to. This was her opportunity to find her lost family. Even if she came up during every half-moon, it would take her centuries to dig at this pace. And, what fine vengeance to a village that had done nothing for her death. She walked back to the village and went door to door, touching the hands of the residents with a singular purpose. One by one they rose from their beds in the darkening night and headed out to find their own plots. Their frenzied movements created a haphazard pattern of pits through what once was her hometown. It was a little after half way through the night when the first digger collapsed. Still, his hands clawed and raked at the dirt at his side. The old and frail started to go down first, pulled in by their exhaustion, but unable to extricate themselves from their mission. Some vomited and drowned in it. Their choking sounds became the macabre music to the steady digging. Some began to die in their own pits. There was a brush of cold at Dolores’s shoulder. Her nephew’s half-there, half-not spirit joined her in surveying the destruction of his lands that had been dubiously inherited. “What’s happening?” he asked. “They’re looking for my family,” said Dolores. “Oh.” There was a wheezing cough to the south of them where someone else collapsed. Her nephew was quiet, pensive. His brow brought together still trying to understand what was happening. He looked at Dolores. “You look familiar. Do I know you?” “You did. Once. When you were very little.” “Ah,” he said, bobbing his head. “Everything feels… far away. Do you know my name?” “Hector. Your name was Hector. Like your father.” She spit on the ground. “Hector. Hector,” he pulled on the sounds of his name. “What was my life like? Do you know? What was I like?” Dolores understood how a recent death could be confusing to the newly deceased. His memory would only show up in spurts. She’d remembered little until that night herself. “I don’t know what your life was like. I died when you were still a child.” “Oh,” he said. Hector was unsure of what to do with his arms. He wrapped them around his waist, then tilted them around his head. “Will someone bury me soon?” “No,” she said. Dolores left him to his wondering and walked around the growing pits. One had found a small skull and a body wrapped in a ceremonial blanket. The person kept digging next to her as she lifted the impossibly delicate skull up and ran her thumbs among the cracked cheek bones. Little fissures radiated out on the surface of the bone, and Dolores could not tell whether they had been made before or after death. There was a section at the top of the skull that was missing, but someone, who knows which of her attackers, had taken the time to give this child a burial. Her youngest daughter could rest. Dolores was relieved and upset at this. She did not want her daughter to walk in this existence like she did. But she also wanted to see her again, even if it was their spirits doomed to wander for eternity, unable to touch the seasons and the sun. She held the bones to her breast and sat as people dug their open graves. They were dying, one by one. Devoid of a cloth and proper burial, their spirits rose. These newly dead confusingly watched as their friends and family, who they could not fully remember, continued to dig themselves to exhaustion. It was just before dawn when a heady breeze blew in and tugged at Dolores. The moon is leaving; it’s time to go. The moon is leaving; it’s time to go.She nodded and picked up the bones of her daughter. She left the villagers as they were, expiring in the fading night. Each step became lighter as she trudged down to her own tree. What had been half-solid was dissolving away, starting with her feet, and heading upwards. She made it to her tree and laid out her daughter’s bones next to hers that they may sleep next to one another. She did that, just as the solidity of her arms collapsed. You owe me a secret, said the wind. You owe me a secret,There was a weak and bitter sun rising, and Dolores was not sure what to say. What could be a secret good enough for the wind? As the rays of rising light made long fingers of tree shadows, Dolores told it the only thing she knew. The wind swirled around her, apparently satisfied and left her spirit alone. At least now Dolores could stroke the head of one of her children with her ghostly fingers. There is a village where the residents lay rotting in unburied graves. On nights when there is a half moon, their spirits walk among one another, and try to recollect their lives, collecting the pieces like lovely stones that litter the ground. The wind likes to help. It collects their secrets and doles them out at intervals. Because all good secrets need to be told. Even if they are only told to the dead.