Sudden Traveler by Sarah Hall

Author:Sarah Hall
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780062959249
Publisher: HarperCollins

Who Pays?

Beyond the village, to the east, there is forest. It is very old. No one remembers its name. It has belonged to several countries, empires, and tribes, and it has remained unbelonging, its own nation. Inside are the first trees of the world, whose leaves have learned broadness to collect light. The forest can be crossed in a day on foot, half a day with a steady horse or a donkey cart, faster if there are wolves. Whenever there are wars along the border, more wolves come.

In the middle of the forest, where green is richest, lies a sacred well. It sits like a funnel in the floor, sloping sides, moss-lined, with a small stepped wall on which it is possible to sit and rest and peer down the hole, where space becomes dark sound. There is no rope, no bucket with which to draw and drink. The Well of Simeon. Or the Well of Mevlâna. The oldest villagers just call it the Well of Souls. They do not come here. Whoever built it, whoever raised the spring, danced, performed reversals or miracles, no one is sure. The walls inside are one hand-width wider than the tallest man’s arm-span. Its stones are the blue of other regions, carved and carried in. Blue as buried bone. Or sea-dreamed. Or star-fallen. And its water—so clear, so cold. It might bleed from the heart of the earth.

In the spring and in the autumn, the young men of the village come. Ahmet, Selim, Sait, Nazım, Adnan, maybe with a younger eager brother, or a visiting cousin. They come with beer and salad, instruments, a bleating lamb, home-made rakı. As many as can fit in the cart, riding backward, legs dangling. The trumpet-player, Fikret, blue-eyed and endlessly teased, plays tunes as they ride. These are good friends, childhood companions. The well celebration is an old tradition, told by grandfathers and grandmothers, forgotten for a generation but, now, lived again.

Sometimes, the young women of the village come for the first part of the evening, on borrowed horses, or on foot, single-file, taking turns to trample the grass. Eyes held for long moments, the exchange of scarves, sweet tarts and sips of beer, the freedom of twilight. This is a country between dictators, a country of momentary festivity and hope. There might be dancing. Someone might whisper a beautiful line in an ear: The wound is the place where the light enters. Or sweet, promissory names. Balım, sevgilim. All this before the tyranny of in-laws, and children, and bedroom rituals. Before the rakı the women ride home again, in darkness, carrying burning torches, scorching the low trees, leaving the young men to their longing, and their headaches.

What the women do when they come to the well alone, at other times of the year, nobody really knows. Talk of witches, body-splitters, child-removers, though their mothers walked them innocently through the woods as infants, gathering hazelnuts. On the last day of her first blood it’s said a girl can smell truffle deep in the soil, blind, an intuitor of earth.

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