“Did you hear that? That lilting laughter on the wind? Light and airy. Filled with secret promises to be shared. You really didn’t hear that?”
“No. No. It wasn’t children. There are no children out here on the edge of everything. There is just the course sand and the gray ash from the Red Mountain. Just the waiting before I go to the Mountain to die.”
“No. No. I didn’t lose any children. That’s not why I keep… No it was her. Her whispers haunt my dreams. Memories of her skin. Her touch.”
“Ha! Wife? No. She was… She was something else. Something marvelous and terrible. Thinking of her fills me with hatred and love. It is hard to explain, but she is why I sit here having my last drink before I go out into the desert.”
“Oh yes, I hate her. Hate her for what she did to me. What she made me do. There is blood on my hands. Their blood and it is her fault. Her fault that they are dead. Her fault I did what I did.”
“No I won’t tell you more. Goliat curse you, this is my story, not yours. I choose to keep it. I choose. Not you. Not her. My choice. It was her fault, but the story is mine.”
“Wait, did you feel that? Like a soft warm breeze on the back of my neck. You didn’t feel that? No. I have to go. I have to go now. If she is here she won’t let me go. Won’t let me make it right. I have to go.”
~ From Taubha’s Lesser Book of Names
