Hello and Goodbye

A little something I whipped up the other day. I might continue with it until I grow bored.

I remember the day my father sent for me. I would like to think of it as my first clear memory, but that’s not really the truth. However often I think back upon it, focusing and sharpening and perhaps adding with things that came after, it remains the memory of a child: a fog of confusion and raw feeling, broken by strange moments of clarity.

It was late spring, and I was with my cousins, up in the green hills that overlooked our village. The streams were ice cold, fed from melting snow higher up in the mountains. We didn’t dare to stay in them long, but splashed in and out, revelling in the contrast between the freezing water and the still warm air. We ran to keep our blood warm as our clothes dried out, screaming with delight as we flew heedlessly into the woods, away from the edge of the cliff where the stream fell over into the seaside valley.

There was nothing spectacular about that morning, but I remember it all the same. I remember every footfall, every time the cold slowly sank through my boots and into my skin, every flourishing twig that whipped against my thighs as I ran. My memory has held onto that last hour, lengthened it as I might have if I had known what would come after. Every moment we stayed up in those hills, ran through the ice-cold stream or went shrieking into the well-loved forests beyond was a moment left in the southlands, and I held onto every one.

In the morning, a glimpse of the horizon revealed white sails. By noon, there was a ship filling our harbour, too large to have come from anywhere but the north.

Ever since my mother’s death, we had known that my father might come for me. We might have known from my birth and it would not have made it easier. My cousins cried. My aunt kissed me and said it wasn’t right, that seven was too young to be taken from my homeland and from my family. They made me promise not to forget the land of my birth.

They need not have worried. I would not forget the southlands. We may forget a place we have been, but never a place that has been us. I could not have forgotten the land whose cold rivers ran in my blood and whose stones and iron formed my bones.

No, I would not forget them. But neither would I weep in remembrance, after all was said and done. The southlands were my heart and body, but to the north lie my heart and soul, for I am of it as well. I was not leaving all that I was behind me. So I cried, too, when they told me I was going away, but the tears lasted only as long as the soil beneath my feet. Out on the waves, the shore vanished quickly behind us. I pointed myself with the ship, and it went where the winds took it. To the North.

It was not a long voyage, and though I had little companionship, I was not lonely. My heart was filled enough with coming and going, with hello and goodbye. It was long enough ago that in my mind it has become only one long, sunny day. The sailors found me a wild child, and were half frightened. Northern children, I would learn, restrain their most primal curiosity from an early age. The crew, the few passengers, and even the merchant my father had asked to bring me to him all let me mind myself. I ran and I climbed, heedless of splinters or falls, though I had many of each, loving the sea spray even in the way it stung my eyes and skinned knees. At midday I would sometimes fall asleep on the salt soaked, sunny deck, almost cradled by the waves crashing beneath me.

The sun was hotter every day that we travelled. We made good time, and I remember wondering, vaguely, where the south turned into the north. I expected something to happen when it did. A lightening bolt, a clap of thunder signalling our passage. A change in the colour of the sea and sky. At the very least, some magical gate dividing the one from another. But there was no clear line. The two blended together, like hello and goodbye, like the coming and going. It’s a strange feeling, one I’ve come to know well. In my memory, it still tastes like salt and smells like sea air.

We came ashore at last, and I got my first view of a city. It sat under a bright, hot sun, all smooth stone and glittering marble. I had never seen such a busy place. There were as many people in that harbour as there were in my entire village. The people were different: their features were more delicate, and some of them had hair like fire or spun gold.

A thousand different smells came to my nose. Rising even above the salt of the sea was the sweat of multitudes, for here were a thousand men and beasts tucked into a small pocket of earth. The buildings rose to contain them all. The noise was unbearable, a constant background of chatter and the clip-clop of hooves on cobblestones. Still, above the odours were fruit and bread and perfumes, and above the racket was a music I had never heard before. Silence and stillness for art and civilization.

I was enthralled by the change, but not quite overwhelmed by it. God granted me that I was too young to believe anything impossible, and thus accepted the new world with wondering eyes but an open mind. So great was my desire to take it all in that I wonder how I made it the short walk from the ship to my father’s house, stumbling on sea legs and staring at the sky, at rows of windows reaching beyond my view, at laundry lines and people shouting in a language that sounded like dripping honey.

All this, and then quiet. It was two months before I came outside again.