A Quiet Place to Read

For days, the contents of the scroll eluded Lee.

There was no place for him to read the paper in his home, constantly monitored by his mother in the morning and evening, then forced to share a room with his sister, who reported all his behaviours and pathetic mistakes back to his mother, only for her to nag at him in the morning once more.

The constant plaguing questions of," what will happen if the rest of the village finds out about your actions? How am I supposed to explain how my son can't even lay out the sheets of his bed, every night? The people out there will blame me for being a bad mother, who can't teach her son the most basic of tasks? Do you want me to suffer? All I want is for you to be respected, why can't you do this for me? Are you doing this on purpose for revenge?"

Lee was thankful to leave the house every morning, escaping his mother, until he realised the day that he would still be suffering, out in the open fields, as soon as he left the treeline.

The hot sun would be beating down on him, and he would be suffering under its scorching rays until he retreated into the comfort of his dreams and hallucinations.

The birds which shot down from the sky and pecked his back were bearable, but the chattering of all the other men around him seemed to sap whatever joy and vitality he had felt, as soon as he was out of his mother's sight.

They'd compete by way of arm wrestling and drinking contests, before leering, as if they were private, at Lee's sister, and all the other young women like her, as if he wasn't within earshot and regularly glaring at them.

The gossiping was still the worst. It was as if every criticism from his mother was amplified by at least ten times, before being launched out of the mouths of every man over the age of thirty.

Unfortunately, most of the men fit the description.

They give out pig like laughter, and slap their alcohol filled bellies, and creaking knees, as if they weren't prematurely decaying.

Lee found it easier to retreat back onto the farm, earlier than the others, and pick the corner, most furthest from the lunch picnic set up, after gulping down his lukewarm congee as if it were cool, refreshing water, his throat gagging as soon as he was far enough away to curl up on the ground without losing his dignity.

Sulking alone at the edge of the rice field, close to the road that led to the next village, where his sister's clothes had been commissioned, Lee sometimes felt as if his own village, where he hailed from, did not matter. That he could just, simply, walk away from all of this, his life, and cross the mountains, peaking over the edge of the horizon, to traverse the mythical deserts and forests on the other side.

His arm thrust his rake down into the soil, as he ploughed the soil, as images of cool oasis villages filled his mind.

He imagined a small, prosperous town on the edge of the water, directly overlooking the desert, looming high above it. A small, quaint place with a fabulously rich population, the people spending their days lounging at the water's edge, their drinking cups made from the shells of hard fruits, filled with tantalising stories that would be told by eager, dancing elders over dancing fires.

There would be stories about how, on some special nights, dotted around the year to mark the dates of festivals, the sand of the desert would contribute to the joy, by singing its own ceremonial songs. The singing would mark the beginning of the ghost month, heralding the arrival of all those lost to the families of the oasis, and the desert, once more, by the power of its song, would call all the spirits back, once more, to be taken under the sand, at the end.

Lee took his shovel, and dragged it backwards, carving through the earth, as he continued to dream.

He saw, behind his eyelids, spirits who lived in the desert, and would speak to any lost travellers, sometimes guiding them on their way, and other times, riddling them so confused, that they would be forever lost to wander the hills of sand, until they died.

A particularly hard rock was hit by Lee, and he stumbled over, the force of his arms, toppling him onto his back. He sent a quick prayer of thanks to the Gods for not hitting his head on anything, as he lay in the mud, before heaving himself back into standing, brushing off all the dirt he could, with his lanky arms, struggling to reach every where on his back.

He was thankful for the darker brown clothing he had, hiding the worst of the stains, but he knew that the second he walked into his house, he would once more be nagged over his messes, with all prior occasions of how he tracked mud into the living room, how he could never wash his own clothes properly, and his ever present clumsiness, thrown back into his face, again.

His could only hope that his sister wasn't there to watch over him, and making comments on how he wasn't going through the motions correctly, without emotion at the side, before reporting back to his mother.

He knew that it wasn't her fault.

He remembered all the quiet sniffling that echoed through the night, only a couple of years ago, how she froze up whenever the teacher dismissed the class at school at the end of the day, how she eagerly eyed the front door, non-stop, until she got engaged.

He was relieved when her hands stopped shaking, but he couldn't ever stare at her fiancé without pain.

Why him?

Why did she pick the prettiest man in the village to get married to?

Tears pricked his eyes as he thought of that man, and he could feel his heart chip a little more.

There would nothing between them anymore.

They would no longer be friends.... friends.

Lee wondered, staring back out towards the vast expanse of the road, whether sand dunes had legs, underneath their giant hilly bodies.

He had heard the odd tale of some of the older men, recounting the journeys of their grandfathers, back before the village had properly formed, back when it was simply a small collection of shacks, inhabited by hungry entrepreneurs who had spotted some good fields.

Whispers of how the sand dunes moved at night, and sometimes, if especially brazen, during the day, with new sand dunes being born with no real pattern, and old sand dunes dying without even a warning.

The faint whispers of a jeering crowd echoed through Lee's ears, and the few words he managed to pick out bounced around his skull.

He immediately threw himself back into ploughing the fields, dragging his shovel to him, until he hit the same stone, that made him fall before.

He got down on his knees, and began digging around the rock, with his bare hands, and managed to scrape it loose.

It was a large and rounded rock, with no jagged edges.

It was strange.

The only types of stones which existed in that shape were found at the river, smoothed over by the gushing, white rapids.

Lee was curious, and wanted to take it home, to investigate it further.

His heart sank when he saw the shadows of a man looming above him.

He looked up and saw that it was only one of the other farmers, looking tired with crinkling skin around his kind eyes.

"You need help with that, young man?" he called out, leaning down and putting his hands on his knees.

The screams of past voices of Lee's mother as she yelled at him for being weak, unable to chop enough firewood, his teenage, wobbling arms too weak to carry the axe properly.

Lee looked down, into the grooves of the dirt, before picking the rock up by himself, holding it up to his chest, his chest compressed, his breathing forced into short, sharp bursts. He mumbled out a thanks, before carrying out the rock towards the path.

It suddenly struck him, as he dropped the rock down, that to read the scroll, he could just sneak outside and read the scroll in the woods. If he was going to use the moon to read the scroll, he would be too close to the village and would be caught.

The village rules never did anything for him, pressing down on him, he was happy to start a little fire in the woods, and read the scroll there.

He could finally satisfy the curiosity that had been plaguing him for weeks.

The scroll that had been hidden at the bottom of his side of the clothing chest, was finally going to have its secrets revealed.