9 minute read
Daybreak Song
Daybreak Song
It was a work day, and for prisoners like us that meant heaving pickaxes to crush rocks and scrape dirt under the sweltering midday sun. The agonising lift, each inch tearing muscle from bones, wish, smash. A rhythmic trance took hold of us and, forgetting the harsh hold of our leg shackles, we felt something beyond the sharp twitches of our traitorous muscles. The rattle of our chains with every swing, the clash of tool and earth with every impact, the scramble of feet with the reverberation of force through our skeletons – there began a song. I closed my eyes. A shout! A command. A disruption – like a mistimed accompaniment, except it demanded the song’s end, but, against expectation, the song grew yet louder. The previously confused scramble of feet had turned into a sure march following the crashes of our picks. A shout! Again, another disruption – yet with a lesser effect. The now overwhelming song overpowered the cries of the few guards on duty. Soon enough a whistle was blown, as perfectly off-beat as one would think possible. Other guards poured into the field where we worked like an infection entering a wound. Armed with batons, they gave us a final, full-volume warning to cease our indignation. However, a thought entered our collective minds all at once: the guards were holding batons, rarely something an unarmed prisoner would try to contend, but we were not unarmed. Our pickaxes became our keenest defence and we immediately began to put them to good use. No, not as weapons, but rather there started a decidedly irregular clattering as we all took them to our chains and shackles. A few swift crashes and clangs and we were free. Like leopards, we leapt through the field of jagged rocks and crusted mud. We were fatigued and bruised, attentive and deaf, free and fast. Almost implausibly, we made it to the woods without a graze. Not a single trip nor stall hindered our forward freedom march, but there was no time for rest. Next came the barks – a most unpleasing tone that did not complement our escape. Without a word we agreed to separate into smaller group and ran through the woods, trying desperately to dodge the dogs of our savage captors. I was in a group of just four men, each one of us prepared to shove the other out of the way if the force should accelerate him so much as an inch further from those poorly tuned animals. As it would soon turn out however, I did not need the assistance of these men to come tumbling to the ground. I tripped on a tree root and my head stole the occupation of my pickaxe as it smashed against a rock. That should have been it – the end of my escape, if not my life, but I hadn’t even reached the chorus just yet. When I woke, I found myself not in the cold cuddle of the forest floor as I had expected, but rather the warm embrace of a freshly laundered bed. I looked around the room; the glow of the setting sun had been replaced with the fervent crackling of a fire, and the trees of the forest with their deceased brethren who now composed the walls of my new abode. I noticed the proud moose-head on the wall opposing me, and it occurred to me that we undoubtedly had a similar experience, going from forest to room with little explanation for how or why. Of course, the experience had been far more beneficial in my case than in that of the moose, but I contemplated the similarity all the same. After I had indulged this thought, the next that entered my head was to check for handcuffs – or indeed leg-cuffs for that matter. Perhaps I had run further than I thought and a guard had found me with enough courtesy to help me to the nearest medical authority, but not enough to leave me there free. Or maybe there had been a bounty placed upon us escaped prisoners and the person who’s bed I now occupied was inclined to make good on its prize. Paranoia – all of it. I found my wrists as ungrappled as only my mind had been back in captivity. Likewise, my legs were now completely free of the
remnants of incarceration that had previously been clawing to my ankles. My curiosity was now suitably tantalised and I had to explore further, but, as I leant up, I found myself overcome with dizziness. What followed was a swift swish as my head reacquainted itself with the pillow it had only just bid adieu. I reached up to my head with frustration and felt a damp cloth tied to the side, and as I brought my hand back down, I realised the scarlet source of that dampness. The doorknob began to rustle – someone was fumbling with it on the other side. I clenched every pore of my body in anticipation of my saviour. The door swung open in a poorly controlled clatter and an elderly man holding a sponge and tray wafted into the room. He came to my side in silence; setting the tray down on the bedside table gently, he took a seat and began to do his work. He removed the blood-sodden cloth and as he did a sharp antiseptic stench travelled down and engulfed my nose. This odour spurred me awake and I asked him who he was. ‘Who do you think I am?’ He asked in reply, chuckling lightly. Frustrated with the energy I needed to expend with every syllable, I merely uttered the word ‘please’ with intonation. He capitulated with a mere half-answer, saying he had been sent to take care of me. He was a jolly man – thickset, with a mane of aethereal spun silver and a smooth round face. Certainly not the typical hunter you’d expect to find living in such a home, yet perhaps this was why I had not awakened in restraints once again. I felt a terse tug as the man finished securing the new cloth with a knot. Perhaps prematurely, and definitely against the advice of my caretaker, I forced myself upright and slowly turned to place my feet on the wooden floor. I then exerted my weight upon it and staggered to my feet like an unbalanced fawn on ice. My legs finally reached the quivering position of a cautious stance and I hobbled over to the fire, hoping my balance would not forsake me. The piteous sight of me – that must have been the reason for the caretaker’s kindness, for there was no one who could have sent for help like the man suggested. I listened to the crackling of the fire, its cadence reminiscent of those rhythmic chains and picks heard in the work field. There was a window I hadn’t noticed to the right of where my caretaker was sitting. It was daybreak and the rising sun seamed to excite the now clean frosted landscape into a marvellous dance of sparkling colours. As I watched, I felt an swell of emotion take hold of me. I determined it to be relief – and with it, a great knot of anguish in my throat that persisted in its escape no matter how badly I tried to swallow it back down. It felt as though it were going to strangle me – like it could not fit through its escapeway. The pressure spread upwards to my eyes and the already glistening view blurred into a sea of brilliant glitter which began to run down my cheeks. So this was the face of freedom? A deep, jovial chuckle resonated from my caregiver. ‘Wonderful, isn’t it?’ he asked. I did not reply, but simply wiped my eyes clear of crystals. I had never seen a sight so celestial. And it was then I realised the man seemed to be perfectly akin to his home – not in his ‘beauty’, if you would even call it that, but in a certain other quality I struggle to put into words. He walked over to my position by the fire and continued to express his thoughts. ‘Amazing how that tuneful song can be composed of a series of perfectly sequenced clashes of light.’ We stood there side by side for a moment before the caregiver offered me a meal. He led me down the stairs and into his modest, yet well composed dining room. No moose heads here, instead the walls were a scatter with a miscellany of butterflies. They were each painted with such a wonderfully unique pattern, and there were so many that it seemed they were trying to raise the room up to the angelic realm only they could visit. Before I had time to fully appreciate each of these angles however, my caretaker re-entered the room with a oddly extravagant tray, upon which lay our meal. We sat and enjoyed each other’s company until I could no longer withhold my ever pertinent questions. The dam broke. All at once, I
submitted a flurry of queries to him, yet he answered but one, that being why he had not taken me to the authorities. ‘I find the highest authority to be that of a man’s own conscience.’ he stated softly. ‘In my experience, that will punish and award more justly than any judge in the lands.’ I leant back in my chair, contemplating whether he could be unaware of my lack of freemanship. No, it simply was not possible. When he found me I had most assuredly been wearing those shattered shackles – they’d have given me away in an instant. I decided not to push it either way and directed my attention to my first satiating meal in years. It was not a regal meal; the ingredients were not varied, nor were the portion very generous, but to a famished man like me it could have been the nectar of the gods themselves. When we had finished our meal, I asked one last question. ‘When may I leave?’. My caretaker gave me a grin and a sideways look, replying that I was under no obligation to stay and could leave whenever I wished. ‘Oft’times in life it is not “when may we leave”, but “how long may we stay”.’ he said. I would not have to wait long before learning what he meant by this. I had originally intended to stay with the caregiver until my head had healed and I was once again fit to face the troubles of the world. However, that plan was interrupted one night near sundown when I was headed to the heavenly realm of bed and I stumbled, catching my toe on the final step to my bedroom. As I tripped, I found the world once again consumed with the darkness of my eyelids, and when I reopened them I found myself back in the field I had – for that brief period of time – escaped. The song had finished. An authority of man had quelled it. All that was left was the once more ill-coordinated sound of pickaxes against ground. Swi- smash –swi-swish sma-smash. They had stolen my freedom again. And I should have wept like a child, but, as I listened to that same clanging and clinking of tools and rock, it dawned upon me that they may – even if just for a moment – one day resynchronise, and I might once again visit that joyous song.
