He awoke to darkness, cold to the bone, without memory to warm him. Unable to conjure any recollection of himself, who he was or had been prior to this world of dark, uncertain where “here” even was.
All about him silence lay like a fog, heavy and thick, broken only by the sometime echo of water dripping, slowly, somewhere nearby, and the occasional furtive scratching of a small creature in the midst of its hunting.
His eyes slowly adjusted to the gloom, gradually becoming aware that he was not alone, able finally to discern the still, dark shapes standing silently beside, behind and before him, row upon row, so different in shape and trapping, yet all the same in their silence and the darkness of their eyes. They, his compadres, patiently awaiting the final summons.
The call came that night, upon the heels of a clear, full moon rising, just before midnight. Slow to begin but steady in their gathering momentum, they marched, this host, to serve the pleasure of their chief, picking up speed as they made their way along the prescribed path from their mountain cave, down toward the sea, their final destination.
They marched to the beat of drums that were felt more than heard, deep within the core, unseen and unsourced, stifling. All other sound fleeing before it. Their passing was a whisper; no twig cracked, no leaf rustled. Nor was blade of grass bent, nor imprint made upon the ground, so light was the tread of their passing.
Cresting the rise, he saw her standing before them, beautiful, a young woman in that first clearing between forest’s end and the beginnings of the coastal plains leading down to the sea. The silver light of the moon, absorbed by the host without reflection, frosted her silhouette but was incapable of masking the warmth of her glow, her life.
He did not recognize her until the host was nearly upon her. But when, suddenly, recognition finally ripped at the seams of his amnesia, the memories of her began to spill into his consciousness, filling up its void with a lifetime of memory, a lifeline of humanity.
They were to be joined in ho‘ao pa‘a, marriage, he and she, before the spear had entered his right flank, traveling upward between his lower two ribs during that battle upon the cliffs beside the sea. He remembered now her touch, the warmth of her hand in his, the pleasure of their love games, the lightness of her laughter, lifting his heart. Her memories brought others, too, upon their traces: the soft curve of his mother’s breast; his first crab, caught that sunny day, cupped in his small, sandy hands; the salty cool of the ocean washing away the sweat of a day’s toil; the pride of his spear striking closest to the target’s heart. All now washed over him like a tidal wave of love and regret, fueling him to action.
“Mine!” he shouted out, voice hoarse from disuse, according to the protocol, sounding in that night, like the piercing cry of a bird.
And the line of marchers suddenly parted about her, protected by his claim upon her.
She had spotted him now, after his cry, and was gazing steadily toward him, waiting patiently for him as he approached. He tried to shake his head, for no sound would come, to look away, so that she, too, would do the same and thus be spared his fate, as was allowed by the pact.
But she would not look away, gazing back at him on this, their journey together, through an eternity of night, side by side, hand in hand.
