He Is Called Man
Fiction
The person standing below will never have a name, but he will be called Man.
The sky opens wide above Man, the mist frozen to fractals of ice that burn against his face as the wind twirls around. It is intended to be a greeting, but Man cannot understand it as such. He wraps a scarf around his chin and squints his eyes against the chill instead.
The mountain Man stands upon towers over him, dwarfs him. Its bones are planted deep in the earth, and all the storms it weathered has given it wisdom unparalleled. Man does not know this. Man sees an obstacle in his way, a barrier. He would rather tear it down than climb and learn its secrets.
There is no life this high on the mountain. Nothing but Man and those who look upon him.
A lone raven cries a greeting as it rides the forlorn wind, but Man does not respond. He does not know he should. Instead, he stares up the high expanse of the mountain, looks into its craggy smile, and turns around. He will go back down. He does not know that the mountain will miss him.
When he gets lower on the mountain, trees and shrubbery begin to show themselves. They have been lonely, but they straighten and rustle their branches in greeting at the sign of a stranger. He ignores this and begins tearing at one of them for kindling. He does not hear its agony, but the trees do. They reach wooden fingers out towards him, but Man shakes the clinging burrs off and begins to dig for flint.
The sun drops behind a cloud. Man stares resentfully up at it, for he does not want nighttime to fall yet. He does not want to greet the stars.
Man tears up hundred-year-old moss clinging to the roots of the trees to pad the hard earth beneath him. The coyote far on the ridge will judge him, yellow eyes glinting in the setting sun. It will not understand why Man cannot sleep on the ground like it does.
Later that night, the coyote will try to greet him. Man will chase him off with sticks and shouts. The trees will shudder. Man will not know.
Man burns the wood he has collected, and the smoke chokes the clouds and the birds up above. He eats jerky from a deer he had hunted, butchered, and the wind recoils from him, blows the smoke from his cursed fire in his face. He moves to a new side of his camp and does not hear its rage.
Man sleeps well that night. The forest and the mountain do not.
In the morning, the bluebirds and the ravens call greetings to each other and to Man. The birds respond. Man does not. He glares at the sky for being woken early, with the wind and the birds, and begins to pack his belongings. He will leave his ruined fire where it lies, and it will remain there for years after. The trees will hate it.
In the morning, Man will hack his way through the thicket, trying to reach the river. The critters will cry out and the wind will howl, screaming with rage, please to stop, stop, leave it alone. Man will not hear. He must reach the river, after all.
Soon, Man has carved a path through the heart of the forest. The earth bleeds, but Man has indeed reached the river.
The water rushes over the rocks, weathered by time and memories. The river remembers, has generations of a thousand creatures engraved in its path. It longs to tell its stories, and it whispers a greeting to Man when he steps on its banks. He does not hear. It rushes slow enough for him to cross, so he wades through and curses the moisture clinging to his clothing.
There is a clearing near this river, and the tall grass waves at Man as he sits by the stream. The water reaches up to tickle him, but he growls and moves farther away. The river does not try to play anymore.
Man stays in this clearing for three days, and the river desperately wants him to go. He builds fires, tears out the cheerful stalks of grass, and hacks at the underbrush and the saplings. They only wanted to say hello. Man did not hear them. Or maybe he did not want to listen.
Man leaves in the morning of the third day when the ravens begin to sing. He does not clean up his campsite, and the forest hates him for that. The river sings a happy song when Man hacks his way out of the forest, and the mountain settles.
The grass begins to regrow. The trees begin to heal. The wind twirls and scoops up fallen petals, dropping them in the river.
Man returns, and he comes with more.
Dozens of them flood this river’s clearing, trample the swaying grasses down flat into the mud. Their waste spills into the river, clogs its path, and they cut down trees and build crude structures. The river and the mountain groan in agony as their fires clog the skies.
Man does not hear. Neither do the rest of them.
Man does not leave. They dam up the river, and the lifeblood of the valley spills over Man’s crops. He leads them, and the mountain sees this, sees the forest’s suffering, and cries.
“You are not like the rest of them,” the mountain whispers to Man. “The birds and the wolves live with me and the river and the wind. You do not. Why must you change us, too?”
Man does not hear. Man cannot know.
The fires burn and choke the clouds. The mountain watches, rages. His fury builds and builds until the river has turned black with filth and the wind has ceased to howl around the cliffs. The memories, the wisdom, are gone. The mountain is alone again. He does not miss Man.
Man returns to the summit, where the mountain first met him. The wind hisses a curse, a betrayal, and slams into Man. Man stumbles, but does not fall.
The mountain spits fire on him instead. It buries the forest, the river, in molten lava and choking ash, and the wind will be laden with soot for years. The interlopers will be purged from the mountain, but so will everything else. And maybe finally, finally, it will be clean. It will solve nothing, but Man does not know. Man will not know anything anymore.
The person who stood below the mountain never had a name, but the mountain called him Man. The mountain whispers a final word to the wind, the stars, that Man does not hear.
