The Dead Lands
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Part 1: Golak The ringing sound of metal against metal filled the air. Now and then, the tones blended in harmony. At other times, the discord grated against the eardrums. |
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gently. “He says you have an ear for music.”
Jonah turned towards her. She was so small and slight, and the many years of unrest and flight had left their mark on her face. But along with the frailty, there was a glow about her, which always softened his heart.
“Let him be, Lea. There’s no point in putting ideas into his head,” his father muttered, while scraping the last gruel from his plate.
His mother gently raised her eyebrows and Jonah smiled at her. “Yes, I know – and I can certainly tune the pipes better than Ben. No doubt about that!”
His sister, Maddie, had also finished eating. She leaned back yawning on the scratched bench.
“I can’t be bothered to pray more than in the morning and evening. I mean, how would I have time for everything else if I was continually falling on my knees and thanking the Almighty?”
She stretched, then pulled the ribbon out of her straight hair. A single ray of sunlight cut through the overcast sky, found its way through the open shutter and lay itself momentarily around her face. The clear light made the band of freckles over her nose stand out against her fair skin. She ran her fingers vigorously through her hair, which gleamed auburn in the sunlight. She lifted up the thick mane and shook it from side to side, before again gathering it in a tight pony-tail and standing up. It had never occurred to Jonah before that she resembled the small, tough ponies that she was responsible for taking care of. Even if it wasn’t possible to ride them, they were strong, had stamina and were sure on their feet in the steep mountain terrain. They were indispensible when there were chestnuts to be harvested, stones to be moved or wood to be fetched for the rebuilding of the ruined houses in the village.
“Your face has gone all stiff! Have you seen a golak?” Maddie gave Jonah a playful shove as she went past him, drawing him out of his thoughts. He flicked teasingly back at her and said, “Yes, I thought so at first, but then I saw it was only you. Anyone can make a mistake.”
Maddie spun round on her heels and put her hands on her hips. “For goodness sake, Mum, say something to him. He’s calling me a monster.” Even if she managed to look insulted, there was laughter in her voice. Their mother just gently shook her head and turned towards the table to clear away the plates. The pan with the mealy chestnut gruel was almost empty so she poured the remains out into the pig pail.
Nothing goes to waste here, thought Jonah, as he went out into the grey, windy afternoon, where the sun had again disappeared behind the dense cloud cover. Ben was still banging away on the rusty pipes that hung on a patched-up wooden frame next to the chapel. As with the rest of the buildings, the only parts remaining of the original chapel were the solid granite walls. The holes where the windows had been were filled with boards and the roof was patched up with rusty scraps of corrugated iron.
Most of the residents of the village were on their way from their ramshackle houses to set off up the steep alleyways and flights of steps to afternoon prayer in the lofty chapel, but not Jonah, who put his pickaxe over his shoulder and called to Vrads, their guard dog. No-one went outside the village walls alone without a dog. Even though it was a long time since anyone had been attacked, there was no way of knowing when it would happen again. Jonah shuddered slightly. He recalled the last time. They were almost finished bringing in the barley, when a ragged band attacked them. Fortunately the whole village was out helping with the harvest, so it hadn’t been difficult to overcome them. Jonah hadn’t taken part in the battle. He’d been sent into the crypt under the chapel along with the women and the other children, but he’d heard that all the attackers had been killed. Afterwards the village dwellers had cleared up. The dead had had large, weeping sores and some of them had parts of their bodies missing. Everyone who had to help out with getting rid of them had been told to wear gloves and tie a piece of cloth around their face in case the dead were carrying infectious diseases.
When Jonah came out of the crypt, his father had called to him and said that, as he was now practically an adult, he must do his share of the work in dragging the emaciated and disfigured corpses over to the deep ravine to be thrown in. The black, carrion-eating birds had had some good days.
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Author's comments
History:
As the mother of a young man who has been very preoccupied with death metal music for several years, I have, along with many other parents, struggled with an aversion and an anxiety towards this dark universe and its pictorial manifestation in the form of CD covers, internet sites, bandtags, patches and T-shirts showing death, cruelty and mutilation. The music is violent and aggressive and the human voice is reduced to a grotesque, animalistic growling.
Fortunately my son has had enough trust in me to allow me into this universe and explain to me what the fascination was and where its power lay. This has been an incredibly exciting journey for me. I've realised that the heavy music and the rough lyrics conceal and release more or less the same sort of fear of the future that I recognise from my own youth, even though it’s in a different wrapping – there’s a long way from Bob Dylan to Black Dahlia Murder.
The first time I admitted this to myself, I became more open to some of the music, but at the same time, I noticed my anxiety stirring again. Maybe it had been forgotten and hidden away since I was young, but it didn’t need much oxygen in the form of lyrics and furious music before it was swaying in front of me like a cobra ready to strike. One had only to open a newspaper or turn on the TV, and there it was: the poles are melting; the rain forest is being chopped down; the deserts are spreading; billions and billions are spent trying to re-enact Big Bang, while billions of others are starving; war, famine and misery are everywhere and science is totally out of control. My oh my, there’s certainly enough there to induce black thoughts.
And there is only one way for me to go when I get like that: I have to dive into it and write my way through it.
I got the chance to work for a fortnight in a house that lay on a mountainside in the Peloponnese. There was a view from the balcony over swaying olive groves and the azure Mediterranean and while I was writing, I had the music of System Of A Down, Black Dahlia Murder, Slipknot, Nile, Finntroll etc. in my ears. It turned into a chilling, scary inner journey into anxiety about the future while I sat in the middle of this starting point for our culture.
The result was “Golak”, the first volume in the trilogy, “The Dead Lands”.
