Mountain Dirge
Sandee Bree Breathnach
The mountain is dying .
Frantic whispers are lost on wax-plugged ears . The hag shuffles through , stepping on toes and fresh cobblestone roads . All around her , villagers swarm and point towards the burning sky . The hag looks down and grimaces at the pebble rolling in her shoe .
The gods are destroying the land . Does that mean the hag is dying too ?
She blinks and her eyeball squelches like someone stepping on a toad . Fuzzy shellfish shapes dri across her eyeline and cloud her vision . She cannot see children recoil from her wretched appearance . Cannot see women scowl and men spit in her direction . But she knows it . Feels their spiteful stares rake into her glaucomic bones and arthritic eye .
The hag continues on , the clack clack clack of her staff punctuating each feeble step . Good riddance . She brought them here . It ’ s all her fault .
The whiskers on her chin wreak of whiskey , but she has not smelled its bitter succour in a lifetime . For decades , her nostrils have been consumed by smoke and decay . It clings to her fingers . Clings to her tattered cloak as it drags along the ground .
She feels the petrified tug of the wind through waning rags of hair . Hears the thunder of war a dozen miles away .
She ’ s just an old woman . She doesn ’ t know any better . Words that strike harder than a mother ’ s palm across the cheek .
The hag grips her staff until her knuckles might split through the translucent fibres of liver spot skin . Waylaid fortune guided her out of town , she thinks . But it is vitriol that pushes her forward to the black foot of the mountain and up its crooked trail .