Men died as they built it. Stone rose atop the mountains and roads carved easy passage through the mountains. He was their guide, approached at the beginning. Furs hung about his lean frame when they found him at the trading post. He was known to sleep upon the wide branches of an ancient tree that stood proud beside a younger waterfall. The men with their money came and propositioned him a fine deal. “Share it with the world!” they said, “give your children such beauty as has never before been seen!”
He was young. The men convinced him. He led them through the mountains, introduced them to the natives, and wrote their maps. The men poured a fortune on materials and left little to the workers. Yes, men died building these stone roads. As the people poured in and settled the hills, they burned the villages of natives, cleared sections of wild trees, all of them burning and hacking away to civilize the land.
It had been many years. The guide found himself childless and friendless, for the natives he had known were only whispers now. His ancient tree—the only home he had ever known—he found butchered for spectacle and sport, its great rings on display at the local market.
His was a somber look, and he had the tendency to cause mischief, which was the only time that he smiled. He cared nothing for the art of the cliffs and the waves around him. He was free from that search of reason. Instead, he created his own. His heavy feet would break the beach where it was smoothest, his tongue flailing with a great grin at the disturbed peace he left behind. He chased the birds and played in the mud, laughing as loud as ever. But the joke was on him, for he was just another part of the masterpiece he thought he was destroying.
The little girl with green eyes wandered about the forests often. Her mother scolded her and feared madness. Her mother scolder her father as well.
“It’s your stories you’re always going on about!” She yelled, “You mislead her! The forest is no place for a little girl!”
But the little girl’s father kept telling her stories. He would tell stories of wisps and spirits that filled the forests when the mists came about. He told of a great bear and cunning wolves. His eyes would alight as he spoke and even he would sometimes get lost in the firelight beside her bed.
“There is magic there,” he would say, and leave her to dream.
The day came when the little girl stumbled upon the den of the great bear in her father’s stories. The bear’s roar threw her hair off her shoulders. He flashed his jaws and stood as tall as three men.
The little girl’s green eyes grew larger than ever before. She felt the fear coursing through her legs, telling her bare feet to run, but she did not. Something inside of her required that she stay.
The bear caught sight of her eyes and closed his great jaw. He fell back to four legs. His giant nose snorted and exhaled. He smelled the little girl that would not run.
Her hand reached out for him, and he did not bite it. The two looked into each other’s eyes. The bear was transfixed in her emeralds and she in turn grew lost in the giant red eye of her father’s stories.
She never returned home. Stories were told that she became a wild wisp, one that ran along the streams and the falls deep in the forest. Her mother believed her dead.
There was no regard in him for the wooden signs and the trails they led to. He and his brother had carved their own, ones that he would need now.
He pulled on the straps about his shoulders and looked up through the canopy at the light dancing on the leaves. He dug his right boot at the dirt and he breathed deep. His brother spoke first.
“I won’t let them say it.”
“Let them say what they will.”
Only he smiled. His brother’s jaw clenched and his eyes were hard.
“I’ll be long gone,” he said, but his smile could not hold.
The two stood for some time, listening to the birds.
“Little brother,” he said. “I hear they have dogs.”
His brother’s eyes fell to the dirt, “I hear that too.”
“Bad luck that.”
“Yeh.”
“They have mastered the hunting of men.”
His brother only nodded.
“Well,” He started to go, stepping up the mountain, but halted. He thought a moment, then spoke over his shoulder, his head cocked to the right:
“Little brother—”
“Yeah?”
“—None of that box in black shit when you see me next. Give me whiskey and burn me bright ‘top Rooster Rock.”
His brother nodded.
He parted the ferns and hiked forward without looking back. The breeze made him feel wanted. The forest beckoned him further. The birds chirped loud and the chipmunks scurried above him. All the while, his little brother watched him depart on his last hike in the hills that he loved.