Ghost

I REMEMBER there was fear.
  The little people used to come tell me their secrets, or ask for blessing. In the springtime, there were bowls of pink petals cupping fruits the size of grains, tempting and delicious. Their rooftops crowded my hillside, sandy yellow. With painted walls.
  Then there was fire. And water. And darkness.
  Now they crawled atop me. Over me and under me. Measuring the span of my fingers and chipping at soil and green that had grown across me. I could have shaken them off, torn free of the soft ground to scratch their itching from me. But I was frozen, rooted to the ground. What once was warm flesh was now cold, dead stone. Lifeless bar the spark of me inside it.
  They tickled my palm, marvelling at the scale, the way my fingers were carved in a position to swoop down on them. I would have growled. I would have clawed. Stone compelled me to silence.
  I overshadowed their encampment: a city of cloth and canvas. While the sun shone, these small creatures dug and defiled my history. They stole away anything that glittered, bundled up the brittle bones of the dead. All of it packed in straw and crude boxes to be carted out of sight while I lay prone and helpless. Thieves.
  At night my spirit slid free like a shadow. I could lay and wrap unseen arms around their entire encampment while they slipped through my body like ghosts. I was a breath lost on the night breeze. A gigantic phantom who peered curiously into their metal cups and crude machines, and scowled at the foul scars they made.
  Every night I hunted for a way in. A way out. My form arched above this incorporeal world, fingertips sweeping through it like silk in the dark. My thoughts slipping into canvas sheets to find minds filled with gold, greed and wealth. Closed like a box with a lock.
  Sometimes, my lips hovered over the tent of one or another, invisible to the flickering lamp of captured fire.. listening to a mind. Scenting the shape of it, before moving on. Every night the same.
  Until I found one who was different. Still ignorant and selfish, yes, but also.. curious. With a longing for more. Something that intrigued me. And a long while I lay unseen, weightless over the camp, listening to his soft breathing while he slept. Drinking the faint sound of his dreams, as they grew stronger night by night.
  I spent the darkness chipping at his mind while he spend his days cutting unto my body, until I found a chink, and my thoughts poured into his.
  For the first time in an age I felt life. By proxy, maybe, but still. I… we… took a breath and air poured into our lungs. Filtered out and rushed through our warm body through a million arteries. Fibres on our fingers, warm air. We clenched. We knew the names for those things now. Cars. Those rugged black machines with arched wheels. Our muscles moved into a half smile of delight while I delved too deep. Too eager…
  The shadow of dreams faded. His eyes opened. I was expelled. Thrust out into the corporeal as doors shut behind his eyes.
  Dawn, and they were already carving at my body. I raged down at them, bringing toes down over men with picks and axes, howling impotence when they emerged unscathed. My fists pounded the earth, and moved no dust. Minute spectres scurried around my petrified body, carving closer and closer to stone flesh, peeling away the remains of crumpled houses that had attached themselves with years to me. I screamed, without voice, for them to get back. I kicked. I tore. I did nothing.
  Eventually I fell silent. I watched in aloof defiance as they roved through me. Hundreds of flitting ants who ignored my towering presence in favour of hacking at my hillside. My massive fingers sank down, descending with vengeance to snub some ignorant victim from existence. And I bared my teeth when I felt nothing, and the ants carried on unperturbed.
  When darkness came once more, the air should have cooled, but that was denied to me too. No heat of sun. No breeze. No surface. If I closed my eyes I had no point of reference. I could have been existing in a void. No senses to anchor me. Except one.
  Their voices and dreams were a soft murmur, the only tie keeping me from oblivion. So I broke with my hillside, and descended once more.
  I hunted for my man again. The adventurous one. Scenting his dreams and following them to their source. My lips parted. He never knew my tongue passed through his tent as I drew it across the earth, eager to taste some hint of the life there. I would have been grateful even for dirt.
  I shared life awhile again in an alien body. The dreams sharper: A city lost in mist and poison. London. Great machines that snaked over the land, belching steam into the air. Steam Engines. Huge buildings that did the same. Factories. Roads. Churches. Bridges…
  His thoughts merged with mine. Unwittingly sharing a glimpse of memories and knowledge. And so I shared back.
  I showed him the sandy walls and red pillars I once knew. The scrubby trees. The dark haired people who played on the hillsides. The soft metals they gifted to gilt my wrists in colour and jewels. The salt breeze in my hair as I smirked down at them or lifted them to converse. I showed him the warriors laid low by my mighty hand. Men on eyed ships I reduced to floating splinters. Arrows that wedged my skin and stung.
  I showed him the day the ground burst and the sky burned. And the sea rose in fury to claim me.. and I rose against it, arching to protect my own. My downfall, the sea dousing my wrath, and my people perishing beneath me. Screaming as they were broken and I.. we.. I.. seized to..
  He woke. And I was nothing again.
  I grieved the loss of my life and my people. Every angle I once knew had been ground down by the uncaring file of the elements. I wanted nothing more but to cast aside rage and walk. Rise over the trees and the cratered husks of homes and step towards the sea.
  It used to comfort me. Dolphins would come nuzzle my sides while I waded the depths and enjoyed the lightness and coolness of water. I smiled at the memory of fishing vessels playfully tugged beneath. Soaking their small helmsman and drawing out more than a choice handful of curses. Occasionally I'd drown them in overzealous play. The will of the gods, they said. And so it was.
  Now the sea lurked, grey and imposing, blemished with the ugly angular ships of these invaders. Another intrusion. My transparent fingers curled to fists as I longed to strike the waves and break… smash… every last one.
  I knew I couldn't. I tried once, but beyond the sound of voices I became lost. My form and mind froze like the cold rock of my body. Darkness thicker than that which first claimed me. Drowning in air.
  I had fled back. My feet carving invisible chaos through their camp towards my anchor: my blackened body atop the hillside haunted by flitting specks. Cursed to linger about my tomb.
  My only redemption was him. His mind glowed. Drawing me in to the drug of life. Yet again I lay in his body and invaded his dreams. Twisting them into something strange and fantastic. I towered over his stories. Learning, tasting. Enraptured by this world beyond mine.
  Fabric and wood machines carried men through the air like the most clumsy of birds. Planes. I couldn't help it. I reached across the dream sky and closed my fingers around one, feeling the vibration, twisting it until it broke. I wanted to feel those cities too. And the ships with their steam and masts. The -
  "Who are you?"
  The soft words cut through all else. The man standing quiet amongst it all, asking a question I couldn't understand.
  The dream snapped. He was a ghost again.
  I turned my back on them. Sat, chained to my bones while they split my flesh and mined the gifted jewellery. Earnt in blood and stolen by filthy fingers. I hungered for the horizon I couldn't reach. Thunderstorms toiling angrily across it, mirroring my feelings.
  For three nights I ignored him. Even when I felt those insolent thoughts turning my way. Probing perhaps for more memories to steal from me.
  Sometimes I fancied I caught one speck pause in their butchering of my body. I wondered if it were him. If he knew how much he hurt me.
  A cold front swept slowly across the island, washing through me. I lifted my head instinctively. Waiting for the lilting breeze to shift my hair, waiting for the splash of rain. I knew it wouldn't come.
  But he did.
  A golden star wound it's way from the camp, alone in the darkness, seeking. He scrabbled across the path twisted by age and turmoil, crawling like an insect along the curve of my waist and into the crux of my mighty curved limb. And up to where I gazed blindly out over their deeds.
  My face was hollowed by the sea winds. The salt had crept into every cavity and smoothed my expression. Carving it from something wild and cruel and loyal and free and loving.. into something sad and almost serene.
  He called me in that ugly language of his. I didn't answer, looking coldly down through the rough stone eyes to see the living man gazing up at me. He spoke again. Softer this time. There was fear in his voice. I realised he was crying. And suddenly I knew what he was going to do.
  I cried out in protest as he touched me, and finally he saw the glimmer of my form… like dust motes dancing on a shaft of sunlight. Connecting us. The living, the dead. The thief and the guardian. Stone in between. He offered his life for mine…
  And fell like a discarded robe, folding atop himself to a crumpled heap while the outcrop above flushed from dark stone.. to flesh. Course folds of rock became waves of hair, unleashed to furl around warm shoulders. Stone cracked and earth tumbled as I felt myself fill with warmth once more.
  MY fingers curled. And cleaved through the earth as they should. MY back arched, stripping away from the ancient house that had propped me up, sending it tumbling down the hillside. MY lips curled into a smile. Hungry, furious.
  Lost.
  My eyes downcast, seeking that huddled vassal.
  He shivered as the darkness crept up to claim it's price. My lips above, framing his last moments as they bled away. His life was stolen. As he stole from me. As all the lights dotting the hillside stole from me. Somewhere, far down on the hillside, drunken laughter echoed up.
  My fingers curled around his body. I could feel that delicate, familiar weight brought up to an unfamiliar wall. My eyes boring into his, drawing him to lips that parted as a gateway to the abyss, and delivered a kiss. Warm. Living. Pliant flesh against him.
  I cradled him gently as his body blackened. Whispered soft words that formed a mist in the air. He couldn't understand, but I hoped my tone would offer him some comfort on his last journey. A fresh ghost to haunt the Land of the Dead.
  I traced the hard, frozen ridges of him. Folded, forever more in a foetal position, stone atop the hillside.
  I felt a pang of grief. Of fury. As below, thieves and invaders lifted their voices in broken song.
  The Land of the Living awaited.