Ree-Imagined Worlds

Of all the villages scattered throughout the undulating mountains and valleys, it was the tiniest and the furthest away.

I had to squint through the hazy afternoon light to even see it. Even with the help of my travelling companion’s outstretched arm.

It was perched on a cliff edge – a cluster of houses and buildings huddled delicately together as though carved out of a mound of sugar. It was flanked on either side by tall, protective cliffs which folded themselves into sunglare, sky, haze and mists. So it was said, you could rarely see where the cliffs ended and the mists began.

The village seemed to reflect the light somehow, so that it looked translucent and blended into the haze.

A jumble of words fought in my mind to be the most accurate descriptor. I’d heard from other travellers through these endless maze of mountains and valleys that your first reaction would determine if you ever got to visit it.

I hesitated then said ‘shy’ out loud through dry lips.

It wasn’t accurate though, not by itself. ‘Secretive’ or ‘enchanted’ felt closer, I thought as I watched the haze thicken into mist thicken above the rooftops. The sky itself descended to visit that village and share its secrets.

“When I first saw it as a child, I thought ‘lonely’,” my travelling companion laughed and skilfully guided me to reality. “It’s time. Come. Finish your drink. We have a long way to walk if we want reach a village shelter before dark.”

I nodded and took another deep pull of water from my canteen. A sliver of mountain air tickled my nose with teasing currents of wild lavender.

I decided I really wanted to visit the village.

My travelling companion, who had been born in these mountains and who earned her living guiding endless pockets travellers in and around the mazes of rock and cliff and mountains, had never been there.

“I have no need,” she laughed frankly. “People are either fascinated by it or they are not. I am not. Come, it’s time to walk.”

Village by village, we inched our way closer to my village of sugar and sky.

The closer we got, the more unhappy my travelling companion became. Until one early afternoon, when we reached the base of yet another hill. Against her usual practice, she insisted we make camp early instead of getting a head start into the ascent.

That night, we took care of our walking wounds, and prepared our food. The air was sombre and stilted and my heart swung between excitement that my village was close and lowness to mirror my travel guide’s spirits. After we had eaten, we had some desultory attempts at conversation. Finally, when the campfire had quietened, she kept her fixed on the fire circle and shook her head. “I’ve been trying, but I can’t do it. I will return your funds. I can’t take you any further.”

Her words, for whatever reason, didn’t come as a surprise to me. But my heart dropped the same. Whatever was in that village called to me and pushed her away at the same time.

To my own surprise, I blurted out the words, “will you marry me?”

And she looked at me sharply with a sudden flood in her eyes.

My heart constricted again. I felt my own eyes fill up as my throat swelled.

She never cried, this guide of mine, not even when a hidden thorn bush slashed unexpectedly at her forearms, sending her into a raging fever. Nor when the unevenness of thousands of mountain steps burned our legs to water and the altitudes turned our stomachs inside out. No, her heart always embraced the mountains and trees and rivers and she was always light. Except now.

“I cannot,” she finally whispered. “You will always be caught between two opposites. The sun or the moon. I cannot do that to you.”

“It is no choice,” I moved over to her and held her hands tight. “You are my sun and my moon.”

The pull of the Village of Sugar and Sky tore at my heart. I rashly promised it I would return one day.

A traitorous kind of promise shovelled aside in the excitement and joy of our hugs.

The Village of Sugar and Sky was a sometimes shadow over us, and we did our best to treat it like a light-hearted wraith. We mostly succeeded.

But we had to move well away from all the mountains to make our life together work.

We tried the flatlands first, but their absence of mountains only made us long for them more acutely. Then we discovered the sea, of shimmering surfaces, of salt and silk and moods of madness and mystery and magic, of all the different ways in which the earth and the sea met each other, and we found a place where we could be.

Over time, our three children were sea babies and grew up to become sea adventurers. They couldn’t understand and though we tried, we couldn’t find the words to explain.

One day, I returned to our home to find our old mountain travel packs pulled out of the cellar, aired and packed.

I looked intently at my beloved guide and wife of so many decades. Her hair had long been white – mine had long left me – but we had known her health had been creeping away.

“It’s time,” she said, using her long-ago words announcing the start of a mountain trek, and following it up with her beautiful joyful laugh.

So we finally returned home to the mountains.

Our homecoming was sweet, bittersweet and both sad and not sad.

Long after I released her spirit to the mountains, I waited.

Holding off on any continuing journey for reasons I didn’t understand.

Until one night when her voice floated into my dreams, “it’s time, sweetheart,” and my eyes opened to the darkness still hearing her beloved laugh.

My mountain bag was packed. It had been for months.

That night, before dawn, I hefted it onto my shoulders and began my final journey. To the Village of Sugar and Sky.

The end.

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Backstory: Well, this story went in a different direction to what I was expecting! It was originally going to be a short, sweet piece about the narrator reaching the village. Instead, the village became a backdrop and the narrator had to go fall in love with the guide and then take me all the way through to their eventual parting. Did I cry? You betcha!

As for the illustration which inspired this story, it started life with me attempting to draw a flower. (Yes, that right, stay with me here.) LittleOne then added flourishes around my petal ‘bumps’, making the overall effect look strikingly like a little village with roads. So I took a photo of the image and did some editing in my Autodesk Sketchbook app + much photoshopping in my Photoshop Express app to add colour and mood and all the other things that make up a story. For the record, there was a ridiculous amount of photoshopping.

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