Uploaded October 2020 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago

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— REVIVED BY THE FALL — As for the Old Man, the same raven who’d followed him long ago was now following him again. Or maybe it was a different raven. She speaks through every raven, he thought.

A plague called the New Sick spread across the land, driving everyone into their homes. People who caught the New Sick complained, at first, of hard breathing. But as they grew sicker, they all began ranting about how everything was “new” — it was a “new world" we lived in, our lives were one “new thing" made by a “new being", a god “newer” than God. The afflicted also said there was a “new” thievery (not of goods but of thoughts), adding that "one’s thoughts were now one in the same with one’s deeds".

Some people warded off the New Sick with pomegranate seeds, onions dipped in vinegar, they drank holy water from ancient springs, tied knots out of rope made from holly and the leaves of Ash trees. They called on spirits and ghosts to guide them. They called for the alchemists and the midwives, they scoured the wilderness for the old witches who had lived in the caves of the backwoods, begging them to boil elixirs, with the promise of healing, in their cauldrons. Others made offerings of prayers and burned cedar in ditches which filled the villages with the odor of sweet incense. They called on the gods, the furies, the angels and the elders. The healthier ones carried the bodies of their dead loved ones away and tossed them into pits far from town. There was wailing and haunting. Some built walls to separate themselves. Some called the New Sick a blessing, a cleaning, while others fell into peril and cursed how The New Sick crept through every town and village like a blade cutting the reeds after Autumn Harvest.

It was rumored the Old Man had died, or grew sick, as he had disappeared for many months. How could he say these rumors were false? When the New Sick spread, trade routes were halted, roads abandoned, doors shut everywhere, and he almost believed he would never again see his wife's face.

Many considered him a great warrior on account of his skills with a Claymore, but no one knew the greater battle within. When it rained very hard, for instance, and the air grew loud, the Old Man couldn’t hear the rain at all but instead he heard the bards, from all times, speaking simultaneously, and he felt his wife was one of them. He tried to separate her voice from the rest by using his eyes. He studied fallen leaves, soil — even the air itself — for details that did not reflect voices, but in the evening there were crickets. He swore he was grave-footed at one point, and that's when he slipped down a bank into cold river water.

The fall revived him.

Now he reemerged from the woods and found a copper kettle in the road. He dusted it off and held it up to see the red-brown against the leaves that turned a similar color.

He laughed at the good luck of the kettle, just as he laughed at bad luck on other days. Without laughter you can get sick. He brought the kettle with him.

The raven followed and cawed and the Old Man said, “How can we be apart, my Love? There’s a thousand miles in every single drop of water. There’s the rain, and the river, the ocean, clouds. Kettle-held water…” And with that, his wife sent him a memory:

He recalled a moment from his youth when once he sat in the long hall with his mother and father, his brothers and sisters, all of them huddled in by the fire, protected from the cold outside. Winter approached and they kept their bones warm as they listened to the white bearded bard tell the tales of the goddess of war, bringer of famine, carrier of disease, gatherer of fortune, carrier of fate. The bards told them how the Raven chose, with her “dark ink wings”, who to bless and who to banish.

Such was how the Old Man got through most days, and this was a very good day, he decided.

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