Song in the Graveyard

The first time he came here, the mist had been too thick for him to see; he wandered unknowingly. A sudden gust lifted the pale clouds, and the shadowed femurs and broken tusks suddenly materialized out of the craggy desert structures, the edifices, he now perceived as bone, transformed into the leftovers of the sacred elephant. It was unlike anything he had known. All around him were the skeletal remains of giants, this strange, dusty canyon the deathbed of those great creatures.

He returned later, after he learned. The sorrowful mists still hung low, and he looked down into the canyon, trying to pierce the haze.

When the mists lifted for that brief moment all those years ago, the howling winds raced through those long unburied corpses, whistling with a thousand anguished cries. Now he stood above the deep canyon, listening for the sighs of the elephants.

The wise beasts wailed, and their songs can be heard:

Together, together, flee.
The forest’s on fire; flee.
We run in panicked race.
Against the fire we race.
It licks and bites our hides.
Beneath, my child hides.
Together, together, we flee.
Away from the fires we flee.

And then the woes will chime, the elephants’ heartbroken calls:

Woe, the fire behind us, woe!
Before us the cliff, woe!
The children are screaming and mothers are burning.
The mothers, their bodies are shields.
Woe, the children are crowded and scream.
Woe, they’re pushed, woe.
And falling, and falling, and falling, they die.
The children all fall and they die.
The mothers are burning and children are screaming.
Together, together, they die.

And when he first wandered there, and first heard the song, he did not understand the words, but the song drove him mad to know. And on a pilgrimage, he searched for answers, asking village after village for some clue. He would sing the song as best he could, merely humming a soft tune, and the kings and the priests would nod. And they would sing:

The great have fallen down below,
yet still we hear their song.
The ancient grave, the misty grave,
sings its silent song.
Dream on pilgrim and you will see
the sordid tale thus told,
and dreaming you will come to know
what tale you have been told.

So the man returns, and hears again the song.