Peace

BY DR. AGONSON

I cleaved the last one’s skull, driving my sword down the monster’s ugly face. There was a beautifully perplexed look there as his head split in two, as his eyes began to part, going north and south from each other. The cannibal creatures always seem amazed when steel teaches them that they are also meat. He fell at my feet, pulling my sword down with his collapsing body. I had to wrestle my blade free, shoving my boot into his chest and kicking him away.

The others were all dead—or dying. There was a wheezing sound coming from one of them, which meant it was still breathing. Staggering among the carnage, I found him. He had been the first of them to attack, a big grey monster. I’d sliced open his belly in the middle of his swing, just as the mallet had come over his head.

He stared up at me, gaping, his eyes hate and pain. I drove the point of my sword into his heart, and with a shudder, he died. Then there was silence. The monsters were dead. The work was not done, though.

Coming over to their cauldron, still sizzling over a fire, I stared into the bloody stew they had been cooking. It was still boiling and turning and frothing, parts of the child, still recognizable, swimming with the roots and vegetables—a hand, a foot, a carrot, something green—then something dark, like a mat of hair on a small head, a child’s head.

I kicked dust onto the fire until it was dead. Then, as I let their wicked concoction cool, I started to dig. One of them had had a shovel for a weapon, probably procured from some raid on a hapless farmer. It had been beaten flat and swung it like a sword, but it would still work for its original purpose.

Once the job was done, the child laid to rest and the earth packed down tight over his grave, I sat down under the lonely tree that these creatures had chosen to camp beside. Beneath its shade, I washed the blood from my sword and watched as the field of unmown grass bent and swayed in the passing summer winds. The green blades bowed and rose, like waves shimmering in the sun, and my heart felt peace under the elm. I sighed and sheathed my sword, watching the dancing fairies of the lonely field.