It was there, under the sky, that the mountains whispered words. I know they did because at night, when the house no longer shuddered under children’s bare feet, I heard them. The deep rumble of stirring masses, the almost murmured voices from the hills. When the sun sank below the paddocks, the world around me awoke; the voices sparking through my ears until my mind exploded into cacophonic sound and I could no longer sleep. It was these nights that I slipped from my small bed and onto the cold wooden floors. Phsss, my teeth protested as I tiptoed through the corridor to the place where the green door stood. The lock slid easily and I arrived in the world that I liked to claim my own.
It was the sky which spoke to me first. It often was. Great shards of violet had strewn themselves across the horizon, framing the thundering clouds that were mimicking the peaks below. This night the sky had parted, leading my feet across the cracked footpath where the long grass grew. I closed my eyes as the green feathers stroked at my knees. I was transported to a world where it was only the soft fields and I.
It was the mountain which woke me from my trance. Scrambling up the rickety fence, I watched with awe as the hillsides were brought to life. The cold palm of pre-storm wind placed itself upon my shoulder. I sat there for a moment, basking in the incredibility of it all before the wind left once more for the mountain.
As the world unfolded before me, my eyelids slowly sank into each other. It was then that I slept in my world.
I opened my eyes.
Behind me the fence lay, broken and torn from its hinges in age. The white paint had long faded and peeled, the wood buckled and worn. Slowly I turned to see a cracked footpath, obscured by weeds threading themselves through the crevices. The green grass was gone and in its place, a backyard overflowing with dying reeds, suffocating itself. Small flowerbeds had been replaced with graveyards- teeming with the skeletons of small birds and insects. Victims of the gardens massacre.
The green door watched me as I approached. The once clean and inviting paint was now cold and desolate, chafed almost bare by neglect. My warm hand shuddered as the cold metal of the lock pierced it. The steel had corroded and it took strength from my wrist before it snapped open.
The corridors spoke emptiness. A frigid loss of movement. The echoes of a family, broken, sat in corners. The kitchen cupboards muttered a word of regret to one another. The fruit basket lay empty. My feet lead me to the bedroom, back to years where my head was not dark but an innocent blonde. So long ago when my bedroom was a palace, a cathedral in size. Now I struggled to not feel overwhelmed by claustrophobia in this child’s room. The bed covers lay unmade, the purple and pink patterns echoed on the lilac walls.
The windowsill groaned under years of untouched dust. In the distance, the peaks of a hillside were still visible. I stared through the dusty panes towards the now silent mountains. No voices stirred from the masses of earth. The air was still. The world I once owned had passed. From the time the raised voices of adults began, to where I stood now, a process had been placed in motion. My face and my identity had evolved. I changed and with that change part of me died. The hills lay as silent as I stood, repeating the horrors of what happened to us both so long ago.
A tear fell.
The mountain shuddered, then lay silent once more. The wonder and beauty of innocence was gone from this place.
As the tyres of my vehicle skidded down the uneven driveway, the desolate place waved a quiet goodbye. The leaves of a towering oak rolled as I turned away from the place which for so long had breathed life into me, the place I had called home.
