NEW: Song of the Folk.

 

The mists rolled in from the ocean, covering everything with a blanket of silence, including himself. He'd been softly singing one of the songs from the time of circles and scythes. But he'd stopped singing.

The silence was overwhelming. The new world - the world of planes, satellites, mobiles and chatter, had dissolved, making way for something else, an older world, a much older world, lying - near sleep, beneath the new.

He looked around him. There was nothing to see below him, the long track down to the village had disappeared, as had the village itself. And above him, the brooding naked hillsides, were empty, just edging above the rasping mists.

He started to sing again, a different song. It was a song of ancestors, of his folk. He sang of the world of men, of miners working deep beneath his feet, and before that, of the men that had broken open the land for farms, and then before, and before, and before - till his ancestors became the small folk, the true folk, his folk.

He sang the words that were harsh, guttural, but remembered. He sang as the heathland that he stood in, crackled with movement, with memories, with small folk that moved across and around him. He saw them within the song, and they saw him.

As he gave voice to the song, men gave way, and were no more. The land shifted, began to fold in on itself, then unfolded again in a different guise - forests spread then withered, mountains rose then fell, oceans spread then dried - over, and over, and over, and he kept singing till there were no more words to the song, and he was far away, and he was folk.