The Land Breakers

by John Ehle

He looked up at the mountain. It had a snow topping tonight, and the moon cast a warm light on it. There’s no prettier sight, he thought, and no prettier place than this one. It traps a man into staying, into building here; then it shows him that he doesn’t even possess his own cabin and fields. The valley is it own, he knew now. The valley and the beasts and the mountain and the snows and the water and the cliffs owned themselves yet. If he left here, in a few years there would be little sign that he had even come. The vines would cover the buildings and pull them down; they would pull over even the tombstone here at Imy’s grave. The trees would spring up in the fields and gnarl again with roots the yielding land. The clearing he had made on the hill would become again part of the whole, as the bear had been part of the whole and now in its grave was part of the whole, unprotestingly.