“They're coming!”

“Quick! Hurry!”

“You’ll miss them!”

She heard the children’s shouts. The village pulled itself into action. There was no debating what would happen next.

The villagers ran towards the eastern boundary walls in orderly quiet. A few louder voices called for attention, organising what needed to be done so nobody would be left behind.

The walls were built of rough grey stone, twice as tall as a man, and thick enough so people could stand three deep at the top. The walls provided protection, marked a boundary, and were a place to watch without risk.

The children jostled elbows as they clambered the worn, uneven steps. Their fingertips grazed the stone and rough lichen flaked onto palms and was wiped onto trousers and shirts.

The elderly and infirm were carried and perched on chairs brought by the young adults. The rest of the village filtered between. Everyone was there.

The sky was clear. It had only been an hour since the sun rose. The walls faced east, and Jem shielded her eyes to the bright, strobing sunlight on this early autumn day. It made her blink and her vision haze.

There was a hint of a chill in the air, autumn spoke in a louder whisper. It would be hotter later, but for now, there was a chasing coolness, the chill of the night taking its time to burn away.

The summer had ended, and the greens that remained amongst the sun-bleached yellows were dark and hardy. The flowers were mostly finished, and the crops to the west were plump and ripening.

It was an unremarkable morning, a morning like so many others; and yet it was unique, full of the winds of change and spectacle.

The whole village stood on this ordinary, tantalising, changeable, pregnant moment and watched the single figure walk past outside the village, less than a hundred feet away.

The figure was hunched, bent over like it was very old, the weight of the world tipping them over. It was covered in a dark cape-like garment of black feathers and dark leaves. The black feathers contained fibres of iridescent green, and the leaves shone when at an angle to the sunlight. They swayed hypnotically around the figure within.

The garment covered them entirely, right from the head, which peaked the covering with angular shapes beneath, to the floor, trailing behind in a long train. It extended but hung a little, not quite touching the ground.

As they walked there was the occasional hint of foot or boot or a glimpse of something else in the shadows. A shine of metal, a twisted knotted growth, a foot more mud than leather. Or was it the rusted metal of a sabaton, or perhaps the fringed hair of a fetlock?

The steps it took were lumbering and tectonic in their resolution. The slow, inevitable progress cracked and juddered, the way a gigantic oak tree would walk if it could.

A small breeze rustled the hair of the people on the wall. The feathers on the back of the walker quivered.

The figure sloped over the moss-covered rocks and the sun-beaten grass. Its pace did not waver in the change from rock to rock, from mossy surface to grass, to mud to stream. Nothing dissuaded its pace.

Jem watched with her peers and neighbours, her silence heavy in her mouth. Awed silence filled the wall, a silence full of sighs and mouthed whispers.

The figure continued.

A keen-eyed watcher noticed pops of life emerging behind the figure and silently pointed to beyond the trailing train of feathers and leaves. Small plants, tiny flowers, became visible to the villagers as they proliferated and the walker’s path was marked. They lined a border, a snail trail or blood trail of protection. A living salt line.

The flowers were a strange combination of colours. A purple so dark it could be black, a greenish white, and an acid yellow.

Jem knew the flowers would disappear within a few hours, separation from their host or the sun burning them away. The bravest children will go out once the figure has gone to collect what they could, to add to the doctor’s stores.

She remembered when the walker last went by she’d only been a child and had been one of the collectors. She remembered the flowers' ethereal beauty and how they’d visibly wilted and shrivelled in her sweaty palm on the run back to the village gate. Their beauty had made her gasp with wonder. Now, even from this distance, she saw precariousness in the precipitous blooms.

The hunched figure continued, the dark enveloping feathers hiding secrets.

The villagers watched as the walker disappeared into the distant trees to the northeast, evaporating into the shadows.

The villagers came to from their spellbound reverie and wiped the sunlight from their eyes. There was a quiet sigh of relief. The walker had seen no reason to stop.

As the elderly were helped down the steps, the children gambolled down, able to laugh again, and the adults made their contemplative way back to the streets of their village and their homes; Jem paused and stared at the oily, dark shadows beneath the trees. She felt a pang of her own age; a decade had passed and she felt the confronting wall of her own imminent adulthood.

The beginning of the day resumed from its pause. No one talked about what they saw, although the children were full of questions. Stories would be saved for the evening.

Jem returned to her chores, helping her mother in her shop by the gates. Her brain tickled with curiosity, her fascination with the walker deep as a hatchet strike.

She watched the children be sent by the doctor from the village gates on their mission. The doctor and her nurses waited beside the gates with their metal baskets, ready to receive.

Jem occasionally heard words from the group, carried by the breeze.

“Lots of green ones. An omen?”

“Depends on what the green ones will be needed for.”

Jem looked at the pinprick colours passing between small and larger hands, and couldn’t shake a feeling of sadness. Jem's mother wrenched her from her overhearing and contemplations, asking her about chore progress.

When the day was over, and the uncollected flowers had withered away to non-existence, the village did not need to announce what happened next.

A fire was made in the central square, with seats arranged in concentric circles. Thick, spiced vegetable soup had been made, and the villagers received it with gratitude. The people sat close together, breathing in the firelit air. The evening behind them cooled, autumn extending her fingers of orange and gold towards them.

It was old Mrs Wanless who spoke to lead the recounting. Jem could not remember who had led it last time, almost ten years before.

The stories were not told outside the day the walker passed, for fear of bad luck. But everyone knew the back and forth, the call and answer to start.

“We saw the walker today,” Mrs Wanless said, her rich voice carrying through the crowd.

“We saw the walker pass,” the village answered. A few children giggled and were silenced by their parents.

“We saw the walker keep walking,” she continued.

“We saw the walker resolute.”

“We are grateful for the walker.”

“We saw the walker today.”

There was a small pause, and the villagers stared into the leaping, dancing flames.

One of the children seemed more wired than the others, questions writhing within her. Her mother nudged her and nodded encouragingly. The voice of the small girl was shy but strengthened with her curiosity.

“Why does the walker pass?”

The elderly group, about a dozen of the oldest members of the village, looked at each other, exchanging knowing glances. They indicated Mrs Ryall, who had a sip of her soup and began.

“Long ago, before even our grandparents were born,” she paused and gestured towards her companions, lots of raised eyebrows and pertinent looks. Children laughed, and some of the adults chuckled.

“As I was saying! Long ago, before even our grandparents were born, our patron lady goddess desired a hero.”

Mrs Ryall widened her arms, a pantomime of strength. There was another good-natured laugh in the audience. She continued,

“As to why, that reason has been lost. Some say there was a war with the south, others say a threat of invasion from the north, and others say the goddess knew it would soon be time when she would no longer live among us. It was time she left us, and went to the depths of the sea with her brothers and sisters.

“She needed someone to trust. Someone who could be her champion whilst she was gone.

“Our hero stepped forth. They were proud, loyal, full of patriotic pride, ardent and steadfast. They were willing to lay down their life for their fellows. They wished to fulfil the goddess’ wishes, and be the hero she wished them to be.

“They offered their life in service to their people, and she took them at their word.

“The walker walks round the whole of the goddess’ land, and keeps the bad things out.”

Jem pondered the usually misted horizon she would see from the walls when she went up to look alone. The warm wooden bowl curved familiarly in her hand, its contours from the wood turning settled into the flesh of her palm the same as a hundred times before. Her finger fretted at a minute ripple, where a knot only mildly disrupted the bowl’s smoothness.

A child interrupted the pause, asking, “But why do they look like that?”

The child’s face was innocent, asking the question with no malice or ill-intent. But as Jem watched the storytellers’ faces and saw ritual and practiced retelling, she did not see sympathy.

The storytellers offered morsels of detail.

“The walker was beautiful once. They gave themself utterly.”

“The hero was a person just like you and me. They volunteered their whole self to service.”

“It changed them.”

“Well, the things they protect us from caused them to change.”

“My grandmother told me about their hand, the last thing they lost. It had long elegant fingers, broad palms and tidy nails.”

“My grandfather told me his grandmother once saw the hero’s face. Astonishing, striking beauty.”

“Thick, luscious hair that shone like a river.”

“Eyes the colour of a rough sea.”

“My mother told me of the hero’s back, shoulders of strength and muscular grace.”

There were some snorts among the adults, and the children looked confused.

“But what’s beneath the cape?” another child asked, impatient and inquisitive.

Jem recognised her own curiosity but felt wary of the story. She only had vague sensory memories of when she’d last heard it, when she had been but a child herself. She remembered how it had made her feel; gratitude, wonder, pride, astonishment, and amazement. The tantalising, rapt thrill when the whole world falls away and your soup goes cold as you want to hear just one more word of the tale.

But now, Jem felt wary. Though the soup had been well-spiced, with liberal alliums and capsicums, she could taste bile.

“We’ve only ever seen them covered," a speaker answered.

“Indeed,” added another.

“When they said they would give their life to their people in service of our lady, that’s what happened,” Mr Magellan said, glancing to the others for permission to proceed.

The children sat straighter. Mr Magellan always told the best stories; full of drama, action, and bad guys bested.

“Our hero was once beautiful and strong, ready and willing to bear their sword and shield against danger to protect others.

“The start of their service was simple enough. They were capable and could easily handle their foe.

“But, not always unscathed."

Here the teller paused for effect. The suspense made the soles of Jem’s feet itch.

“First,” he continued, “we think wolves attacked a village in the west, and in the fight, one tore a hole in our hero’s side. The wound closed over not with skin, but with feathers. The same black feathers of the eagle that flies over their skies.

“Then, the tribes from the south tried to cross the border and steal the women from a southern town. Our hero lost a hand in the fight, it was only them against 40 men. A knotted root grew in its stead, holding the sword in place and they won. It was like the dark wood of the tree growing in the town's centre, hard and coiled.

“Little by little, parts of our hero were taken from them by their deeds, and replaced by the land they saved.

“When the skin on their legs was blistered from the acidic snakes in the north, the skin hardened into tortoiseshell.

“Then, when the king of the bandits came from the east--” There was an intake of breath in the audience, as their village was in the easternmost part of the goddess’s chosen land. “--The fight was bloody and our hero nearly overpowered by the strength of the warriors. The bandit king chopped off their beautiful head.”

A child yelped, and the man continued his tale.

“The goddess’s gift continued, and they grew a new one, chosen from the land. Some say it is a goat skull from those that traverse our rocks or the roots of the pale tree that push between them. Theirs was absorbed into the land, given in service.

“The day has passed when the last of their human body was lost. Only their heroics remain.”

The children sat in rapt silence. Jem felt nauseous; the soup had become cold slop in her belly. She didn’t want to hear any more but said nothing. The group of elders finished the tale together.

“Each time we see them, they have grown another part of themselves like the land they protect.”

“Until one day they will be a part of the land itself.”

The audience was silent, considering the tale.

Jem looked into her soup, the thick ingredients indistinguishable in the firelight.

The last time she'd heard this story was the last time the walker passed, nearly ten years before when she had been only a child. She had heard these replacements as badges of honour, mysteries of strange bravery, war wounds to be proud of the same way a child loves a new scar or an injury from a fight well won. She’d coasted on the grateful pride of the elders telling the tale, and the polite gratitude of the other adults.

Now she was 17, full of life, ambition, and tickling rebellion. The fear of the entrapment of the hero’s life was harder to hear, duty conflicting with personhood. A disquieted squeak within her threatened to roar. The simplicity of childhood felt the other side of an ice age.

The hero had been giving themselves to the land, without the ability to escape or change their fate. Now she could see the horror, the sadness, the pain of it. She wondered what it would be like to be trapped in an eternity of lonely service. She longed to be far away from the crowds, and desperately wanted comfort, but in a place unreachable by anybody. How could she be reassured if the walker remained as fact?

She wiped away a tear, remembering the lumbering figure as they made their way into the clutch of trees.

The group spoke about the heroics, and everyone was grateful for the hero’s service.

“Did you see how it looks like they have a tail, from the way the cape moved?” one adult asked.

Jem went to bed early, and didn't sleep.

*     *     *
Autumn passed. The harvest was collected without issue, but Jem saw worried looks and heard concerned whispers from behind closed doors. She saw the wrinkles around the mouth of the village headwoman deepen.

Winter arrived. The cold swept in in a sudden surprising flurry, the temperature plummeting. The ground froze and the mud solidified. Cart tracks were frozen solid and unyielding; a last journey preserved until spring.

The villagers centralised the elderly and the children from the cold, turning the larger central village halls into dormitories to share body heat and keep fuel use down. The rest congregated in a few select places.

Spring felt very far away.

There were whispers about the food stores, a hint of decreasing hope. The man in charge of the food stores said everybody would be fine with a bit of rationing and a lot of imagination. We can make it to spring.

The midwinter solstice came, and the cold remained. The daylight hours grew longer, but the cold did not leave. The food stores decreased, and it stayed cold.

Jem would occasionally visit the wall alone, and she continued to do so even in the freezing temperatures. She climbed the icy, precarious steps in early afternoon, when the sunshine was like weightless gossamer, barely touching the frost flowering on the mortar. She’d watch the misted horizon, thinking of warmth and exotic, far-away places. Or even just the other side of the rocky fields.

On a rare day when the perpetually misted landscape was unshrouded, she would imagine what it was that she could see. Were the distant glimmers the white of snow, perhaps? Or the white of foamy, peaked water? The rocky distance beckoned, tempted, and forbade.

The villagers ate pickles, carefully made bread, and dreamt of spring.

The first crocus was a warrior, pushing its resplendent violet through the hard frost. The purple was bright and cheerful, the orange stamens vivid. Such a contrast to the desolate winter it almost ached to look at it.

The village hoped it was a turning point.

But the next day they awoke and the world felt different. The cold mist had thickened into a settled fog that penetrated into the village and blurred the features of their homes.

There were unfamiliar noises on the edge of hearing, that no one could isolate or understand until whispers spread of what could be seen from the walls.

There were a group of men waiting at the borderline, sometimes visible in the thick mist as it ebbed and flowed over the rocky ground.

Nerves and uncertainty spread through the village. The bravest and most curious gathered together to climb the walls to see. Jem was among the first, choosing her favoured spot.

At first, all they saw was mist, the hint of rough silhouettes in the murky grey-white.

Then there was the light of a match; a pipe had been lit. The mist cleared enough to see figures, not clear how many, sitting on the hard ground, bulky in furs, waiting. Watching.

Jem stood close to her friends, huddled and defiant; their mothers had told them not to go. Jem remembered the path of their hero and could see the men were sitting just over the patrol line of the figure's passage.

The village held its breath. It felt like hours passed but it could not be; the insipid sun had not travelled far.

The men did not move. Occasionally those on the walls could hear a voice by craning their ears, but it was wordless.

The mist began to clear. The watchers from the wall saw the glinting shine of knives. Jem felt icy fear dribble down her spine, chilling her even beneath her layers of wool and fur. Whispers cascaded along the wall like unseen butterflies.

“They’ve come to take the food,” somebody muttered, and there was quiet panic and prayer. The long winter had been so cruel and hard already, and it had felt so close to finishing.

When the weak sun had stewed away more mist, when visibility had reached a hundred feet, and the viewers on the wall could meet the men’s eyes, the men stood.

Their gaze was confrontational and resolute. They glanced at one another and crossed the line.

Jem held her breath. Futures splayed before her. What would happen as they crossed the line? What if nothing happened? What would they do in the village?

As they crossed the imagined border, the walker’s patrol line, nothing changed, as if there was no line at all.

The men’s expressions shifted to confidence; they exchanged looks of bravado and encouragement. There were a few half smiles of grim triumph.

They walked at a slow, unhurried pace; saving their energy, bristling with hunger, determination, and need.

The villagers’ breaths made worried misty shapes in the air. The men on the ground puffed cloudy phantoms, enlarging their bulk.

A dozen paces away from the gate, the almost score of men stopped. A sound approached from the northeast.

There was a loud creak, like a forest in a high wind.

And the walker emerged from the receding mist, dark feathers, shadows, and rustling leaves. It shuffled and crouched, moving faster than when it had passed five months before.

Jem looked at it with relief and fear, mesmerised by its gait. Though the men below looked sinister with hungry eyes and shining blades, they were a simple threat. The walker was magnetic and dangerous in the way of a pitch-black forest, a desolate plain, or a sun-bleached skeleton. It was the call of the void, the inability to stop watching an accident in motion, the attraction of the forbidden, the whispering echo along an untrodden trail, and the thrill of a maze. Hidden potential, nightmares in its very existence, and tantalising, unworded secrets.

It approached and stopped ten feet away from the men. The men turned towards it, expressions uncertain.

There was a pause as they faced each other, hero to trespassing, potential thief. The figure was stationary, its feathers and leaves tousled by the cold breeze. The villagers on the wall held their breath in anxiety and hope. Jem’s muscles seized in suspense.

Then the walker unfurled, the way an animal would rear on its hind legs. The cloak pulled back from its head and shoulders and revealed the hidden secrets of its belly. It stood over ten feet tall.

Someone on the wall let out a small scream as the cape pulled away from a head and face of merging pale bone and burnished wood, frozen in an expression of agony, anger, and attack. There was visible, misted breath coming from its mouth, heartrending proof of life within.

As the feathers and leaves withdrew Jem saw the body of bones, branches, sharp flints, and hanging fronds of moss. A collarbone in twisted plaited woody vines, the other in sun-bleached bone. The shape of a ribcage preserved in knotted twig-bristling branches, the hip in angular flint, sinew in vine tendrils, upper arms burnished in tortoiseshell, with warped root forearms holding two long swords, their hilts darkened with age. A body shrivelled; dark and dry feathers. The husk of a person. A forest floor with knives.

Jem saw beauty and horror in the unrecognisable body. Tears froze beside her eyes.

The walker let out a screech like every bird of prey at once; their voice box had been replaced long ago.

The men stared at the rearing figure, mouths gaping and eyes filled with dread. A few looked towards the village, others looked at each other, and they wondered whether it was worth it.

A few still thought it was. They were hungry, and their families too. They tightened their shoulders, tautened their muscles, and ran towards the gate.

The hero ran after them, graceful and gigantic, the ground shaking as their mismatched feet leapt.

They came upon the men, and blades met flesh and knife. The others rushed to save their friends, hurrying to stab the walker in the back or cut off a limb. But their knives came away bent and twisted, or they chipped off an insignificant splinter of wood, or they tore holes in the feathered cape. Those that charged were shaken off like bugs. The men that met their knives to the walker’s blades crumpled with the force. How does one fight the land when it protects itself?

The villagers on the wall watched the brutality below.

After a few minutes, the men had not found an opening. All were wounded, a few lay still on the ground, and the fight stopped.

The walker paused, its shoulders bent with tension.

The remaining men looked at each other and at the figure. All breathed heavily. The men held up their hands in surrender, to which the walker inclined their head and gestured towards the east.

The men lifted their unconscious friends and retreated over the line back into the mist. Limping, huddled, and hungry.

They dissolved into the receded, opaque murk and the mist closed behind them.

The villagers sighed, and the tension released a little. There was no cheer; the mood remained watchful and hesitant. Apprehensive.

The walker’s figure hunched, tired from exertion. They rested their sword ends on the ground, propping their coiled shoulders on their strange walking sticks, releasing audible breaths. The cape was still away from the head and shoulders, attached below the shoulder blades, revealing intimate and vulnerable shapes in the curved wood and bone. Breath puffed above it like smoke.

Jem peeped around at the hesitant, quiet crowd and descended the steps, her feet following an instinct she didn’t yet want to name. She went to her mother’s shop by the gates and filled an earthenware cup with water from the simmering kettle above the fire.

“Jem? What happened--” Her mother’s question followed her out of the closing door.

She carried the cup over the frozen, crunching ground. The cup steamed profusely in the cold, and she could see layers of water peeling away from its surface. The smell of boiled water contained hints of the earthy herbs her mother added for rejuvenation.

When she reached the gates, the walker was still hunched just beyond. She unlatched the wrought iron bolt and opened it with one mittened hand. She slipped out, hearing the crowd’s wordless whispers from the wall.

The space beyond the gate felt large, edges indefinable from the mist and the unknown horizon.

The figure was stooped, shaking with rasping breath. It gave a faint cough.

She wondered whether she was frightened, but realised she was not. She prodded her bravery and found other things within.

As she drew closer, she could see the holes in the cape from the men and their knives were starting to seal, growing over with feathers, leaves, and creeping tendrils. The rustling movements sounded alive. The walker smelled like spring to her, fresh, tender hope.

She walked around to face them and came eye to eye with their mask of bone and wood. The features returned her gaze, an expression of pain and discomfort, a stretched scream within its whorled lips. But as she watched, the shape softened and melted into one of resignation and release.

Jem looked over its body, its terrifying features, its horrifying shape, its sorrowful purpose and saw beauty in the sinuous curves and natural strength. Her feelings burned within her, as hot as the kettle’s water, conflicting, coagulating, refusing to reconcile and mix. She wanted to run away, both into the village and towards the horizon, but also to stay with the figure. She admired the walker’s sacrifice, but she churned with anger and sadness that they should have to.

She wanted to say so many things to them. Thank you for saving us, thank you for always being here, thank you for what you do, what is your name, who are you, who were you, I’m sorry this is happening to you, I’ve cried for you, I’m proud of you.

She held out the steaming water in offering and gratitude. Their eyes met.

“Are you tired?” Jem whispered, surprised at the sound of her own voice in the quiet, three words rising to the top of her inner maelstrom.

The voice of the walker was creaking and majestic, the movement of branches in a tall tree, the changing of the seasons and the whisper of the wind over the rocks first thing in the morning.

“Yes.”

And with the sound of its voice, she realised all her feelings could exist at once. The precarious moment tickled within her, a bloom about to burst into splendour. Her asynchronous, contradicting feelings coalesced into an imperfect whole. She could be filled to the brim both with sadness and joy, she could be grateful and angry, and she could possess both fear and love. She could know she should worship but also want to gift time and company. Her bravery crouched like milk about to boil, inevitable, uncontrollable, and undeniable. It rose in her chest and her instincts guided her voice. She gave in. She would deal with the repercussions later.

"Would you like to come inside?" she gestured towards the gates, inviting the walker into her village.