Janus walked a short distance away from the end of the longhouse, and sat down cross-legged upon the flat ground. He looked out over the elongated, dark forms of the other longhouses occupying the village interior.
He settled himself in and stared away towards the horizons, looking at nothing in particular, content to await the rise of the sun. At the very least, the ascending sun carried with it an uplifting sense of renewal as it ushered in a new day.
“You do not look very happy,” a young voice announced softly to Janus.
The calmly voiced words might as well have been shouted out. Janus head jolted upright in complete surprise at the unexpected intrusion of his solitude, his heart immediately leaping up to his throat.
Rapidly turning his head towards the abrupt sound, he beheld a young boy of perhaps twelve years old, crouched down about five feet away. Arms wrapped about his knees, with his smooth hands clasped lightly in between, the youth looked upon Janus with a keen interest.
The child was clad in the typical fashions of the tribe’s more matured youth, not far removed from the attire of an adult, wearing leggings, a hide-kilt, and moccasins. The bare skin of his arms and lean upper body was as of yet unblemished by the tattoos so abundant on the adult males of the tribe.
The youth’s long black hair flowed freely over his shoulders, and the surface of his large, dark eyes appeared to gleam within the dim ambience of the pre-dawn.
He patiently awaited a response to his inquiry from Janus.
“No, I guess that I am not very happy,” Janus replied at last to the youth with a rueful grin, relaxing slightly from his initial shock. His tone lightened as his nerves gradually settled back down. “What brings you out here so early?”
The youth just smiled and shrugged, offering no verbal answer.
“Ah, a mystery,” Janus remarked with a slight smile.
“What is wrong?” the youth innocently inquired. He then repeated his initial observation, “You do not look very happy.”
Janus gazed upon the child for a long pause.
“I suppose it is because I recently lost a very, very close friend
… my father,” Janus commented in a weary voice, his eyes lowering as he stared towards the shadow-draped ground.
He did not know how to begin to explain his current situation to the young boy. It seemed to be an insurmountable proposition when he could not really grasp it himself.
“And I also suppose there is more to it now,” Janus continued. “I do not know your lands, and I do not know how to get back to my own lands. I am just very sad, and I have much to worry about. I guess that is why I don’t look happy.”
The child’s beaming face dimmed. “I understand sadness. And it is not good to feel lost. It is not good to lose friends… or fathers. But I have something that might help you.”
Before Janus could get another word in, the child sprung up, and abruptly bounded off into the depths of the darkness. Though the child was quickly out of sight, Janus could hear the boy giggling in mirth, and wondered what the spirited youth could possibly be up to. His curiosity piqued, Janus looked around after the boy, but it was several minutes before the youth finally returned into sight.
“Here he is,” the young boy announced to Janus, striding up and gesturing to his right side.
Though Janus looked closely, he perceived nothing at the child’s side. Only empty space occupied the area that the boy was so fervently indicating. Janus said nothing, not quite sure how to respond and having no inclination of what the boy expected of him.
“Can you not see him?” the young boy asked with enthusiasm, smiling luminously.
He looked down to his side again, and shook his head, as if in sheer disbelief towards Janus’ lack of reaction and perception.
The boy said matter-of-factly, as he pointed again, “He is right there.”
“See what?” Janus inquired at last of the insistent youth, becoming more than a little confused by the strange proceedings.
“A dog for you. Not like the village dogs. One with really long ears. One who will watch over you, and make sure that you have a companion to help you… even here, in these lands that are new to you,” the youth exclaimed brightly.
The words froze Janus for a moment. They nearly brought tears to his eyes, dredging up a deeper sorrow, one of those older floodwaters that had been fully released by his father’s passing.
On pure impulse, Janus felt that he wanted to scream out that his pain was nothing to make light of, or to play games with. Raw emotion had been poured over raw emotion often enough. Yet even in the strained moment, his heart and mind somehow won out over his immediate, passionate instincts.
He knew that the child had meant well enough, and did not know anything about all of his painful losses. Janus surmised that the imaginative child, in his own way, was just trying to make Janus feel better.
He then decided somewhat grudgingly to play along with the game, at least for the imaginative youth’s sake.
“Is it your dog?” Janus asked a little more firmly, acting as if he saw the dog at the boy’s side.
The child nodded, and then shook his head vigorously. To Janus, it was an odd response, but the child quickly explained, “Yes… but he is also yours. He is our dog. But I think that you need this friend with you now.”
Janus’ resistance could not hold everything back indefinitely, as the thoughts poured vividly into his head of older, lost friends. His eyes welled up at the thoughts of his precious hounds, and a few tears escaped and trickled slowly down his cheeks.
The child noticed the change in Janus, and his expression swiftly became saddened. “Do not cry. You did not lose your friends forever.”
Something strange seized upon Janus for a brief moment at the child’s words, giving him immediate pause. Janus wondered whether he had heard the child correctly, even if he knew in the fullness of his heart that his ears had not lied.
“This dog is one friend to you. There are others, one like him, another that is not,” the child then added.
The unexpected words pierced Janus through.
He looked down again at the ground, as the deep-seeded pains within him roared up again furiously, nearly choking him in their vice-like grasp. How badly he wanted to believe the young child, or at least what his mind could imagine that the child was referring to. Yet he did not think that there was any way of proving any relation to his own world within the youth’s mysterious, penetrating words.
It was just another trying episode, painfully reminding Janus of times that had left yet more scars on him that would never truly heal.
“Do not be sad,” he then heard the young boy say. The clear presence of conviction within the boy’s voice was not lost on Janus. “Sometimes, you just have to look with different eyes… eyes that see beyond the things of this world.”
Janus fought back his tears, as he recognized a sudden and peculiar change in the boy’s tone. Lying underneath the boy’s words was the presence of a deeper, resonant wisdom that did not seem quite normal for a boy of twelve.
Raising his head slowly, he brought his eyes up to meet those of the strange youth.
There was no one there.
Swiftly looking about in all directions, all that Janus beheld were the silent pools of shadows, the slumbering longhouses, and the upright stakes of the outer palisade. There were no sounds within the stillness, other than those from the light, whispering breezes gracing the hilltop village.
Janus had heard no footsteps, and he could not believe how quickly the youth had disappeared from sight. He chided himself for being so slow and unaware, and began to wonder if the whole episode was just a mere creation of his imagination, a figment given life by his own powerful sorrows. If it was such, it was likely the first indication that he was truly starting to lose his own grip on sanity.
As before, he found himself entirely alone.