Benevil

Benevil

A beautiful young woman strolls down a righteous path lined in golden pine needles with her eyes to the heavens, her baby blue and white dress whipping politely in the wind like the hand of a friendly old man in greeting. She knew the path she was on well, for she had taken it every day out of seven since she could walk. A sort of informed innocence fills her sky-colored eyes as fully as water in the ocean. Her hands are clasped behind her back, each of them covered in a smooth cotton glove the shade of a mid-summer cloud. Under her breath, she hums a warm and gentle hum, one not belonging to any chorus or composition but instead to itself. Not a worry in her world drags her eyes down to the dirt her feet seem to know so intimately.
It's here, 66 paces into those peaceful woods, that she hears the first of many disturbances. She knew this area well. She knew the sounds and animals well, and they knew her well. This interruption does not sound well. Three snaps like the wringing of a spine, a few rustles of crispy leaves, more snaps, more rustles. Snap, rustle, snap rustle. Snap rustle snap rustle.
"Morning," a man materializes in the golden snow-like light before her, "I hope I haven't frightened you." His smile hints that her fear, or curiosity, was somehow on his nose. The deep but soothing voice in his throat bounces in her small, delicate ears.
"Good mornin'," she responds as politely as she's been taught, making sure her sweet Southern voice was just girly enough, "I was just takin' my walk, you don't frighten me. Although, I am not used to seeing strangers out here. Might I ask what your business is, sir?" The man stuffs his hands in his browned dark blue jeans.
"So polite," he says this as if complementing the taste of a polite key lime pie or some exquisitely polite dish, "The only business I'm doing out here is my own, miss. You see, I hunt for my food, and I've very, very recently caught myself a fine little bunny." With a grin and a grunt he drops a bloodied burlap sack that was strung over his shoulder to the earth. His offering to the forest rolls out. It's small and furry neck is twisted in an unnatural way, it's black eyes now witnessing what no creature has told another of- death. Swallowing bile and vile criticism, the girl meets the man's interested eyes.
"Why do you hunt for your food?"
"I have no use of a market."
"And why is that?"
"Because I hunt for my food."
"You already said that."
"Yes, but that doesn't make it untrue ."
She studies this man now, but not in the way she studied most things. She truly hadn't met a man of this kind in her life. A cold breeze from his direction whisks down her dress and unintentionally cools the uncomfortable heat gathering there.
"Might I ask your name?"
"Nevil," he answers easily, "and yours?"
"Benevelle," strange, she's only mildly hesitant around him with such information.
"Well, Benevelle," Nevil greedily slurps her name like soup, "what brings YOU to these deep dark woods?"
"I live a few miles through them. And they're not dark yet. Still have some light left."
"Ah. But the sun sets fast this time of year. Plus, I much prefer the darkness."
"Why? Is it easier to hunt?" The man grins and rolls up his bounty he seems to have forgotten about until now.
"No, it's just....simpler. To move, see, hear, think, pretty much everything."
Benevelle suppresses a smile. This man must be out of his mind, she thinks to herself, believing nonsense like that.
"Is it really?" she asks, and he nods to answer. "Well, then, explain, if you would please." Nevil simply turns to his sides, gazing at the greens and browns and yellows and small, faded reds of the forest. He retires soon after to a nearby log, beckoning for Benevelle to join him. Reluctantly, she does.
"It's more natural that way," he begins, "there's no blinding light in the sky to sway your instincts, and no light means no telling me where I'm going, so I then have the freedom to not care. No automatic, conversing folk to fill your ears, no confusing things like worry for a sick friend or guilt of an unattended animal to cloud your conscience. It's just you and Nature, and that's the truly peaceful way to be."
"But what about the things that need you?" Benevelle wonders aloud, stroking each of her fingers with another different one, "It's peaceful to know you've healed that sick friend or helped that animal or conversed with those lovely folk. There's peace in People, too, ya know."
Nevil nods into her wide eyes, which have become the color of the sky reflected in a gentle stream. He begins fumbling at his hands, and Benevelle just now notices he wore black wool gloves with the fingers above the knuckle removed. She notices at the same time the sweat cumulating in the webs of her own fingers, so she slips her snow-colored garments off and neatly folds them into her small purse. Nevil stuffs his into his jacket pockets.
"How rude of me," Benevelle breaks the wind-filled silence, "I haven't asked you anything about yourself save your name!"
"You won't get any answers," Nevil's deep voice seems to influence the dead tree beneath them. "I come from nowhere but where I was yesterday. What about you? Is this town your home?"
"Oh, no!" Benevelle giggles as if the question were a hysterical punchline, "Grandmother always says our family comes from a long and distant and honorable heritage. No one knows for sure just how far back my name goes, but it certainly has been with many great people." A breeze exposes Nevil's undershirt, some thin and properly worn cloth-work, doused in last week's travels and tomorrow's stains.
"I've met many people who claim the same," he offers his input while wringing his hands intimately with one another. A paused moment in time gives the two of them a chance to truly analyze the situation as of now. Benevelle would've been home by now, stoking her hearth and humming that lovely hum to herself. Nevil would've no doubt been miles away and aimlessly wondering about. The sun sits in a mourning position.
"My, my," Nevil glances to the light, using his calloused hands to block the heavens' outrageous gift, "Still this bright out. Time acts strange when you're with strange company, I suppose." He did not say this with an offensive tone, and Benevelle takes no offense to the statement, because in all honesty, it was quite queer to her as well.
"Yes, I suppose," she mirrors his words, "but, what lovelier way to spend a midday than in these beautiful woods with pleasantly strange company?"
"I've had much strange company in my days, mind you," He suddenly, smoothly, rises to his feet with his belongings in one hand and an open palm in the other. "I must be checking my traps, but I'm not quite ready to be alone. Would you do me the pleasure of checking with me?" Benevelle is taken off guard but at the same time feels a rush in her chest. She wasn't ready to go home either, which was surprising given how quickly the great light in the sky was trying to hide.
"I'd be honored!" She smiles and hooks her forearm around his escort.
"Your bag," Nevil says before they begin their walk. Silly me, Benevelle thinks to herself. She scoops her satchel up, and they're off, strolling arm in arm off of that bright path and down, down a darker area of the woods, shaded by an abundance of carelessness and creaking pine needles. "Yes, I've had much strange company," he returns to the digressed story, "I remember this one man who was absolutely rich with money, dressed quite strange too, stopped me on the sidewalk to criticize my clothes in front of all his admirers." Benevelle listens intently to what the man has to say. "I tried to explain to him that I had no money like his to buy clothes like his, therefore he had no right to criticize me as if I was his, but the truth seems to be blocked to those who refuse to acknowledge the other side of things."
"Rather interesting story," Benevelle doesn't mean to think out loud again, "interesting, really. I too was critiqued on my dress you see here not ten minutes before I entered the woods! The poor old man even tugged at the hem, as if he wanted it for himself! Ha! But to comment on your story, an honest wash wouldn't be bad for you, I must say."
"Being dirty is beneficial to my life," Nevil counters, "No animal can smell me if I were right between its eyes. Also, it keeps People away, just as I prefer."
"I believe a clean man is a happy man," she says this rather chipper-like. "Being rinsed of dirt and filth is one of the most pleasing things in this life. All my things are spotless, not a speck of impurity in sight." She says this proudly while studying Nevil's dusty, wrinkled belongings in his hands and on his body. Smoothing out her cloud-colored and baby blue-splashed dress, she clears her throat. "Plus it simply fills me with joy to do cleanly good to a dirty thing."
"Dirty things and clean things are just things, Benevelle," Nevil says, "They share a common family name, after all. We've given them each a first name, and in doing so have chosen a favorite child. Clean does best by you and Dirty does best by me. I hope you understand what I'm saying, most people do not." Benevelle did understand this.
"Who told you this?"
"No one. Well, no one person in particular, rather it's an observation I've made in my time with so many People."
"You must spend many hours a day, then, with them, to come up with a....certainly different opinion like that."
"Trust me, I spend as much of it as I can alone. It seems People seek me out sometimes, honestly. I take it you enjoy the stuffy company?"
"Gosh, yes! And they enjoy me! Well, I believe they do."
"Oh? Why'd you say that?"
"People have always claimed to know me and adore my presence, but I've always had this nagging feeling that, maybe, just maybe, they were lying about it; that they enjoy my absence all the same. That must sound foolish of me."
"It's what you believe," Nevil offers, "It can never be foolish to you." He sighs a well-spent sigh, "I'm afraid we can't take too much leisure," he says as they pace themselves deeper into the still dewy forest, "I must have those traps or animals in them with me by sundown. Otherwise, wild things will take what's rightfully mine."
"Let us hurry, then!" Benevelle is excited to be doing something....new; something she wasn't sure of; something she knew Grandmother would not approve of; something drizzled in bubbling mystery that heated her heart. Nevil also feels some alien way toward the current state of things. He normally despises the company of People, but this woman was different. She was pure in a natural way, untampered, untouched by prejudice and sin, beautifully unaware of the things he wishes he could forget. He admires her stamina as well, no one thus far had had the will nor time to truly examine him.
They've traveled now to a part of the forest Benevelle had never experienced before. Snake branches that had fallen but been caught by their weak but upright brothers dangled like empty nooses in the dim but manageable light. The air is thicker, slightly harder to breathe. The ease with which Nevil navigated this uneasy area suggested far more than familiarity. He leads the both of them to a bundle of thorn bushes and dead leaves. Underneath, a shy little squirrel nibbles noisily at his palms, bound to the base of the bush by a cleverly place string loop.
"I gambled when I set this trap," Nevil explains. "There are two paths a creature could have used, but I had only one string." He was right. Where the squirrel now awaits its fate is a grooved-in stretch in the shady brown leaves, but not six inches away is another identical path, both just as tempting and promising but well hidden as the other.
"Poor thing!" Benevelle gasps. "It must be miserable! And that string around its foot doesn't look too comfortable, either."
"Yes, yes," Nevil mumbles as he crouches to meet the mammal, "miserable indeed. Wouldn't it be mercy to release him from such torment?"
"Good heavens, yes!" She exclaims. Nodding, Nevil swiftly clasps the small animal in both hands and then twists the one containing its neck and head. The sound that results is akin to thin twigs dying beneath a stern boot, but the whimpering ceases.
"Poor choice for him," Nevil stands and stuffs his lifeless prize in the burlap sack, "good choice for me."
"Oh, was that necessary?" Benevelle's voice is ashen with a dread-like shock.
"Absolutely," he answers. "I gave it salvation, it gives me a full belly. Of course, there was the business with the trap, but that was partly its mistake. I merely benefitted from its mishap."
"I thought you were to release it," she says.
"I did," he counters. She understands, but that understanding settles like salt water and sand and a rock at the bottom of her stomach.
"Such dirty business," she sighs. "Let's move on, shall we? The sun is moving quite too quick for my liking." With that, they're off.
Deeper still they trek into the woods. Now Benevelle has great difficulty deciding where they've just come from, for the trees here are thicker and easier in which to lose one's pathway. The ground beneath them has been rarely tread, leaving only half-trampled weeds and grass to guide them through weaving infant trees and the occasional thorn bush. A musty, earthen cloud fills the two travelers' nostrils now; Benevelle wrinkles her nose and Nevil opens his wider yet. Among the thick aroma is a single thin stream of metal, a whisking rat's tail of iron in the wind.
"Ah..." Nevil hisses, "damned snakes." Upon closer examination, it appears a wise chipmunk overstepped the cryptic trap Nevil now collects. But over a yard away, a sluggish serpent digests its meal, suspiciously about the size and shape of a chipmunk in its belly.
"Seems your prey was clever enough to avoid your trap," Benevelle says to Nevil. "Unfortunate it was struck down either way."
"Yes..." Nevil grumbles, "very unfortunate." He throws his string into his sack, and their journey continues. This time, they do not join arms, but the connection between them remains as strong as a bad habit. Nevil glances back at his champion. "I do admire the snake's cunning. The perfect animal, really. No need or instinct for anything other than its own."
"Nasty critters, I must say," Benevelle distastefully shivers in the compact atmosphere. "So....simply creepy. Those black eyes and that awful flicking tongue and that sly, slithering swiftness of it, ugh!" Nevil licks his lips at the memory of the scent on a hunt, how one becomes just as animal as the animal becomes nothing all at once.
"My next trap was set in a nearby stream for fish," he points before them. Now there is no delineated course for them to use. They struggle side by side on the trying terrain, ducking under prickly limbs with witch-like fingers for branches, balancing over surfaced tree roots covered in moss that lied after every step, squinting through a sheet of light-absence ripped only by the occasionally bold fallen patch in the canopy. Benevelle begins to worry they have lost their way only minutes before the sounds of water whisper in her ears.
The stream Nevil spoke of emerges out of the muck behind bars of bark, a single line of ripples and movement forever-running perpendicular to the sturdiness of a wooded generation. When they reach its quivering banks, both the man and the woman take a moment to glance at their reflections first, then eventually into the waters and its transparent conveyor belt of truth. What little light that ventures to the forest floor is caught and entertained by the current. The dark blues and brown-greens and blackish-beiges move along with the sparkling dancers at the surface. Thirty feet or so across appeared identical to the inhabited side. On top, the waters move swiftly, cunningly. Beneath, only exploration could unveil the secrets.
"Here it is," Nevil squats beside a long stick jammed into the mud and surrounded by a mound of the same but dried substance. A straight string tied to the skinny and exposed end of the stick either ends or begins in the small, mystical River. Nevil plucks at the line. "There's something caught here, I feel it." He grips the strings, but he hesitates just after he prepares to pull. "Why don't you do the honors?" He turns and smiles to Benevelle, a genuine smile, a smile only the River could decipher. She touches her collarbones.
"Oh I don't know," she squeaks. "I don't want to risk you losing your fish."
"I'll be fine without my fish. I have squirrel and rabbit plenty." Benevelle ponders her decision beside the sound of the stream that has now climbed to a rather manageable clamor.
"Alright!" She excitedly makes her way to the string and replaces Nevil's touch with her own. Wrapping the delicate but sharp and strong material between her fingers, she yanks at the line. The prize at the other end budges but returns to its place.
"Fighter," Nevil comments. "We need more pull. I'll help." He grabs the line now with both hands, as does Benevelle, who stands ready on the other side of the thin border. "On three. One."
Two knees bending, two legs turning, two heels digging into Nature's filthy skin, two feet pegging their place.
"Two." Two pairs of eyes blinking, two elbows cocking, two breaths intaking, two fingers working the knife-like string.
"Three!" Two bodies working as one, two pulls and two heaves and two yanks and two tugs all happen in one motion, one infinite moment in time. One River, one truth hidden beneath the changing liquid, one end of the string hooked to a heavy and stubborn but weak-willed rock, one pull back. Two beings may have pulled, but it appears the answer to their assumptions pulls harder.
They fall in together. Neither of the two have gathered their bearings before the waters have whisked them unwillingly away, down, down, down the stream and away. They turn this way and that, fighting off threats of their own mistaking, wailing arms for the open air of the forest of blurred hours and seconds and for time itself. The current quickens like the maddened flow of the blood of a giant. Clothing, old and new, torn and smooth, leather and silk, Dirty and Clean, is washed away by the insane obliviousness of its owners. The truth of the River takes control. Belief and experience and perspective and hope become untethered among the speeds of the coursing authority. Benevelle and Nevil are now aware none of the things they try to hold on to will hold them for long for soon, too soon, the River wins and they're washed away again, gasping for air that suffocated them before.
The feeling of gravel on flesh. Hands clap on wet rock and hold themselves steady. Both man and woman emerge from the now suddenly calm stream on different sides. Light casts its criticism upon both; the shade of generous darkness shields both. They've arrived at the delta of the body of water, a Great and omniscient Lake greeting them. A lush garden of lies, ripe with deceptive fruits, to their back, the nude stand on wobbly legs with nothing to hide now, completely cleansed and shivering.
Nevil finds Benevelle. Benevelle finds Nevil. Here, at this perspective, they are one in stature and dignity, one in creation and destruction, one in two and two of one. They are together, separated by the truth of life, connected by the same thing.
A golden light slips under the water and a dark sky takes its place, but there's no competition between them.