“Dad…where’s the moon…Dad?” “Huh, what’s that, son?”
“Dad, where’s the moon?”
We were out on the back patio as the sky condensed into darkening shades of blue.
The sun was doddering to the west.
“It’s up there son, right there over your shoulder.”
“Where Dad, I don’t see it.”
“ There son, there!”
“I don’t see it, Dad.”
“It’s there, Evan.”
A shiver ran through me, a distant memory of a poem I had read and that had long haunted me erupted like a dark premonition.
Wer reitet so spät durch Nacht und Wind?
Es ist der Vater mit seinem Kind;
Er hat den Knaben wohl in dem Arm,
Er faßt ihn sicher, er hält ihn warm.
It was only later that I understood the unease with which it saturated my presentiment.
The poem describes a night ride, wherein a father carries his deathly ill son on horseback, riding swiftly through wind and gloom. The destination is unclear; the phantom of an Elf King appears to the child in a fever-dream attempting to lure him into death’s kingdom. The father has no idea of the spirits that hover around his child, nor can his frantic mission save his son.
In a matter of few months I became that father. I had not seen the phantoms hovering.
That day in January was much like this day 29 years later, cold, snow on the ground. When I arrived home I remember my heart dropping into a widening abyss as I watched the shadows creep long and black across the yard outside my window, the day was ending, night was coming; he was still breathing, still alive that morning, tomorrow there would be no trace of him in the waking world.
Now, I see phantoms in streaks of mist, voices stirring in dry leaves, the Erl-Kings’ daughters dancing by the old grey willows.
Yes, now I hear the pounding hoofbeats that blaze relentless into the unknown darkness.
