Caino's Alphabet: A

A
    At the start of it all, when time was still free 
and the days could stretch longer than years, 
a boy lost his way and found himself alone.  
    His family lost to him, he drifted his way through the wilderness.  
He picked fruit, caught rabbits and ran from wolves.  
What once he knew of man’s world he soon forgot, and as time passed, the boy became wild.    
    The boy was alone and yet he was not.  
There was a friend that none saw but him.  
His friend found him food 
and warned him of danger; 
when they spoke it was in a language 
that was theirs and theirs alone.
    At times his friend, finding rabbits, 
came in the form of a wolf.  
Other times he arrived as a 
whimpering child—warning of wolves 
and of men who had become hungry 
and dangerous and strange.
    Sometimes the boy remembered his family.  
His mother was to him the memory of a smell, 
his father a sound without words; 
his sisters and brothers were the feeling of laughter and the dog was as soft as a cloud. 
    

    At night he would climb as high as he could: 
a tree, a ruin, a cliff.  
At first, the ruins were tallest and best, 
but as days turned to weeks and months into years, the trees grew thick, fast and tall 
while the old ruins crumbled and fell.
    On clear nights he looked up at the stars, tracking their progress across the sky, 
plotting their positions with finger and thumb.
    He saw that six stars made their own way through the skies, 
while the others all spun as a group.  
He watched as they retraced their travels; 
he saw that their places compared with each other reoccured year after year.  
He counted his days by the moon’s waxing and waning and saw it reflected the sun.
He gave these things names of his own, 
and to predict their positions he learned how to count in his head.  
    So he learnt time from the stars 
and he taught himself numbers 
in his long lonely nights in the wild.
    Years passed and the boy became lonely.  
The wolves had their packs 
and the birds had their flocks, 
but in the wilderness his own people 
had become rare.  
By the time he decided to seek them out 
and make friends, 

his hair had grown tangled and long, 
his body was dusty and strong, 
and his manners and language were almost all gone.  
    When he came upon people huddled about fires or walking the vanishing roads, 
his visage was so savage that without exception 
they chased him away or they fled.  
So he lived like a monster, 
alone in the valley that lies between humans 
and beasts.
    One evening as a crimson sun 
dropped from the sky, 
the boy’s friend warned of wolves on his trail.  
He knew of a ruin surrounded by trees, 
a good place to climb and to hide, 
so he ran to that ruin but when he arrived, 
he was met by two more hungry wolves.  
They circled him, 
snarling through bared yellow teeth, 
their fur made blood red by the sky, 
but he knew from his friend 
there were more wolves behind—
he would have to get past them or die.
    His friend, now a child, with a face full of fear, 
turned and ran toward a thicket of trees.  
Knowing his danger 
and trusting his comrade 
the boy followed quickly behind.  
The wolves snapped at his heels 
and he could feel their hot breath 
as he entered the cluster of trees, 
but as he burst through the needles and branches, he was met by the warm light of a fire.
    Two men were sat in the flickering light, 
faces hid under thick, heavy hoods. 
From the darkness beyond the light cast by the fire, 
a low whining growl told the boy it was over.  
He was safe and the chase was now done.

    “Wolves?  Stay boy, you'll be safe by our fire,” said one of the men with a smile.  
He rose and removing his long heavy cloak, 
draped it about a boy who was cold, frightened, filthy and wild. 
    The boy sat with the men 
in the warmth of the fire until finally, 
they asked him his name.
    “What name is?” grunted the boy in reply.
    “Name is your ‘who’ when you don’t live alone.  There may be other men like me, 
but I am the one they call Aaron, 
and Bartholomew is the name of my friend.”
    
    The boy tried hard to remember 
if he too had a name but recalling nothing, 
he told them, “lost name.”
    “In that case, we will call you Caino.  
Now drink this, it will warm you.”  
Aaron filled a bowl with hot broth 
from a pot that hung suspended above the fire 
and passed it to a boy now called Caino.
    Caino sniffed at the broth, 
then he sniffed at the air, 
then addressing his hosts stiffly 
with unpracticed words, told them, 
“big rain soon come,” 
and he hungrily emptied his bowl.