Kevin Wade Johnson
2020
I stepped into a world o' gold, gold and yellow and orange and all the colors 'twixt 'em, with a hint o' red too. I didn't see no underbrush, nor the scrubbier trees, leavin' only the giants, 'cept they rose on up even higher here, no leaves or branches till hunnerds o' feet up. I could see the stream a mile or so t' the north, same as the world back home, the other burblin' along t' the east, and t' the south the ridge risin' slowly up, all reddish, till it topped out a hunnerd feet up. A native warrior sat astride a horse up there, silhouetted against the dawn-sky, impossibly stretched out tall, just like the Old One. He held a spear I knew he could throw a-fore I could move, could pin me to the yellow-orange sandy soil a-fore I could breathe. I raised a hand slow-like t' him, but he didn't move. I knew he was still poised t' throw that spear. And I could understand. Couldn't blame him, not really, though I didn't want him to, nohow. Aunt had told me 'bout our grandparents and great-grandparents, and hunnerds and thousands of others, all comin' t' these shores, all 'scapin' the trollin'—controllin'—tyranny wars in the Old World, comin' here all a-yearnin' for freedom. Most, they'd been brought here what didn't have no choice, a-cause tyranny seeps into the bones till lordin' it 'round seems natural, but still some had come here t' get away from the horrors back 'cross the ocean. And t' others, they found theirselves free, in time. And the lashwillows and grabgrass and River Horses and grisly b'ars and all the rest, even the Atlantic Serpent, hadn't stopped 'em, and so the natives had given up tryin', their druids stopped bloomin' up tougher and meaner critters, 'cause the British had their druids cast their own charms and magicks on what turned into iron buffalo and passage pigeons and all. So the natives, they'd given up the land o' their ancestors, given up and left it t' us. And though they'd retreated t' where magic comes from, t' the land wellin' up with it,
Read this work at the World Public Library (library card needed).