The Gathering

The clouds gathered just as the people did. Slowly at first but more and more quickly until both the sky and the field were about to burst. We sat in the middle, eyes closed but minds open, seeing what our eyes didn’t. A hush fell over the world as everything waited expectantly. A hand gripped a stick and held it up, a raindrop fell from the sky, and it hit the stick straight on the tip. Now earth and sky met. There was no stopping it. The stick fell onto a drum of wood and skin and with the first soft beat the sky added to the rhythm, soft raindrops fell from the sky, a prelude for things to come. Another drum joined the first, this one louder and deeper than the first, as if to keep pace with the drums the rain suddenly got harder. A soft hum could be heard all around us, coming from the mouths of the thousands gathered around us. The rain, the voices and the drums now beat in unison.

A third drum now joined, this one with a higher timbre and we could feel the electricity in the air. I raised my arm high and brought it down onto the large drum in front of me. The sound came from the sky and the drum, everything else was drowned out but we all knew that no one stopped. The first two drums intensified their drumming as the rain drops turned into a stream of water falling from the sky. The high timbre drum chiming in over the hum, the rain, and the drums. My arm fell time and time again using the heavy rod of bone to deafen the world for one small moment before the hum, the rain, and the drums rushed back into our ears.

The drums and the rain waxed and waned. Sometimes it was so soft that it sounded like it was over while at others even the thunder could barely block out the intensity of the drums and falling drops that seemed to want to pound the earth and all on it into submission. The people hummed, the drums beat, the rain fell, and the thunder clapped with a never-ending certainty. The world lost to all but those you felt round you.

I heard the drum and felt the air electrify once more and I raised the bone high p above my head and brought it down once more. As my arm arced downwards the bone I clasped in my hand shattered and as my hand fell to the skin of the drum a soft peal of thunder erupted and then he drum was silenced forevermore as the bone pierced through the skin that used to be its own.

I could tell that the high drum had also been silenced, having played its last. My arms dropped to my side, unable to move. The rain now beat on me as I did the drum creating its own rhythm on my skin as it fell. A private rhythm that was unique to each person in the world. Soon the other drums slowed, then the second drum played its last as the rain slowed. Soon the melody on my skin began to fade and the soft drumming became even softer until it stopped.

We opened our eyes to see a man with a white beard and scarred skin holding a stick up into the air as the last raindrop fell and landed on the tip. He then took his drumstick, the bark now worn off and as we faded the old man stood and broke the stick, his drum would drum again while it was our time to fade.