The Anguish of Elephants
Death is not new to me.
I have seen it before. I have grieved. I have added my trumpet song to our orchestra of agony, an amalgamation of sorrow, of stamping the ground and shaking the trees, of the passage of one of our herd.
Death is not new to me, but this is different.
“Come, little one,” our matriarch says to me. Her voice is distorted, coming to me through miles of water and desolation. “It is time to send your father on.”
“Don’t go exploring too far, little one,” my father said. “You must learn to read the signs; humans were here recently.”
I ran around a bend in the forest path anyway.
Right into three cloth-covered humans, weapons of steel and fire hanging from their shoulders.
“Daddy!” I screamed.
I can barely see, can barely lift my trunk in acknowledgement of the matriarch’s words. The world crushes me. The sky and all it contains — clouds and stars and the excess of human machines — funneling to a single point, pinning me down.
The matriarch has seen this before, felt this before. She doesn’t get angry, simply slips her trunk under my stomach and hoists me up, even as my misery weighs me down like thick vines. I take one shaking step. Another.
I am in the circle, then breaking through it to see my father’s body.
Death is not new to me, but this time, it is my fault.
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He appeared in a flash — bigger than the sky, louder than a rainstorm.
“Run! To the trees!” His tusks were sabers against the lightning strike of the humans’ weapons.
I ran as fast as I could, chased by the sound of rapid-fire explosions, the grunts from my father, the tiny earthquakes that came with each of his knees striking the ground. Only when I was behind the trees did I look.
My father, motionless.
The humans, gone.
Twin streaks of blood trailing off into the forest.
Blood stains the forest floor even now. The matriarch begins the orchestra, a haunting melody of heartache and heartbreak. The others join in until the sky shakes with our power and pain. I can barely look up from where I lay crumpled on the ground.
I was back at his side. “Come on, Dad. We need to go before they come back.” I poked and prodded. Wrapped my trunk around his leg and pulled. Then, I noticed the dark puddle of blood staining the ground around his head.
“No. No, no, no! DAD!”
Thunder rolled across the forest. It came from me. A broken, jagged sound ripped from my trunk as I collapsed by his side. Breathing became impossible. I felt scooped out. Empty.
Minutes or days later, my herd arrived to find us.
The trumpets end.
We bury my father in the forest. In dirt and leaves and branches.
The ceremony comes to an end.
A permanent marker on the land, in our memories. A ghost, tormenting me for the rest of my life.
