The Older Brother Returns

Written by Holly Wilcox Routledge

C.W.: Mild allusions to violence, minor injury.

He goes to the fields after he has mopped up the mutton grease with the final dregs of bread. In the cold, autumnal morning, he wraps the woolen cloak around him more tightly, calloused fingers pulling wool through the metal hoops of his clasp. 

He still remembers the Spring they brought the sheep in for the shedding. Still remembers the pile of wool he was assigned to make this cloak, and the number of dye allocated to him. He remembers the singular pot he was given to dip the stretch of virgin, undyed fabric into to dye to its current colour amongst the honeycomb of others, bustling with his father’s workers, and his father himself. 

He had prodded the billowing fabrics, tied together like stomach and guts with rope, with the end of his crook, unsure of how the dye would turn out under his gaze. 

The older brother lets his thumb run over the handle of the sickle, polished through use and soft where it melds to his hands. 

He has stood in the fields day after day, Summer after Summer, the scorching hot rotation of the planets, as he cut and sliced through heads and necks of wheat, faithful sickle at his side where no horse or servant ever has been. 

The path he treads is the path he has walked since he was given his first sickle, which was too big, too large for the hands of a child, the blade as wide as his middle finger. It shone at first, but dullness spread across its curved edge like the encroaching heat that spreads along the leaves that rise amongst the tilled fields. 

The warmth will not remain for long; already now, he can see that darkness lingers in the mornings, and before long, he will rise and walk this path in the dark, with only the moon and his memory to guide him along the path. There is no point wondering if his younger brother will join him. 

But even still – 

The older brother dares to let his mind wander as he makes the first slice. The wood of the handle is warm, solid. As he swipes through the first clump of weeds, he remembers the day the first sickle broke, the wood splintering off in his hand, shattering into multiple directions, the way the solid sway of its body had suddenly twisted and snapped impossibly as he pulled the blade through a wedge of stalks. 

‘Too much’, the head farmer had told him as he inspected the bloodied chunk of wood that he had pulled from the boy’s palm, ‘Too much weight too soon. You cracked the body and it couldn’t hold up under the stress. It served you well, but you expected too much of it.’ 

And then he had bandaged the hand and handed him another sickle, with a blade so clean he could see his tear-streaked face in it. There was no pause for farming. There was no pause in this life for him. 

There was no glory for him here. He worked because he was needed, and to be needed was innate to this job. Without him, there was no food, there was no money, there was no certainty of success. They all needed him – and they needed him all the more because he was the only one out there. 

The older brother gathers the fistful of weeds, loops the end of the cloak through the clasp to make a crude hammock before dropping them inside. He was here all Summer in the fields, back bent and waist stooped to gather everything in time, to make sure every thumb and gram of crop was accounted for and measured. He was there when they began the plans for Winter, to prepare for the cooling temperature and the need to adjust. He was there first thing in the morning, and was the last to leave at night. 

He had been the one to assign the sheafs of wheat to be given to the festival sheep, he had been the one to make sure it was housed properly at night, that it was well fed and watered. He wondered if, when it was finally slaughtered, they would taste the devotion he had provided it; that they would taste every hour he had worked out in the fields and ditches in the roast. That somewhere, when it was opened up to be cooked and fried, everyone could see how much love he had given to it.

In the end, it had taken less than a minute to slaughter it. In the end, it had taken his younger brother less than four hours to eat the sheep that he had spent months tending to. Did he taste it then? Did he see what an example was supposed to look like as he ate? 

The older brother takes his scimitar and cuts out the next group of weeds he reaches. He should be taking them out by the roots, ripping them up where he knows they run miniscule beneath the soil, to prevent any further growth. Removing the weeds only by slicing them is a poor choice in the long run. 

He wonders if his brother knows that. 

He will need to show his brother the ropes of the farm, if he still remembers it after his time living in opulence. He wonders if his brother caught any news of the change in weather, if he still remembered the life he had so desperately tried to run away from. He wonders if his shame will direct him to work harder to remove the stigma that clouds around him – 

He wonders if his brother would ever know the difference between a brand new sickle and one close to bending and breaking into a thousand pieces. 

The older brother continues his way up the field, slicing apart the weeds as he sees them. His cloak grows heavier with each bundle he puts in, until he finds himself reaching the top of the field, a small slope that leads out to the road that runs by the farm. 

The sun begins to rise, and when the first waves of heat begin to run up the side of his cheek,  he has to turn to try and lessen the glare. He gazes back over the fields he has grown up alongside, the beaten path he took to reach this point. The farmhouse where his family sleeps following the feast is quiet, with only a few servants flitting in and out, getting everything ready to start the new day. He wonders how well his father slept last night, holding his youngest son to him, like he would never see him again. 

The sun ascends behind him, higher and higher, his shadow dragging itself out along the field before him, like the sharp, jagged edge of a rock, the point of a sickle, but never quite reaching the farmhouse below.