I see the rock. I read the legend. I see the rock and I read the legend. The rock with the imprint of the hoof. The legend on the sign beyond the bars. The iron bars. The bars between the sign and my sight. I see the bars. I see the sign. I see the rock and the sign. Through the bars I read the legend. The dark-skinned man comes out into a clearing in the Forest of Turtles. The Old Goat is standing there, in the clearing. He was standing there, and he is standing there. The Old Goat stands there on the rock and holds an instrument. It is his instrument, one of many. His hide is bristled, his hair is matted gray. Around them the forest is dappled and green and living. The air is full of sound. The sun shines. The Old Goat’s eyes are sunk in shadow. In the trees, birds hunt crawling centipedes and millipedes, make nests, pull berries from stems, regurgitate for their young. Ants come out of their tunnels, follow scent trails, climb over fallen leaves and mossy logs, bridge gaps with their bodies. Bees circle at flower height, and in lofier reaches. Deer, elk, smaller mammals step in the underbrush. Rabbits scurry, foxes crouch. Wolves sleep in their dens. A squirrel freezes, pivots, scrambles away. Fish swim in the ponds and the lakes, the streams, the rivers, in the shallows and the depths of the great encompassing ocean. The turtles swim with the fish, swim with each other, swim alone, climb onto the shore and bask complacently on hot, smooth waves of stone. It has been this way for a million and a million years but it will not be for a million more. Not even for a hundred more. The man, like most men, senses this dimly, but the Old Goat knows it in its true and terrible clarity. And thus the Old Goat is here, standing on the rock, holding his instrument in his hand – the bow, the strings, the resonant body. The man comes out of the Forest of Turtles into the clearing, and he is holding his own instrument, with its own bow and own strings, its own resonant body. The instrument which, when he is asked, he says he has always had, has had for as long as he remembers, and which he has spent many long, quiet nights playing upon – nights with moons rising high and candles burning low; nights when his bones were weary and his back was sore and there was little food in his belly; nights that followed days of good fortune and nights that followed weeks of bad luck – an apportionment which he has been made to understand is to be his lot in this time, in this place, a country which is not a country yet, but might become one, someday. He has been made to understand this, but he has chosen himself the terms of this understanding, what he will accept, and what, as a man, he cannot. And when a midnight traveler on the road some night would hear the sound of his instrument coming over the hills, coming from some close yet distant place, clear like a north wind – this traveler would always stop and listen. Stop just for a moment, sometimes, or sometimes an hour or more, but stop there, caught in place on the muddy track by the warping of the air around him, the sonorous warping, with the stars above, the firmament below, wondering or not wondering at all, knowing or not knowing at all, but nonetheless always stopping, always being stopped. The man now stands in this clearing in the Forest of Turtles and the sun shines on him and he accepts the sun, and he accepts the clearing, the forest, the world around him, the birds, the insects, the deer and the foxes, the squirrels and the rabbits, the fish in the ponds and the streams and the rivers, and he accepts the Old Goat’s challenge. He agrees to the duel. This is how the legend goes. I see it. I read it. Hammered in bronze, I read it. Baking in the sun, I read it. Melting in the rain, I read it. I read it, and the Old Goat plays on his instrument, and the man plays on his, and the air grows fuller. The sound climbs the high pinnacle, falls into the low chasm, climbs and falls and climbs again. The sound presses against itself, flickers in the light like fire, like the tongue of a snake. The air is full, the forest listens. And when the contest is over, the Old Goat knows he has been bested, knows it by the air, the light, the forest, knows he has been bested by this plain, dark-skinned man, and a cloud comes over the sun, and the Old Goat, in his anger, in this shadow, stamps his hoof down on the rock, and the rock does not crack but rather boils and steams, and glows white-hot beneath, and then the cloud passes, and the Old Goat is gone. Then the steam dissipates, blows away, and all that is left is his mark in the rock, his imprint, his hoofprint, burned there in the surface like a scar. The sun shines the same as before, no brighter, no dimmer. Shines with its perfect silence on the rock. I see the rock. I read the legend. The bars stand. My sight is behind them. I am there. I am not there. I see the rock. I see the mark. I see. I cannot hear. The dark-skinned man leaves the clearing, goes back into history.

David C. Porter is a writer and photographer from the American northeast. His work has appeared in various places. His most recent book is an epistolary novella called Rat Beast. Twitter: @toomuchistrue