The flames in their eyes sparked with fear. Young faces, ignited with worry, scourged the old soldier with a hope of distraction as he took his last puff from his pipe and cleaned the ashes from it. 

A meager fire sat before the old soldier as he refilled his pipe with new tobacco and lit a match in the damp, raining air. He sat cross-legged, enlightened by the flames that danced upon his thick beard. His tall bear-skin hat was askew atop his temple as new smoke tindered in his pipe and his old gray eyes met the flaming fear of the young men before him.

The young soldiers crammed and settled in under the makeshift tent on top the fortification walls around him. Rain plundered the ground and seeped through the canvas awning, greedy with its flooding, making loose gunpowder useless, and cannon-barrels inaccurate. Around them, outside the walls, the blasting of the big black guns boomed and thrummed, all but useless; the artillery syncopated with the roaring of thunder in the dark sky. Its blasting below them, their fortifications high yet not impenetrable.

“Your rears must be wet, dear fellows,” the old man spoke, his voice almost inaudible above the dancing of the rain and the scattering thunder. “But, I hope your ears are dry.”

The young men before him chuckled nervously and then shuttered as a cannonball blasted into the brick mortar of the fortification. Smoke danced from the old soldier’s mouth.

“You shan’t be afraid, dear fellows. Shan’t be,” the old soldier’s voice lilted in the night rain and the fright in the bones of the men eased its tension at the dance in his tone. “What might ye need from an ol’ man such as I, on a nice cozy eve as tonight?” He smiled, thinking of a grandson who had passed a decade ago, and saw the boy live on in the sparkling eyes of the young men before him.

“We―we were hoping you would tell us a dear story, something to shake the fear from our skin and the wet from our bones,” one man spoke out quietly as he shifted his long musket from his lap to the cobbled ground.

“I should be letting ye all get to bed, for the sun will rise red, and I may too. And I dare say on the eve of my end I might be liking some sleep before a day of muck and ruckus such as may be tomorrow.”

“Ay, sir, good friend, but we might’n be gettin’ better sleep if you be telling us a story,” another young man called out in a quiet whimper, his mind too wild, too worrisome to make direct eye contact with the calm old soldier.

In the dark of the night a flash of lightning scarred the sky as the thunder followed it close behind with brass booming. The vibrations of cannon blast tickled the stone below the tall fort. Some felt the old stone structure quiver into the toes of their worn boots. Some of the young boys winced their eyes shut. And the rain fell. And the rain fell, always.

The old soldier shuffled his shoulders in a quiet chuckle as he took a long draw from his pipe and twisted his gray mustache. He was bootless as well, and he wiggled his toes as his cheeks glowed red with laughter. He puffed more smoke as it joined the smoke of the small fire as another soldier added a damp log to it.

“Are ye sayin’ to me, dear lad, that me stories and me talkin’ might be too sleepy for you to finish hearin’? Might ye be hurtin’ my feelings on this eve, an eve that may be the last of mine, or the first of many to come?”

“I ain’t saying I won’t be hearin’ all your stories from sleepin’, sir, but that your stories might give me the only rest my mind would get on a night such as this when the cannon blasts and the thunder booms, and we wee lads, outnumbered and new to the muskets we hold, shiver on top a fort three hundred years old.”

The old soldier, his challenge met and the fear before him spoken for, sucked quietly on the tip of his pipe. He fixed his bearskin hat so that it would lean to the other side of his head. 

“Good on you, lad. To speak of the fear upon ye shoulders is the bravest thing a soldier can do. To speak of the worry that rattles in your bones is surely a clearer way to live than to bog in the fog of misguided, untrue bravery. I can tell ye a story. But it may not be a beautiful thing. It is no song of women nor lake isles far from here, but a song of the dark and the light, and the wet and the dry. A song ye have never heard, perhaps but a tune you’ve always known.”

There was a quiet from the group before him. Ceaseless rain got its expanding fingers on everything. The fire was dim and low, the black around them harrowing. But the light from the pipe illuminated the gray-haired old soldier with his cocked, tall beaver skin as it leaned sideways on his skull, as though it felt the weight of the world all before them.

“It is said to be legend,” he started, “overgrown, nameless legend, but deep in its broad branches and boughs their lies a seed of truth.”

“And what story might that be?” one questioned as the small fire flickered again with flame.

“This one, dear fellows, this one is all our stories. The story of the caged Blue Jay flying away, the story of the starving wolf alone in the wild, the story of the leashed dog set loose. The story of the person and the paths they might take, or not take. The story of why we are all here.”

The old soldier wiggled his toes, puffed his pipe, and twirled the edge of his mustache. A million shadows danced on the edge of the soft firelight and the dark, raining night. Thunder bashed upon the heavens, cannon balls danced upon the fortification walls.

“So listen, ye all, ye good fellows who wait in the dark, and hear the tale to keep the fear from your bones.”