Author's note: I'll keep this short and sweet. What follows below is a complete short story inspired by a nightmare I had earlier this year. It is one of nine stories in "Keep off the Grass" (published Oct 31, 2013).

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Merry Christmas all!
MikeL

***

Converse

'Hate the game, not the player, right?' He wondered as he wandered, trudging across the wheat field with tears in his eyes and ice in his heart. For the first time he could remember, he was alone: really, truly alone. The man he had called best friend, the man he had called lover, was dead because of him, and the others would never forgive him. He must hurry.

He stopped for a moment to look up at the dawn sky, hoping to see some sign that would show him he was walking in the right direction. What kind of sign he hoped for he couldn't say. His family were Jewish by heritage but scholars by trade, so at least he knew he was walking *north* even if he wasn't sure about the *rightness* of anything any more. He had lost everything by joining the gang and his family had disowned him, but nothing could take away his knowledge of navigation.

Avoiding the roads was necessary if he was to have any chance of making it to safety. He needed time to think: all of them had been making too many snap judgements lately and it was probably inevitable it was going to fall apart. The others would likely start looking for him at daybreak and the sun was already rising behind the hills in the distance. The shadows from the wheat stalks were steadily shortening in the patches where the clouds permitted them to exist. The scene was so surreal, he almost thought he might be dreaming, but if that was so, it was a bad dream, for he had never felt so much pain from following instructions before.

If it had been a good day, his lover would have made it his mission to cheer him up. On those occasions when he could more easily escape from the trappings of his celebrity, he would have taken him aside and wrapped him up in a bear hug, kissing his forehead and temples with fierce joy. Later, he would have swept him away with his ever changing stories of virtuous heroes, battling villains horrible beyond knowing.

On other days he became someone else: brooding endlessly on the wrongs which were yet to be righted, or rage fearsomely on the slights to his person. Never could you truly know what to expect, but he had such charisma that you couldn't help but love him.

Those other times were less often though. His lover was rarely so careless as to let too many see that side of him. His celebrity was a carefully cultivated thing, and he was an expert gardener in that regard. He was a master at knowing the right anecdote for the right moment, and even the most hardened cynics couldn't help but laugh at his jokes. When he spoke so charismatically of heroic deeds in death-defying situations, you could tell that he knew exactly which parts of the story were most important, and why those were the stories that were remembered. Always was the hero good. Always was the villain evil. Everything else was just a scaffold to the story.

The man is wrenched from the safe-haven of his memory as he trips on the root of a tree between fields, coming down hard on his chest and hands. A single bird takes flight as he struggles to regain the wind knocked from his chest. He lies there for a heartbeat, five, until eventually he rolls onto his back to sit up, only now noticing the small stones which have lodged in his hands. As he starts picking them out, his eye is drawn to one side, to a fog, like one you might expect to see above a stream in the early morning.

There was no stream though, just a patch of fog. A shape within the fog quickly resolved itself into an older man, who stepped out from the fog like a swimmer breaking through the surface of the sea. Behind him the fog quickly dissipated, leaving no sign that anything out of the ordinary had occurred. "Hello", the traveller said, his accent strange, his clothing stranger.

From where he sat, the man stared at the traveller in disbelief. He touched his head, wondering perhaps if he had knocked it harder than he thought.

The traveller laughed easily, as if at some inside joke. "Did I surprise you?" He lilted, "I'm sorry." He held out his hand.

Hoisted to his feet, the man continued to regard the traveller suspiciously. "I didn't see you approach" he said. "Were you hiding? Waiting?" He asked uncertainly; the wheat in this section was scarcely tall enough to hide a man.

The traveller laughed again "in a manner of speaking". He glanced around at the horizon. "No, I was just passing through. You however. You look like you are running away from something?"

"No," said the man, looking around nervously for some sign of pursuit, before realising he'd given himself away. He rounded on the traveller, now trying to look as threatening as he could, "how did you know?"

The traveller kept smiling, his callused hands up in submission, "Hey now, I'm not after you. Look at me... My clothing... I'm not from around here, am I?"

The man relaxed a bit, fidgeting with his hands while shaking his head no.

"I knew because you've got wheat stalks stuck in your shoes and in your hair, and you reek of dried sweat like you've been walking all night. Am I right?"

Again the fidget. Then the nod.

"And if I was to guess a bit more, I'd say you must have insulted someone pretty badly?"

Fists clenched, but no other response.

"You stole from someone?"

Arms cross and recross.

The traveller raised an eyebrow. "You killed someone?"

Unbidden, the tears started up again, streaming down well-worn paths in the dirt on the man's cheeks.

"No wait. Not 'killed'. But someone did die because of you."

Before he could quite figure out why, the man was bawling like a new-born babe: his resistance had left him. Stammering out half an excuse to an old stranger was the weakest he'd ever felt as a man, but somehow he had to make someone understand what had happened. "He asked me to do it. He told me it was never going to go this far, but he lied. He knew this would happen all along." His body undermined him with a fit of sobbing.

"Hey now. It's ok." The traveller embraced him in an awkward hug, patting him on the back. "I've only known you for a minute and I already know it wasn't your fault. You're not a killer, son. Unless you know how to cry someone to death?"

Their eyes met for long enough that the younger man realised he was being mocked, if only gently. He tore out of the embrace and looked around, determined to start walking once more and forget all about this terrible day.

"Hey. I'm sorry." The traveller spoke up. "That was unkind, forgive me." It was enough to make the man pause for a moment longer.

"Please, stay here a while and eat some breakfast with me," the traveller said, idly reaching around for his backpack. "I'm new here, and I'm sure there is much you could tell me that would be helpful".

For a moment the man considered ignoring him, but the smell of fresh bread stopped him in his tracks. It had been hours since he'd eaten anything, and it might be hours more before he had another chance, so he walked to the tree and sat down against it wearily.

Only when the traveller passed him the bread roll did his eyes widen at it's crusty softness. "Where are you from?" he asked with awe. "You must be very rich..."

The traveller smiled as he pulled a thermos flask from his backpack and poured two cups of tea. As he passed a cup over to the man he asked "would you believe me if I told you I was from the future?"

The man stared at the hot, fragrant drink in his hand, then up at the traveller, then back down at his drink. He took a small bite of the bun, felt the bread crust crack in his teeth and melt in his mouth. "Yes." He tasted the buttery softness, and for the moment his worries were forgotten. "Does that make you an angel?"

"Ha! No." The traveller laughed. "No, no. I'm a man just like you." He took a bite of his roll and a sip of the tea. "Careful: it's hot. I'm from the time of your children's children's children's..." He gestured with his hand to indicate a few more generations.

The man tried sipping the tea, twisting his mouth at the flavour, more than the concept of a person travelling through time. "This drink...?"

"Is from a place called China"

"Where is that?"

"A long way away".

They lapsed into silence as they ate, but soon enough, the man had finished the bread, relishing every last mouthful. The tea was bitter to his taste, and it took more getting used to, but it was warming at least. He regarded the traveller once more. "Why did you come here?"

The traveller topped up their cups with the remains of the tea in the thermos. "Me? I am an explorer and a scholar. I travel, I meet people, and I tell their stories."

The man's laugh was choked off by a sob, the sound of it harsh in his ears. "Well, you came too late then. You missed a true master at that craft. He would have given you enough tales for a lifetime! He would have liked to meet you too, I think."

"And I would have liked to meet him," the traveller said wistfully. "Unfortunately there are certain rules with how I travel, and that means I am here now, and not before. Still, for one man to have inspired such loyalty in his friends, he must have been quite a man."

The man nodded silently, wondering what his lover would have thought of this turn of events. "I don't know whether 'loyal' is the right word. If I was really being loyal, I would have ignored him, I should have told him he was being an idiot. I might have saved his life."

"You might have. But then what?"

The man couldn't keep the edge of bitterness out of his voice. "We should have been focussing on uniting our people. Growing our organisation. Making sure our cause was known far and wide. But all he wanted was to be a martyr." He shot the traveller a glance, "why get himself killed? He had no grudge with those men. They were nobody to us."

The traveller stared at the man for a while, before nodding. "Legacy," he said quietly.

"Legacy?" The man repeated, "the stories people tell of us after we die? Why would that matter? A great man leaves a great legacy no matter when he dies. Why *seek* death?"

"Because who would know better the power of martyrdom for a cause than a master story teller?"

"But there was so much yet to do!" The man protested. "The others were constantly squabbling over who was more senior. He could at least have sorted that out." He lifted his cup and drained it in one swallow. "And anyway, why the charade? Why not just offer himself up? Why lie to me?"

The traveller chuckled softly, "I think you've answered your own question. You said the others *were* squabbling, but not now?"

"Not now," the man agreed crossly. "Now they'll be looking for me. And if they find me..."

"Funny isn't it?" The traveller smiled, "so difficult to make men unite for a common cause, but give them something to unite against and you barely need do any work at all. Your friend achieved his martyrdom and united his men at the same time. He united them against you."

"But I only did what he asked! Why would he do that to me?"

"Did you love him? I mean truly, love him?"

"Yes, of course!" Of this much the man had no doubt.

"He knew that. I'm sure of that. And because of that he accepted your gift to him."

"My gift to him?"

"Your legacy."

"What does that have to do with it? A man's legacy can't be given."

The traveller sighed, "not given, rewritten. There are some who say that the greatest act of love one can do for another is to give one's life so that the other may live. But that is still a heroic thing to do. I say that it is greater still for a man to be willingly cast as a villain in his legacy, such that another may be elevated to the highest of heroes."

"Always is the hero good. Always is the villain evil," murmured the man, repeating something he had been thinking earlier.

"Exactly," said the traveller. He tossed the dregs of his tea on the ground, taking both cups and packing the thermos away in his bag. "Your friend *was* a master story teller, and a hero in his own life story. So I ask you again, did you love him? Did you love him enough to be the villain in that story?"

The man was silent for a while as the tears again worked their way down his face. "Yes. He betrayed me, but yes."

The traveller smiled as he stood up, offering a hand to the man crying against the tree. "Betrayals happen all the time. It's how you respond to it that counts. You have a good heart, and that's all too rare in the world."

The man merely looked at the outstretched hand with disinterest. "What would you do now if you were me?"

"Get up. Keep walking until the sky itself looks different. Live a different life. A quiet life. Try to remember what it feels like to be happy and content with what I have."

The man thought for a moment, nodding, his face set with more determination than he had felt in months. He accepted the hand up, was hoisted once more to his feet, and found that a knife was deeply embedded in his stomach.

"So sorry about this," said the traveller as he sliced across the man's abdomen, exposing his intestines to the morning air.

The man's shocked silence gave way to anger, trying to wrestle the knife out of the traveller's hand and out of his gut. He only partially succeeded, gasping with pain. "But you said...?"

"Yes. You asked me what *I* would do in your position. *You* on the other hand are too dangerous to be allowed to live."

"Me?"

"Yes you. If one of the others ever found you, they would probably kill you, which would irreparably damage their legacy, and destroy the unity your friend martyred himself to create. And even if not, you would most likely redeem your legacy given time, again destroying that precious unity. I'm sorry, but this is for the greater good."

Weakening, the man sank to his knees, trying to hold his insides in. "The greater good?"

"Of course," the man smiled as he pulled a rope from his pack and threaded it into a noose around the man's neck. "This is the greatest story ever told Judas, and you must play your part."

Working quickly, the traveller threw the rope over a branch of the tree and pulled the limp body to standing height with strong callused hands. He positioned the knife on the ground under the man's preferred hand, surveying the scene before walking into the patch of fog which had reappeared in its place. "Always is the hero good. Always is the villain evil." He muttered to himself. "Must remember that one," he thought as he went through.