FOOTSTEPS

August 1998

FOOTSTEPS

by Laura Williams

When I was a boy on Trebus, I loved to play.

My summer afternoons were filled with long runs through forests and meadows, lazy swims in cool rivers, dizzy tumbles down flowered hillsides. And there were always playmates to be found for a wrestling match or a footrace. I had many friends in the village, boys and girls I called "cousin" in the tradition of my people. We played the days away, disappearing in boisterous packs and hurrying home in time for supper. We imagined ourselves victorious warriors returning to our families, the moons lighting our way through the whispering trees.

We were happy.

But as we grew older, the nature of our play began to change. Mindful of the lessons our elders had taught us, we realized our play was preparation for a difficult future on Trebus, a life in which we would live in harmony with the land, but would bend our backs for the food we would eat. Our play was preparation for our work. Gradually there came to be an underlying seriousness to our fun, a growing awareness that our carefree days would not last forever.

And then there were the Games.

It was symbolic and traditional among my people, and had been for hundreds of years. At the close of the harvest season, before the descent of the long, hard winter, all the youths of the village who were approaching adulthood participated in contests of strength and skill, endurance and intelligence. There were footraces, swims, wrestling matches, climbing contests, tests of marksmanship with ancient weapons all these contests symbolic of the skills our ancestors had needed to survive the Terran winters.

In the year before we were old enough to participate, my friends and I sat on a hillside watching the older children sweat in the meadow below, proving their fitness to take their places as adult members of the village. My friends boasted about their prowess at each of the skills, dreaming of the next year's Games, wondering how they would feel if they crossed the finish line first, reached the far side of the river before their cousins, threw the spear further than any other man or woman of the village. I listened uncomfortably.

My friend Philicia turned to me at the close of the final contest, moonlight shining down on her dark face. "Will you run next year, Chakotay? You know you'll beat us all if you do." She tossed her hair proudly. "All but me, that is."

I shrugged and looked away. "I don't know. Maybe I won't enter the Games at all."

Philicia laughed. "You say the strangest things, Chakotay. You'll enter the Games." She gave me a knowing glance. "You'll probably win them all."

"Maybe." But in my heart I knew I wouldn't win. I wouldn't even place, because I had already decided not to participate.

A cold breeze made me shiver and turn away from her. It was autumn, and I was twelve.

All through the next year I grew more and more dissatisfied with life on Trebus, with the backwardness and quaint religiosity of everything we did and said. We rejected modern technology that could have made our lives easier. It seemed foolish to me, willfully ignorant and shameful.

I grew most dissatisfied with my father.

When the harvest began and the Games were mentioned, I told him I had decided not to enter. I told him the Games were ridiculous and meaningless, a holdover from times before there were computers and robots and a thousand labor-saving devices. As I rose from the dinner table that night, I think I heard my father's heart break.

That harvest season was a difficult one for my family. I did everything that was asked of me, but nothing more. I spoke only when directly addressed, and kept to my room or to my secret places in the forest when my work was done. No one said anything about the Games.

On the day of the Games, I sat on the hillside and watched my friends sweat and strain, thinking I was above it all, too sophisticated to participate in their petty contests.

But I saw my father watching me with his sad eyes. And I was ashamed.

The day crept by and I came to a reluctant decision. Slowly, as the sun began to set on the day and the participants gathered for the final test, I made my way down the hill. I passed by my father. Though he said nothing, I could see the pride swell in his chest. He knew as well as I did that I would win this contest.

It was a footrace through the forest, a long run in which each step symbolized the long journeys my people had taken from their homelands on Earth, across the continents with white conquerors constantly on their heels, across the vastness of space until we had landed in this place of peace and freedom and prosperity. It was the last of the Games, the most respected and revered. And I intended to win it.

The signal was given and I soon passed them all, Philicia and Igasho first, soon Calusa and all the others. The forest was growing shadowy and treacherous in the late afternoon light, but I knew the way well. My feet seemed to skim over the ground without touching it at all, and I reveled in the strength of my running legs, the pounding of my heart, the rhythm of my lungs and feet and arms.

The running lasted almost an hour but I felt barely winded. When I crossed the finish line, I knew that in the eyes of the village, I would be the Champion of the Games, the most respected of my peers. In their eyes, I would be a man, entitled to my own opinions and decisions. It was something my father would not be able to ignore. I was so confident in my strength that I even slowed a little. I would win easily.

But on the last bend of the forest path, I heard footsteps.

I glanced over my shoulder without breaking my stride, suspicious that Philicia might have gained on me. She was fast, faster than any of the other boys, but I was faster. I looked back.

She wasn't there.

I quickened my pace, feeling my legs and lungs protest the burst of speed. But still I heard the footsteps.

I looked back again, wondering if Calusa was on my heels. She had grown over the summer, and was almost as strong as Philicia. Maybe I had underestimated her endurance. I looked back, stumbling this time over a half-buried root. Calusa wasn't there.

The footsteps were.

I willed myself to go faster, faster, my heart pounding in my ears, my tunic clinging to my sweat-soaked body. The footsteps were still there, right behind me, practically ready to overtake me.

The path turned and I tumbled out into the meadow, just two hundred meters from the finish line in the village square. I held my breath and bore down with all my strength, running away from the footsteps behind me, closer now, impossibly close.

I ran possessed, my bare feet slamming against the hard path, the footsteps echoing in my ears. It was Igasho, my longtime friend and rival. It had to be Igasho. And he was toying with me, staying just a step behind so he could pass me in the village square in front of all our relations.

I closed my eyes and hurled myself forward, careening out of control, fleeing those cursed footsteps. Stumbling, staggering, wild-eyed and terrified, I fell across the finish line.

First.

I found myself held up by my father's hands, congratulated from all sides by the villagers and my peers.

My father beamed into my face. "You won, Chakotay. My son, you won!"

My breath came in heaving gasps and I felt sick and weak. "I didn't win," I whispered. "He beat me."

"No one beat you, Chakotay." He shook me out of my stupor, walked me to the fountain in the middle of the square and splashed cold water on my face. "I tell you again, you won."

"But the footsteps..."

"What footsteps?"

A little more alert now, I looked up and saw Philicia and Calusa cross the finish line together. "I heard footsteps behind me in the forest," I insisted. "I looked back but there was no one there."

My father peered into my face for a moment, then threw back his head and laughed. "Oh my son!" he howled. "There was no one behind you. You were running from the echo of your own feet!"

The adults around us began to laugh with him. As the story passed through the crowd to the other participants, they laughed, too. I stood alone in the middle of the square and listened to them, looked into their faces and saw no respect there, only mirth, only pity for the boy who ran from the sound of his own footsteps.

I shouldered through the crowd and ran home, shamefaced and humiliated.

I refused to participate in the awards ceremony that night, and the Games were never mentioned in my father's house again.

Soon the days grew colder and the path I had run through the forest was covered with snow.

It was winter, and I was thirteen.

Years later, I returned to the ruins of the village.

The buildings were twisted and gnarled, the meadows burned black by fiery Cardassian weapons. The smell of death hung in the air though all the people had been incinerated, their ashes scattered to the winds after the sudden assault. I visited the place where Philicia had grown up, but the stone dwelling bore no resemblance to the house where I had once played. Igasho and Calusa's houses were obliterated entirely.

Slowly, reluctantly, I made my way to the house where I had grown up. Nothing recognizable remained, none of the sacred symbols my father had carved in the stone, none of the flowers my mother had carefully planted around the edges of the house. I stood in the place where my room once was, my feet buried in deep, black ash. There was nothing left. I felt numb, weak and sick with shock.

I left the house behind and made my way toward the village square. Everywhere I looked there were broken buildings, blackened fields and trees. And the silence settled on my shoulders with the ashes, blown on the hot, dry wind. Ash and silence. There was nothing else left.

But as I approached the village square, I heard footsteps.

I stopped, instantly on my guard. Technically, I was on leave from Starfleet and had only been allowed passage to Trebus by coming unarmed. I looked behind me, prepared to defend myself against those fiery Cardassian weapons with nothing more than my bare hands and vengeful heart.

But no one was there.

A little faster now, I walked toward the village square. Again, I heard the footsteps. And again, I turned to find myself alone.

I forced myself to a light jog, the footsteps still pursuing me. All the ghost stories I had heard here as a child came back to me and I became afraid. Some restless spirit was bent on capturing me and holding me in this haunted place forever. I ran faster.

Ahead I could see a low wall of stone, burned into glass and twisted into a grotesque shell of the fountain it had once been. I hurtled toward it, blindly fleeing the footsteps, tears stinging my eyes.

I stumbled over the low wall and sprawled into the center of the fountain. But there was no cool, cleansing water now, only ash, ash that burned my eyes and scratched my throat when I breathed it in, ash that coated my hands and face and clothes, ash that did not muffle the footsteps behind me.

Angrily, I turned around.

"What do you want from me?" I shouted. "Why do you keep following me?" My words echoed in the emptiness, blown back to me on the ashy wind.

There was no answer.

I closed my eyes, my fists clenched at my sides.

And suddenly, they were all alive again, all my cousins and all the villagers, standing around me as I was held up by my father's hands at the edge of this fountain. All smiling, a sea of knowing eyes staring with understanding, not pity, at the boy who ran away from his own footsteps.

From himself.

From a part of his nature he tried hard to deny, but that would catch up to him just the same. They knew something that day that would take me twenty years to realize. Trebus is a part of me. This village is a part of me. All my ancestors are a part of me, all our old-fashioned ways and backward practices. They knew that someday I would return to this place with an ache in my heart to belong here.

They did not know that, when I returned, they would all be gone.

I turned, prepared to embrace those footsteps, to find my place here and walk the path again in balance, anchored to people and place as I never had been before.

But the footsteps were silent, and no one was there. I reached out my arms, grasping at ashes.

I sank to my knees in the center of the ruined fountain. "I do not know who I am," I whispered.

It was summer, and I was thirty-three.

Time passes. Inevitably, a boy hurtles headlong into manhood, and a man steps gingerly into middle age.

Today the footsteps still pursue me, but I have learned to slow down for them, to turn and listen as they draw near. With effort, I have begun to reclaim the part of my nature that I tried for so long to deny. It is difficult; very little is left of my heritage but my own memories and the few records in the Federation database. When I hear the footsteps, I carefully reach out through the cloud of ashes that always hovers at my back and grasp at whatever wisp of clear meaning I can touch. Sometimes my own eagerness to learn forces the footsteps away. It's frustrating, and requires almost infinite patience. But I am learning.

Thankfully, I have help.

There are other footsteps that accompany me now, friends who walk life's unpredictable path with me, helping me to find the way as I help them. There is one set of footsteps that is always somewhere near me. When I walk with these footsteps, I am in balance. I know who I am and where I belong. I will always ache for the people of Trebus, I will always hear their silence and feel their ashes on my shoulders. But that one set of footsteps, quick and light, keeps me from sinking down into the fountain and losing myself to the despair.

I would follow those footsteps anywhere.

It is Voyager, and I am forty-five.