ABSTRACT
They have walked in silence for some time now. The walk is familiar, something they have done ever since he can remember. There has always been this path, that pack, his father’s staff, and their slow and careful ascent up the mountain. But the silence between the two is new, extending beyond them and seeming to envelop the whole wide world. All is hushed, still, waiting. But for what? His father is beside him, but the old man’s mind is somewhere else; far, far away. The boy, who is barely 12, develops a string of inconsequential questions, anything that comes to him, anything that will draw his once loquacious father back to his former self. But that father is gone, in his place is a man of monosyllables. There is a yes or a no and then silence again, only to be broken by the next tentative question from an increasingly distraught son. And so they go on like this, until they reach their destination and begin to set up for the sacrifice. It is at this point, some 125 lines into what is known as the medieval N-Town rendition of the story, that Isaac notes: Fadyr, fyre an wood here is plenty, But I kan se no sacryfice. 1
