“Devilry!” The yell echoed out across the hills. Aleck jumped to his feet and Charlie rolled over backward and knocked his head on a grave stone.
From way across the hillside, Aleck could see a rectangular light. It shone from the window of the rectory where Father Haslop hung out the window, yelling. Aleck looked around and realized that a perfect ray of moonlight filtering down through a gap in the clouds now illuminated their guilty party—the man, the boy, and a thousand circling wisps.
“Devilry!” came the anguished cry again as Aleck tried to raise Charlie, but the old man just stared straight up. The wisps buzzed closer, as if poised to enter his head in one great swirling mass.
The rectory door flung open and Father Haslop raced across the moonlit hills, a bell clanging in his hand. “He’s heading for the church … going to ring the big bell …” Charlie struggled awake, but was unable to sit. “Go save yourself, boy, or he’s going to cause you all manner of trouble.”
“But the bikes … the ride out … the truths?”
“I’ll be okay, lad. What can they do to me now?” He winked, and Aleck found himself stumbling away through the gravestones. He looked back, feeling like the lowest of traitors, but Charlie waved him away and flopped back onto the dirt. Aleck watched the church door open. Oil lamps flickered on inside, and the main bell began its incessant, morbid clang.
In his mind, he saw Praetor Jones falling out of bed and donning his ridiculous helmet as the legion stumbled out from various doorways, grabbing their pikes and shields and teetering out on their bikes. Would they dare come into the churchyard at night? Would they risk seeing a wisp or having their souls drained?
He decided that they probably would. After all, didn’t at least some of those old men know the truth about the world?
A light halo lit up the sky over Tattledale Town as everyone became abruptly wide awake. Aleck grabbed old Farthing’s bike and ran it into a thick hedgerow, then retrieved his own and scooted it out and onto Church Hill. Halfway down, his rump managed to find the saddle and he was pedaling.… He prayed he wouldn’t meet the legion on the way up the hill to the church.
What were you thinking, hanging out with that crazy old man in such a dangerous place? You’re lucky you didn’t lose your mind completely.” Aleck’s mother had cried a lot since the legion escorted him back home after he collided with them coming downhill. Some of the soldiers were over at Nurse Ellen’s place receiving treatment for their cuts and bruises. Aleck had bowled them over like a bowling ball, sending many into the ditches and thorn bushes.
Aleck hung his head as his mother scolded. Praetor Jones and several trusted centurions hovered around the kitchen, as if ready to pounce or skewer him if he showed any signs of corruption.
Father Haslop sat at the same table, his face bright red and nose a deep shade of purple. Several mugs of strong tea had been required to sober him up, but his eyes held no drunken frivolity. They smoldered with fear and rage. “How do we know?” he asked the sky above him. “How do we know this young lad’s soul has not been taken or corrupted into an instrument of the devil?”
“He’s fine, just misguided and a little shaken.” His mother suddenly came to his side, acting defensive. “It was that old man, dragging him out to the cemetery, polluting his young mind with fairy tales and ideas.”
“In the old days we used a ducking stool and submerged—”
“No!” she yelled, silencing Haslop’s slurred tirade. “No one is ducking or punishing my boy. If anything needs doing, then I’ll decide what it is and I’ll carry it out.”
Aleck felt a twinge of relief. “Where’s Charlie?”
His mother shouted, “I forbid you to ever go near that evil man again.”
“He’s in the jail,” Haslop said. “We should have burned that evil warlock years ago.”
“He’s not evil—” Aleck stopped himself, sensing anything he said would only make things much worse for both of them.
“I saw his foul corruption last night.” Father Haslop clutched his hands in prayer and closed his eyes. “Now all we can do is pray that he hasn’t destroyed the soul of this innocent.”
Aleck’s mother dropped into the chair and grabbed his hands, pushing her face close to Aleck’s. “Promise me you’ll never see that man again. No one even knows where he came from. He just appeared here, out of thin air.”
“What are you talking about?” Aleck pulled his hands away. Charlie’s population-versus-stupidity graph was currently replotting itself across his mental blackboard.
Haslop snapped alert and stood up, arms waving wildly. “He just appeared here twenty years or more past. Said he had been hiding, but that’s just not possible! Some devilry bought him here. I knew it all along, but no … the people accepted him, even forgot where he came from, until I saw him cavorting with the dead last night.”
Rants and shouts broke out between the father and the legion troops. Aleck saw the graph rising up exponentially as the stupid level crashed on through Victorian to medieval … on its way to the dark ages. He found himself staring at his mother and she kept staring back. No wisp inside of her, he thought; she’s too young. He felt quiet now, almost calm, as if the tiny bit of knowledge he did possess gave him some mystical power over those who chose to bury their heads in the sand.
He spoke quietly, so no one other than his mother heard him above the clamor. “I’m old enough to marry, old enough to fight, old enough to bleed and die defending the Land. I’m old enough to live on my own, to fend for myself, to breed … to multiply. So now I’m old enough to make my own decisions, to think for myself … and if I want to, I’ll see whoever I damn well wish to see.”
Her face registered no shock as Aleck stood, touched the backs of her hands, and walked out of the room.
Grog didn’t taste quite as bad as Aleck thought it would. In fact, after several brimming mugs of the cloudy brown fluid, he was starting to feel quite good. His mood swung between seething anger and oddly flippant joviality as his attention struggled to stay focused on the people around him, rather than wander up and over the hills to the lonely jail where he knew Charlie was coughing up his last breaths.
His homesteading party was going rather better than he could have expected, although only handfuls of people had turned up. Most of the legion stayed away, and the children had been dragged off earlier by concerned parents who didn’t want their offspring being tainted by his presence.
Father Haslop had reluctantly parted with a barrel of grog, as was the Tattledale tradition, although he remained noticeably absent himself. Aleck used the barrel as a seat on which he sat and watched proceedings. With very few drinkers present, he was rarely disturbed and felt really quite drunk.
The fires were lit around the perimeter at dusk. Supposedly wisps were scared of fire and wouldn’t come near the gathering. His house had been dressed in a large ribbon, and after a variety of unmemorable speeches the ribbon was cut, and food and drink appeared on the tables set inside the fiery ring. Music came from Tattledale’s small folk band that strummed and banged on their patchy collection of homemade instruments. They were songs Aleck grew up with, old classics like Tattledale Fair and Turnip Fields Forever.
As the night darkened, the singing grew louder, and people danced and played games. The food really was good. Martha and her friends had prepared a spectacular beef stew with roasted potatoes and mushrooms, and there were honey biscuits and thick clotted cream for dessert.
Aleck led the dancing, but only when forced into the open by his mother. Martha showed him a few elementary steps to a basic jig, and
after a few more mugs of grog he practiced the steps around the girls, much to their amusement, before returning to his barrel. He left Martha and her young friends clapping and skipping around the ring; fun to watch, it was an easy distraction despite his troubled mind.
His new house held no dread anymore. The wisps and ghosts he’d been brought up with were harmless fairy tales, and he quite looked forward to having a place of his own. Gifts of new furniture arrived throughout the evening. He was now the proud owner of four chairs, a table, a suspiciously generous-sized bed, and various gardening and cultivating tools that he had yet to investigate.
Three beehives arrived on a wagon and were unloaded around the rear of the house. Empty and silent, they sat awaiting the arrival of their first queens. More would come if he proved himself a competent beekeeper, something he still had huge doubts about, although his newfound fascination with tiny machines had raised new curiosity about hives and swarms and the way such things worked.
The fires flickered lower, and only a few people stayed around— only his real friends, the people who cared and mattered. He glanced across at Martha, seated at an empty table. Her mother and father sat off to the side, lost in their own conversation. Martha’s eyes were downcast, sad, as if focused on something far, far away.
Her sadness suddenly touched him. She’d worked hard for this evening, and he’d hardly spoken to her. For the first time he really studied her, not as a child looking at another child, but as a friend, an adult … as the future. She really was quite beautiful. In a world made of sand, somehow she was here for him, and he was probably the luckiest man in the world and didn’t even know it.
Why so sad? What future did she see here? Her friends were all younger. They just wanted to play games, but she was a young woman, thinking ahead to a world that was poised on the edge of destruction, inside a bubble. There was only one man a few years younger than Aleck who was a possible suitor, the next two older men were married and living nearby in this new community. He and Martha were going to be together whether they wanted to or not.
With a sudden rush of emotion, Aleck lurched to his feet. No one seemed to notice, so he cleared his throat loudly. The small band stopped playing, and the singers went quiet. For a few seconds he hovered, suddenly a terrified little boy again. A lone cricket chirped from a nearby bush, as if urging him back into action.
“I have something to say,” he blurted, surprised at the volume of his own voice in the chill night. “It’s to Martha.” He raised his mug toward her, but she couldn’t seem to pull her eyes away from the fire. “I just want to say that … I really don’t think …” the cricket chirped again, and he felt everyone taking a deep breath. “I really don’t think that I’ve appreciated how much care and attention and … love … Martha has given to me. I’m sorry for that … so sorry. I promise to grow up.… I guess I’ve been lost, a bit confused really about … things.” He felt the collective wind of everyone breathing back out in mild relief. He also knew he should probably stop now before he said something really stupid, but he blundered on. “Anyway, I promise to grow up and appreciate you more, Martha, and to become worthy of you, as much as I possibly can.”
He dropped back onto the barrel, leaving a slop of grog hanging in the air where he had stood. It splashed down, soaking his crotch, and he sat rigid in the painful silence as everyone leached whatever meaning they could from his words.
The applause came and grew. He saw Martha’s face lift and light up in the firelight. She smiled and mouthed a “thank you” at him.
They danced some more. He forgot the grog and food and just enjoyed being with her. The music became loud and the fires were restoked to see them late into the night.
People tired and drifted away. He waved them off, and Mother smiled proudly as she left him to his first night in his new house. He went around dousing the remaining fires, rolled the still half-full barrel of grog into the house, and positioned it strategically next to the rocking chair.
He sat and gathered his breath for a moment. The night was still young, and so was he. With no fear of the darkness and a fierce and newly acquired sense of independence, he knew one more thing needed doing tonight.… There were probably several, but one thing in particular just had to be done.
He spent only a short time watching the wisps wafting over the cemetery. He hid in one of the surrounding gorse bushes until the lights went out in the rectory and he felt sure no prying eyes watched.
He recovered Farthing’s bike from the hedge and headed away, riding his own singlehanded and guiding the other gnarled machine alongside.
The legion’s prison building was an old barn, reinforced with heavy timbers from trees that no longer existed in the Land. There were three individual cells. Aleck could never remember more than one ever being occupied, and that had been a long time ago. The end cell was used as the guardhouse. He heard snoring coming from inside as he propped the bikes, pointing downhill for a hasty getaway, and tiptoed up to the door.
His luck was in tonight since Mills Gilbert was one of the oldest legionaries and one of the deafest. He lay almost flat across his chair, feet on the desk, mouth wide open. His door was barred on the inside, but Aleck propped a stout log from the wood pile under the latch to ensure that he wouldn’t escape anytime soon.
He tiptoed along the row of cells. “That you, Charlie?” he whispered through each door.
“Aleck? You’ll get yourself in all sorts of trouble, lad.” Charlie sounded weak, his voice a rasping reed that took all his effort to play.
“Good!” he replied, rather too loudly. He slapped his hand across his mouth, realizing that the grog was still affecting the way he functioned. “I’m getting you out of here, and that’s that!”
The cell door had been secured with ropes wound around a large oak crossbeam. He fiddled and picked at the knots, but stronger hands than his had tied them securely. He heard a snort from the guardhouse and the sound of someone rearranging their body in a creaking old chair. Aleck froze in silence until the snoring began again.
“You still there, lad?” Charlie whispered.
“Never was any good with knots.” The ropes finally gave, and with blistered fingers, Aleck pulled the coils off and stood back triumphantly to examine the crossbeam.
In seeming slow motion, the hunk of wood dropped from its mounts and crashed onto the ground. “Shit!” he muttered.
“Who’s there?” Mills snapped awake in the guardhouse.
Charlie’s cell door creaked open and a fetid waft of bad air came out. Charlie lay on the floor; he had fallen off his straw bed while trying to stand and now struggled to find his feet. Aleck heard Mills jiggling his guard door, harder and harder as the fact that he was blocked in started to dawn on him. “I’m coming out there,” he yelled. “I’m armed … and dangerous!”
Aleck hauled Charlie to his feet, and the pair limped out and down the hill to the waiting bikes. Behind them he could hear Mills bashing something heavy into the door. The ancient hinges wouldn’t hold out much longer.
“You got to ride, Charlie.”
“Not sure I can, lad,” he wheezed.
“You can do it. I have something special for you.” Aleck gave him a small bottle of grog he’d tapped off of the barrel, and Charlie guzzled it down, nearly choking.
“Woah! Father Haslop’ll be mad at you for stealing this, even though it’s hardly the good stuff.”
“He gave it to me for my homesteading party.” Charlie straddled his bike as the door burst open behind them. He saw Mills silhouetted in the doorway, light from his fireplace radia
ted out around him like anger. His pants seemed to have dropped down below his knees, but he wore his metal helmet and brandished his spear. “Hey, you! Stop!” He surged forward, catching his foot on the door jamb and falling flat on his face.
Aleck gave Charlie a push and the old man began pedaling, the bike taking on a frightening zigzag motion as he fought for balance. Aleck hopped into his saddle and pulled alongside. The pair collided but managed to grasp each other rather than fall over, and together they headed off down the hill as a single stable four-wheeled unit.
It was an exhilarating ride. Aleck had heard stories of things called roller coasters. He imagined that they felt much like this ride. Careening downward, with little control, they navigated the dark lanes by instinct and impact, occasionally parting and then crashing back together and rejoining into a single force. Only once did they fall completely after a midroad collision sent them off to either side and into the bushes. It took a while to pick their way out of the thorns. By the time they had resaddled and creaked off across the meadow, the guardhouse bell was tolling, and Aleck guessed the legion was forming up in Tattledale Square, getting ready to head up to the prison.
They rolled into Aleck’s new house, taking the bikes inside with them and securing the door.“They’ll come here looking,” Charlie warned.
“I know, just not yet. I want you to be my special guest, the first guest in my new abode.” He eased Charlie into the rocking chair and found his largest mug. “Here, drink.” They clashed glasses in a toast and Charlie’s pain seemed to ease as he settled back. The chair’s gentle rocking motion sounded like an old clock ticking away the final moments of a life.
“Time for one more truth, Charlie?”
“Anything you want, my lad.” Charlie raised the mug high.