by H C Turk
“If men come with horses and metal weapons, we will not be able to flee enough. Even sinners can move through a bog. We would have to hide away, perhaps bury ourselves a time.”
“If we had knowledge of these particular sinners, we could prepare well ahead of any attack.”
“I travel to no sinners for the sake of fear’s fantasy. And neither do you unless you crave their ways.”
“I have no craving for sinners, in that most of their ways I find offensive.”
“And the remaining ways which offend you not? Do these draw you?”
“Your question is the very fantastical fear you mentioned, Marybelle. The craving I have regarding sinners is to know what they would do against me before they begin. The craving I have is to be neither killed nor vanquished from my home. Surely, you have the same intent in living.”
“Surely, you intend to hie toward the sinners despite my speaking.”
“Since you have convinced me of the value, Marybelle, I leave tomorrow.”
“You go alone, girl, and go more of a liar than a fool,” Marybelle declared. “Your words were given with care, but you smell of desire. The sinners have something you would have, and I will be no part of your finding it. Go if you must, but justify it not with our safety, but fault the devil for your lust. You go without true concern for my speaking, but you will never be so fine with words as to have me agree. Sinners dupe one another with speech, but they do not hoax witches with words. I am the witch and remain the witch—what person are ye?”
With all our firm words, we parted without a spoken decision. And though I felt Marybelle was not too displeased, mainly I hoped that she was not disappointed in her sister.
Chapter 25
Previous Dreams Of Awakening
The walking was easy, despite the burden of a new possession. The morning I departed—Marybelle out in the land and out of my sight—I found a defense against sinners left as I slept. In my bag was a Bible, a magic notion to protect me, since no witch would carry a Bible. Marybelle thereby revealed her concern, for I would have no need for the sinner’s talisman unless they detected me, and thus she expected me to approach too near for a witch, near enough for a fool.
The travel would require days. No difficulty did the terrain present, except for a river. A river I followed for a half day before finding a crossing. This site was not shallow, only narrow, and would require my submersion. Through the river I would have to walk with my bag held above the surface and my head below.
So much the witch had I become again that bridges were forgotten. Discomfort in crossing this river I predicted, but the horror of water I had misplaced. Since living in the wilderness, my dreams had been rare; and though occasionally unpleasant, never were they nightmares to ruin my thinking. This water held no fear for me, being clean and sparkling unlike the fetid Thames. But as I entered the river, this different submersion became equal to my dreams.
I had been walking shoeless and nude. The immersion began as a typical bath, a gentle current surrounding my legs and bubbling about my breasts. Further steps, however, brought my chin near the surface, and I wondered why in dreams I continually thought of Mother on the ocean floor when she had never been there. I wondered why these dreams could not become a peaceful part of my life by being understood as false. But this contemplation only led to my sinking.
Having to hold the bag above my head was not a problem worth noticing compared to potential drowning. As the water covered my head and the inherent fear of immersion rushed through me, I gave every effort to undertake that strange combination of breathing water yet not breathing, that horrible state of having to survive. After one step with water like thick air pressing against my open eyes, I thought of returning, of searching further for a place to allow my crossing and breathing simultaneously, for I was suffering. My chest and all my innards felt sodden, and I shuddered from the unnatural impression. Then the past struck again, but one never experienced by me; for I recalled that Marybelle had saved herself by walking beneath the salt ocean as though along this river, not across, and so deep she could have never leapt up to gain a taste of air. Because my task in comparison was shamefully minor, I forced myself to be sensible and continue, accepting the proper technique of allowing water inside my mouth, allowing it to come and go and bring air to seep into my lungs, proceeding with a strength provided by Marybelle’s saving feat.
Once my head was in the air again, I rushed through the river, for no longer could I bear the wetness around me. After achieving God’s glorious, pellucid air, I thanked Him for survival, but not until I was on the bank and away from Satan’s wet suffocation. Again I was moved by Marybelle’s accomplishment, one beyond my imagining. And I knew that I was not the same witch as she, knew that upon my return I would walk for days if required until finding a section of the river no deeper than breathing.
• • •
Eventually the sinner smell was evident without my gaining high ground. And when the scent of a sinners’ village became clear, I returned to London. Again I smelled glass and saw carriages and sinners and recalled their acts. I felt the fear of being in such an incredible, evil midst, felt the lifting of my awareness from having emulated the unnatural in order to survive. To understand that I was again moving toward this life, not away, engendered such foreboding in me that I determined to have exceptional caution in approaching the settlement lest I find myself entrapped amongst God’s poorly souled creatures.
A day later, I first sensed individual sinners by their odor. Studying the smell, I understood that they were not approaching me, but traveled in an oblique direction that would not lead to our witches’ home. Feeling safe, I continued with a modified course that would lead me to the settlement beyond.
Another day’s walking brought a new smell: animals, massive and many. Though I had no cause to approach a herd of creatures accumulated by the sinners for some selfish purpose; nevertheless, because I could not identify the beasts—not goats nor cattle nor…elephants—I was determined to learn. The following day, I arrived at a field where a noisy dog chased innumerable greyish white, evidently bulky animals that in fact were of no great mass once their covering was removed, for it was wool and they be sheep, and I had their, er, hair in my bag, woven into lady’s apparel. Here I was disappointed, because no new and wondrous creature of the exotic, African sort had I found. After identifying the fluffy, filthy animals, I thought further of their guard, the dog recalling a former friend who required a strap and master to undertake his walking.
This was not the odor to have drawn my notice on the hill: beyond was a village situated amongst farms. Despite my need to move onward in order to learn of the sinners, presently I felt safe in that animal farmers are not the sort to be casting through dense wilds, though pray God no disease strike this herd, lest my race be blamed, the nearest ugly sinning women thereafter punished with bigotry.
As I proceeded, I remained too far from the dog for it to smell me and notify its master. Aware of the sinning tendency to wander, however, I had scant surprise in viewing a boy child alone at the edge of the farm. As I cautiously moved past, I saw that his only purpose here was to urinate on a flower; and how typical of sinners to change a simple act into a defilement, as though all the functions available to them were not part of God’s world, but Satan’s.
Once adequately removed from the boy, I made myself acceptable in the eyes of sinners. I donned not my fine attire, but my worn dress used for our journey through the wilds. I would be seen as a woman, not a lady. How bizarre to find even imperfect wool amongst the poison sumac. A camisole I had retained, and though normally meant to cover a corset, the latter was an enclosure always rejected by this witch. So the camisole covered only pale skin browner now that the sun had been influential on its hue. A petticoat I also wore, and what a strange sensation to have this cloth against me. With this feel came old thoughts of Elsie’s attempting to make me the lady with the same frilly linen. But she had failed, and I remained the witch at
times and at others the sinner; therefore, neither woman had been successful. Neither human had been perfectly true to herself, and I was the impediment.
The veil and bonnet in my bag next became decisive. Poor farm women do not wear veils. Besides, by touch I had discerned that my head had healed to some extent, so perhaps I was presently only homely instead of revolting. How perfect that would be: not so lovely as to draw appreciation nor so ugly as to draw derision. I decided to wear only the bonnet into which I stuffed my hair, for only wanton women allow their locks loose in the social air, the witch leaving a bit of the black stuff out in a curvaceous layer about the ears and nape, cramming the rest in for an additional cause; for not even baseborn folk allow their hair to go unbrushed an interval of years—and what would Elsie think of that? Smile I did to imagine her horror if one day had passed in London without her lass’s grooming properly. What a brushing she would have given as a lesson, seating me before her and attacking from above like a hawk snagging a rat with its talons, Elsie louder than any bird by constantly complaining, and I would be in pain like that rodent. And with Lord God as a witness, in some way I would enjoy it—but what way? From being with a friend, being amused by taunting someone, or being waited upon by a servant?
The next morning, I came upon a trail with wagon tracks that certainly led to the village whose odor was ever intensifying. My choice was to follow this path, a bold move since the land was so open that were an urgent horse rider to come along, I would have scant opportunity to hide. Therefore, I moved with great caution, especially toward noon when I arrived at another farm, this one for food. And I smelled manna—I smelled onions, and thought of digging through the soil for that necessity of life I had been deprived of. But, no, I would consume only the succulents and berries that had been my recent eating instead of throwing myself into the sinners’ peripheral society.
I hid near the farm until nightfall, then walked beside the trail to leave no footprints, continually smelling for sinners out late. The following day found me hiding from men on a wagon with straw and brick their cargo. Their loud approach precluded my surprise, and here was a factor to strike me. With all my talking in the wilds to Marybelle’s detriment, never had I produced such a noise as those two males with their raucous laughing and loud, useless hollering about the worthlessness of a third.
So decisive was this loud experience that after the wagon’s withdrawal, I stopped to contemplate that toward men like these I journeyed. The danger ahead was not in being captured by passing men, but attempting to pass amongst them; for if continuing in this manner, I would come to people so numerous that not all could be avoided. But would the sinners’ discovering me amongst them not be superior to their finding me hiding in the brush?
The question was no longer whether I would enter the village, but the manner in which I would present myself. Then with a sigh I became weary of the minor guilts coming with every step. Nevertheless, this marked me as moral, and should not deliver me with shame. The shame came from my lust for the sinners’ ways. Being aware of this, more remorse I received, more sighing, and along the trail I proceeded.
A lady’s corporeal posture as taught me by sinners of the Rathel household I deigned to practice, recalling how Elsie considered me scarcely human due to my animalistic carriage; and surely I had lost my sinning deportment during my time in the wilds. A parallel consideration was that poor lasses accept not the haughty air of London ladies. Having assumed the identity of one common, should I not promulgate less elegance than my, er, upbringing would have? A compromise I therefore devised, lifting my shoulders but not too high, pulling in the chin but not enough to choke myself, the nose directed forward, not toward the Creator.
When the land became flatter and the trail straight, sight became more valuable a perception than smell, which poorly measures buildings. Beyond I saw a mass of them, some of two or more stories. This was no village, but a town. Soon smelling horses approaching from behind, I stepped well away from the trail, though continuing toward the town. I next passed a second trail from a different direction. There a wagon traveled, though well removed. After further walking, I gained a better view of the town, and halted.
A town’s edge is not so distinct as a tree’s: here the trunk, there soil. The buildings of this settlement, as with Jonsway, became larger and more numerous as one neared, the road widening as other trails joined it. The populace was also sparse on the edges, becoming denser along with the buildings. Surely, I would not continue this walking to be confronted by all the folk I saw moving beyond, for one young woman alone and unknown would be questionable; and I had no desire to be explaining myself, a burden often and unintentionally generated in London.
Then I was struck with a pride to pain me, for with my thoughts of London came a comparison: that I was a citizen of England’s greatest city, London a land of mansions versus this tract of huts. Then I felt remorse for considering myself part of London, for was not even the greatest city a sinning business? More pertinent, people in London spoke the English language. In Wales, they spoke Welsh, a beautiful sound no more comprehensible to me than the singing of birds, the calls of giraffes and elephants.
I decided to approach the town at night and hide until morning, then slip amongst the populace on the streets. Thereafter, I would proceed with my business: I would look for hunters and explorers. I would become aware of the sinners’ dispersal into the coarse land God had given me and Marybelle. Then I would return home. Having decided my course, I settled behind expansive trees, reclining and attempting to rest, becoming so successful as to fall asleep, not waking until morning when sinners attacked me.
In a dream, London’s populace demanded my identity, brandishing lances toward me while insisting that I respond. Then I awoke with a start to see a girl prodding me with a stick and saying, “Miss? Miss?”
Looking past her, I saw a waiting one-horse wagon carrying an adult man and woman. Instead of danger, I felt foolishness: how could I pass safely through a town if I were so senseless as to fall asleep and not notice an entire pack of sinners approaching in a noisy wagon drawn by a smelly horse? Immediately I decided to quit this world and return to my home and Miss Marybelle, whom I loved in that moment more than ever before. And I would have returned had I not been captured.
No longer prodding me with her stick, the girl looked down to sitting me and spoke further.
“Miss, are you harmed here, miss? I had to wet and Father ceased the wagon and over here I find you. Are you not ill, then?”
My racing thought was that these sinners would pee less if they ate as God intended, but desperation replaced frivolity in my thinking. The possibilities of explaining myself to these people came and left upon my thinking that the exegesis should be reversed, for this country was foreign Wales, yet the girl spoke English. Could that river crossed and breathed by me have been the Wye, and therefore again I was in England? Being a sophisticate from England’s greatest city, at once I devised the perfect plan for outwitting these baseborn folk, and again I entered a contest whose rules I would have to invent as I failed them.
As the girl last spoke, the woman had stepped down from the wagon to approach, craning her neck ahead like a snake, reaching out with her face as though to protect her body by sacrificing the head. Halting shy of the girl, she remained well removed from the stranger; and I understood her true courage, true sacrifice. She would allow her own daughter to face the alien alone. Therefore, I attacked the youthful sinner.
“I am sorry,” I told her, “but I speak no English.”
The girl’s reply was to look behind, seeking parental support. Her safely removed mother was the sinner next to speak.
“What are you telling us, in that you talk it good?” she asked me from afar.
“I am sorry, but I speak no English,” I repeated, then added a sound imitative of Continental folk heard garbling in London.
After a pause to contemplate my words and that odd, accompanying noise, the woman
turned to run halfway to her husband as though for superior communication, explaining as she galloped.
“Good Lord, husband, we find a German miss!”
“French, you bleeding twit,” I muttered, but only Satan and I heard that language.
Then the father, so brilliant a person as to be worthy of his kin, called out to the intermediary mother.
“Ask if she’s dying or near it, lest we be late for the town meeting.”
“How do I ask if she is German, husband?” the woman returned in a testy tone. “She has said she don’t speak our English language. Can you not understand that, sir?”
“Then ask if she is toward Lucansbludge, and would be taken in a wagon,” the male intoned.
So reasonable this seemed, as though conveyance were a more Germanic idea than dying, that the woman turned to her daughter, relaying the family’s most recent semi-notion.
“Girl, ask her if she would go with us to Lucansbludge.”
Becoming a universal translator was no burden for this girl who perhaps all her life had waited for so intellectual a challenge. Displaying neither timidity nor hesitation, she initiated a series of senseless gestures surely meant to signify transport.
“Do you,” she said, pointing to me, “would go with us,” and she pointed to herself, “to Lucansbludge,” arms aimed along the trail, “in our wagon,” ending with both hands directed to the wooden box.
Because sinners, as I had learned from my tutor, have no measure for moments less than a second, no more time than this did I consider refusing the sinners’ offer. Thereafter, I smiled to the girl and nodded affirmatively as I told her “yes” in French.
“Man sawyer,” I pronounced, the girl smiling in return as she led me away.
• • •
I sat in the rear and conversed with the girl by answering, “Tray bean” and “Bow coot” to everything said. Uncomprehending I attempted to appear as the daughter spoke mainly by repeating her mother’s words, asking where I was going, where I was from, as though the girl had some special ability to communicate; for although she used the same words as her mother, did not the gestures make all the difference?