by Van Reid
Then the great maw of the worm shot out, and Erling, stunned, was snatched up and gobbled down by the beast, blade and all.
The worm shook itself and turned to Grandfather. a look of amused patience filled its great black eyes. Its monstrous head hovered among the trees, as it picked its way like a basket weave among the dark trunks.
Though without hope, Grandfather nocked his third arrow and pointed it toward one of the broad eyes. He felt the worm’s hot breath. He sensed the breeze of its movement.
The worm stopped. It closed its eyes and threw its head to the heights of the trees. Its immense snakelike form stood briefly like a tall white birch. From the place where Erling had struck, Grandfather could see blood flow; but then blood shot from a second wound from within, and the point of Erling’s blade rose out of the worm’s side.
A great branch snapped in the path of the worm’s convulsive movements, and Grandfather was thrown down by it. He felt dizzy and confounded. The clamor of the worm crashing among the trees filled the forest. Grandfather stumbled to his feet and tried to move away from its spasms, but he was knocked down again.
He thought he was not conscious, but a vision pressed upon him like a dream, and he saw a large crow settle before his face. “The worm’s fur is a great totem, and powerful,” the crow said, “but if you give it to my brothers, we will find the Sun-Hair.”
“Yes,” said Grandfather without hesitation, “find the Sun-Hair.”
“He may be dead already,” said the crow.
“Then he should not be buried in that creature,” said Grandfather, and when he woke, the great carcass of the worm was black with crows. Al ready the ribs of the animal were exposed, and before long the birds flew aside to reveal the arm of a man.
Grandfather pulled Erling from the gullet of the worm, and it was clear that from that place he had smote the monster’s heart, even as Michabou smote the heart of the great sturgeon that swallowed him. The crows let out a deafening chorus of approval and called down from the limbs of trees and great boulders and from the sides of the worm.
But Erling was greatly crushed, and he was dying. Grandfather carried him to the top of Council Hill and built a fire.
“Is it slain?” asked Erling.
“You have killed it,” said Grandfather.
Strangely, Erling said, “I hope this is a good thing,” and with his last breath he uttered, “Warn my chief.”
From his place upon Council Hill, Grandfather could see the bones of the worm and the remains of the man who had slain it. He feared what might happen at Norumbega if he took the time to go back to the island in the Kennebec and warn the chief of the Sun-Hairs, but he felt a debt to his dead friend. If only he knew where Thorkal had hidden his message, he could scratch it out.
The crows flocked around the hill. They sat about the limbs of trees. They watched him with bright eyes.
Grandfather remembered the marks and scratchings that Erling had made upon the piece of birch bark, and he recalled that the chief had been able to read them. He took up Erling’s blade and went to a tall, flat rock that leaned over one corner of the hilltop, and with the words on the bark before him, he copied them as best he could in great digs upon the stone face. He remembered to draw the picture of the animal’s head to one side. Erling had said that it was like a fat buck. When he was done, he stepped away and compared the carvings on the rock with those on the piece of bark and thought them good.
A word is not true jut because it is carved in stone.
Then he put Erling’s remains in a high branch with his long blade beside him, where it could be seen from the hill. The crows did not offer to disturb the body but sat about it as guardians. Grandfather took up his snowshoes and his bow and raced off for Norumbega.
45. Between Grandfathers
It was the voice of the Grandfather, the voice of Uncle Francis Neptune, the voice of John Neptune. Sundry and Daniel and Mr. Tolly came out of the old Indian’s tale as men stepping into the light of a separate day.
I wonder what the time is, thought Sundry. Daniel was concerned on this account as well, though he was not sorry to have heard this tale from John Neptune’s lips, from Uncle Francis Neptune’s mind, from some ancient grandsire’s memory. He considered his watch and was surprised how little of the day had passed.
“Did Thorkal and Assimiwando reach Norumbega?” asked Sundry. “Did the chief of the Vikings understand your grandfather’s message?”
The brilliant light of late morning fell crosshatched through the panes of the kitchen windows upon the floor and the table where Mr. Millwright had ceased to work, the weavings of the snowshoe in his lap splayed in the air like untied laces.
Uncle Francis Neptune was saying something in his ancient tongue.
“Those are other tales, with other meanings,” said John Neptune. “This is to tell you what the rock upon Council Hill says to the man who can hear the marks and scratchings of my grandfather.”
Rousing themselves, as from a lotus dream, the listeners found the great worm at Council Hill a persuasive memory. Sundry thought the worst of it was that he had no power to convey the tale properly to Mister Walton. He must come and hear it before the man is taken from us, he thought.
Uncle Francis Neptune was asleep, and they were not able to thank him, save through John Neptune, who would tell his uncle when he woke. When they stepped out into the day, Daniel Plainway said, “It’s a very tidy explanation, somehow, for why the runes cannot be read.” The sun hardly appeared to have moved since they entered the Millwrights’ home.
“What do you suppose was written on the other rock?” wondered Sundry aloud when they were back in the light of day. “The rock Thorkal wrote upon from Assimiwando’s instruction?”
“I would not want to follow those instructions, even now,” said John Neptune. “Assimiwando laid a curse in those runes, even if Thorkal wrote them down, and to follow them would be to follow a curse, I am sure of it.” They stood in the yard for a while, assimilating this wisdom. “Give my best to Mister Walton,” said the old Indian finally.
“He would want me to extend his, I know,” said Sundry, and shook the man’s hand with great affection.
“It has been a great pleasure,” said Daniel Plainway, “and a privilege.”
“Come again,” said John Neptune as Mr. Tolly shook the reins and the horses tugged the sleigh from the Millwrights’ yard.
“Even without the worm, you might find an explanation in his story,” said Sundry as they were crossing into Hallowell again. He glanced back at the long slope and the comer of Cobboseecontee Lake. “They were carved not only in some sort of cipher but by an untrained hand.” He glanced toward Mr. Tolly to see how he was taking this. “Of course there is the business about the worm,” said Sundry.
Mr. Tolly did not seem troubled by the worm. He nodded with the movement of the sleigh.
“What was it that you said in the barn?” asked Daniel Plainway.
Sundry raised an eyebrow but offered no reply.
“About the ox,” explained the lawyer. “Something your father says.”
“Oh. ‘She’ll bust her feeding.’”
“That was it.”
“Do you know what it means?”
“Do you?”
“It’s a word or a phrase,”said Sundry, “from Latin or Greek that my grandfather got from an itinerant preacher. Dad has no idea what it means, and he is woefully mispronouncing it, I am sure. But he likes the sound of it.”
“You know, I think I’ve heard something like it myself,”said Mr. Tolly.
“Have you?” Sundry was keen to know more about the phrase.
“Couldn’t tell you a thing about it, though.” The old fellow chucked the reins as they neared the peak of a long hill.
Daniel looked as if he were struggling to capture a tune that had gotten loose in his mind, and he remembered the man in the prison cell at the Wiscasset jailhouse. What had he said? I can hum anything that I have heard o
nce, but I have a great talent for not remembering the name of a tune. “She’ll bust her feeding,”said Daniel Plainway to himself several times. “Bust her feeding.”
“Tell me if you get it,”said Sundry when they topped the hill on Winthrop Street and could see the roof of the Worster House below them.
46. Unfinished Knitting
The kitchen at the Worster House was exceedingly indulgent with the Moosepathian appetite, and the founding members had made a mighty lunch of it by the time Mister Walton and Phileda arrived in the dining room. But here was company that Ephram, Eagleton, and Thump did not care to miss, and as the formal meal, served at one, was nearly prepared, they decided to stay on and do their best. In something of a heroic frame of mind-indeed, without even pausing for a deep breath-they approached the organized lunch with as much enthusiasm as they had the informal one.
It was not long before Mr. Burnbrake and Charlotte joined them, and the old man prompted an inventory of the people they were missing. “Mr. Plainway is not with us,” he said. “He hasn’t left, has he?”
This query was directed toward his niece, who looked unhappy with the thought. “I’m sure I don’t know,” she said. “I did see him with Mr. Moss this morning.”
“Where is Sundry?” wondered Phileda. “You haven’t been telling him terrible things about me, have you?” she asked of Mister Walton. Mister Walton laughed softly. “I don’t know any terrible things about you,” he said.
“But you would certainly warn him if you did,” she countered.
There was just the slightest prickliness to Phileda’s badinage since their brief words concerning Charleston Thistlecoat that morning, but Mister Walton was more alarmed than hurt by it. “Sundry is a good friend,” he said, with more ease than he felt.
Ephram, Eagleton, and Thump were nonplussed at the merest mention of anything terrible connected with Miss McCannon, and it took a smile from Mister Walton, who noted their concerned expressions, to inform them that a light jest was being made.
“Good heavens!” said Eagleton, and he laughed.
Thump and Ephram joined their fellow as understanding struck them. “Dear me!” said Ephram.
“I was sorry to be without our corresponding fellows of the Dash-It-All Boys,” said Eagleton, even as his humor subsided.
“Have they returned to Portland then?” wondered Mister Walton.
“To the Land of Ports, actually,” said Eagleton. “I believe the denouement of the snowball contest was troubling to them.”
“They were fine sports about it, however,” said Ephram.
“Sports is perhaps the proper word in their context,” said Mr. Burnbrake, who considered the Dash-It-All Boys suspicious, but turning to other things, he added, “I see the management has dressed the room up.”
The Yuletide was gaining command of the Worster House, and today the guests discovered the ceiling of the dining room draped from chandelier to four corners in garlands and greenery, and the table itself spread with a gay cloth in keeping with the season.
“No mistletoe yet,” observed Mr. Burnbrake, producing, he thought, rather a lack of response.
“It’s too early for mistletoe, Uncle,” said Charlotte quietly.
“I wouldn’t have thought so when I was a chip!” he returned.
Mister Walton glanced toward Phileda, as he might during any general conversation, but the ramifications of mistletoe unexpectedly embarrassed him, and as he blushed, he was startled to think that Phileda might think he was thinking of her in connection with this suggestive shrub. He looked away again, hoping that Ephram, who sat to his other side, might be of help.
Not only Ephram, however, but Eagleton and Thump as well were looking about, as if mistletoe might appear at any moment and demand satisfaction. Good heavens! thought Mister Walton. I am a member of the club, aren’t I! He returned his attention to his own place, smiling.
Ezra Burnbrake was not finished with his subject, however, or perhaps he felt the need to make the entire table blush, for even as Daniel Plainway was hurrying into the dining room, he began to sing in a wavery, if not unpleasant, voice:
The silver bowls and garlands gold
Bring wa’rmth to yuletide hearts!
But give me the bliss of the right to kiss
That the mistletoe imparts!
You’re welcome to take the poppy-seed cake;
Plum-duff and popcorn go!
Just leave me the treat of the loveliest sweet
Beneath the mistletoe!
“Uncle!” said Charlotte under her breath; but she was looking at Daniel as he neared the table, and her smile was enough in itself to bring the color to the lawyer’s face. Ezra Burnbrake looked from one blushing, brighteyed countenance to the other and chuckled quietly. There were no seats close to the Burnbrakes, and Daniel drew himself up beside Eagleton.
“And here he is!” said Mister Walton. Sundry caught an odd look that Miss McCannon cast after Mister Walton as the bespectacled fellow rose from the tale to greet him. “Did you see your friend?” asked Mister Walton.
“Yes,” said Sundry, “and I saw John Neptune.” He was interested in what had been happening while he was away, however, and did not elaborate. He was not unaware of something between Miss Burnbrake and Mr. Plainway and said, “Mr. Plainway went with me, and I’m afraid I kept him longer than he expected.”
“No, no,” said Daniel, yet he wished he could let Charlotte know that he hadn’t wanted to be late seeing her again.
“John Neptune!” said Mister Walton, looking wide-eyed through his spectacles.
Sundry looked from Mister Walton to Miss McCannon. Mr. Burnbrake looked from Daniel Plainway to Charlotte. Ephram, Eagleton, and Thump looked at one another. a chicken gumbo with oysters was served, and this gave them something to concentrate upon. Mr. Bumbrake hummed a bar or two of his song again, and Charlotte cleared her throat softly and gave him a pointed glance. At the table there was the sound, almost exclusively, of spoons in soup dishes.
Ephram wondered if some item from the paper he had read that morning might be of interest to the table, and he searched his memory for something appropriate. The uppermost headline did not seem to be conducive to table talk: a body had been discovered in Portland Harbor, and the authorities were still attempting, when the paper was printed, to identify it. The rest of the front page had been taken up with political matters, and since the papers of the day were unashamedly partisan, it seemed jupaper this morning,” he said suddenly, “that put me in mind of our friend dicious to stay away from these subjects. “I came upon a piece in the news Mr. Brink.”
“Did you?” said Eagleton, who was desperately glad for a subject to converse upon and not entirely certain why. “Yes, I did,” said Ephram. He looked down at his gumbo. It was really quite tasty! He had taken two or three more spoonfuls of the dish when it occurred to him that they might wish to hear more about the item in the Eastern Argus. He looked up to find the entire table waiting on him. “What was I saying?” he asked.
“The paper,” said Thump.
“Mr. Brink?” queried Eagleton.
“You were reminded of him,” helped Sundry.
“Ah, yes, thank you.” Ephram looked over the heads of the people opposite him (Eagleton and Thump looked as well), and when the item had returned to him, he said, “The author seemed to think that the night of the winter solstice was much the most favorable night of the year for the visitations of ghosts.”
“I should have thought Halloween,” said Sundry.
“That thought occrred to me,” admitted Ephram. “It is the length of the night,” said Ezra Burnbrake.
Thump was still looking over the people opposite, wondering what his friend had seen that had taken his interest.
“Is it?” said Eagleton.
“It is the longest night of the year,” said the old man. “My grandmother used to tell me that the spirits of the dead could come back one night a year, and as the winter solstice offered the
longest span between dusk and dawn, they would invariably return on that night.”
“Extraordinary!” said Eagleton.
“I don’t see it,” said Thump. He was still looking.
“I can see her now, her needles clacking as she spoke.” Old Ezra Burnbrake took in his niece at a glance. Charlotte had never heard the story, and interest was clear in her expression. “‘What do they do when they come back?’ I asked her,” continued Ezra.
“‘Oh, they finish things left undone,’she told me.’They visit folk they miss. Or they come back to see what’s happened to their people.’she was knitting a sweater at the time, a great long fishing sweater for my uncle Harding, who was her son. He was the tallest man in the town-this was in Stockton Springs, before it was even incorporated-and she’d been complaining good-naturedly about the amount of yarn going into that sweater.’Don’t think I won’t come back and finish this up if l die before it’s done,’she said, and she laughed, though I thought at the time she was half serious.”
In the dining room of the Worster House, the sound of spoons in soup dishes had quieted by now, and the talk at a table or two nearby had even dulled as Ezra went on.
“It wasn’t two weeks after that she passed on-rather unexpectedly, for she was a lively old girl-and I recall standing in the parlor after the funeral and peering into the cloth bag she kept by her rocker. There were her needles, still tied up with Uncle Harding’s unfinished sweater. a couple of days later Mother put the bag and the yarn and needles up in Grandmother’s room, and little more was thought about it till the following December.”
Mr. Burnbrake appeared to be enjoying the effect of his story, and he was so bold as to take a sip from the dish before him. “My, that’s good,” he said.
“Mr. Burnbrake,” said Phileda, “you are being very bad.”
The old man chuckled delightedly. “We thought little about it,” he said. “But in December, on the night of the twenty-first, Uncle Harding woke to a series of brief sharp sounds, as if someone were tapping at the window or idly banging one stick upon another. Mother said she heard it too but decided not to wake Father, who was snoring beside her; in between Father’s snores, when there was silence otherwise, she could hear it, and she was sure it came from downstairs. She fell asleep listening to it and thought in the morning that she must have been dreaming.