He picked her up and rocked her. It was the only thing that would reliably soothe her since her mother’s passing, and he needed her soothed now.
The time was close to midday; that was when Old Tuffet had called for the meeting to take place. Though it was, of course, highly unusual for Tuffet of all people to have called a town-wide meeting – the woman was an aggressive recluse at the best of times, and by now most anybody in town could tell you what it was like to be on the receiving end of one of her frantic, paranoid rants – nevertheless, the rules dictated that when a senior called for a meeting, everybody had to go. And this was a town where people followed the rules, even if it meant sometimes having to pay deference to an asocial crank like Tuffet. Still, few could deny there was a morbid curiosity to the prospect. What could she possibly have to say that was so important?
He shushed her, rubbed little circles on her delicate back with the pads of his fingers, swung her back and forth in his arms, and soon enough she was quiet, by the grace of God. He was a careful man, not only when it came to his family but in town life as well, and always highly conscious of embarrassment, for his daughter’s sake, now, more than his own. Few families knew better than his the way rumours could spread like wildfire from a single spark. Every man and woman in the town lived in the forests of their reputations.
This meeting was to be a big day for her, then; her first real entry into the ways of the town. Never before had she been around all its folk in the same place at the same time, and their eye of scrutiny would be on her as much as on anyone else. It would make no difference that she was barely a year old; people said that hers was the pure age, when the traits which would define a person for the rest of their life were at their most concentrated. Failure to abide by the decorum of a town meeting showed bad character. Naturally, he more or less agreed with that, but he also knew that if an infant was going to cry, she was going to cry.
He wrapped her in her sling in the correct way, taking extra effort this time to cover her ears so she might be able to sleep through the meeting. He wrapped her up until she could hardly be seen at all – except by him, whenever he glanced down to find her little face pressing against his chest, gazing up at him with her shocking blue eyes, her tiny, fat lips, her mother’s button nose. He kissed her forehead, then took up the satchel which he carried everywhere, making sure first that there was some milk left in her bottle, and some water in his flask – you could never be too careful. Then he slipped on his sandals and went outside.
Everyone was heading to the meeting. They came in droves all down the path and up towards the hill, people of all shapes and sizes, young and old, some talking, laughing, some just walking, each adorned in the special white robes necessitated by the occasion. To him, they appeared as a giant herd of sheep moving all together.
The sky above was a lush blue sea, and in the distance, waves of hills rolled out and away from the foot of the mountain further than the eye could reach. Looking around, Tuffet was nowhere to be seen; he thought she was probably already there, and looked to the top of the hill where the church hall stood, picturing her inside, sitting alone, waiting in silence for everyone to arrive. A few boys ran past, giggling and shrieking, ignoring their mother’s reproaches, and he placed a gentle hand over his daughter’s ears.
They were handing out peach tea at the church entrance, but he didn’t take any. As the crowd filed in he could hear the bustling and murmuring of those already inside. The hall was truly packed. Most people were sitting, but there weren’t enough seats to go around, and a lot of the adult men were standing, leaning against the walls, perching on the windowsills. Many of these were muttering to each other with their arms folded, pulling sceptical and impatient expressions.
A young woman sitting by the aisle on one of the back benches offered to give him her seat, but he declined, politely as ever. He wanted to be as close to the door as possible in case he needed to step outside unnoticed. While leaving in the middle of a town meeting would certainly be frowned upon, it would not be nearly as distasteful as staying put with a screaming baby – and with the hall this full, it would be hard enough already to get out.
When Old Tuffet took the stand, everyone fell silent. Immediately she began pacing up and down.
“Most of you don’t know me,” she said, “and the rest of you think you know a lot more than you do. You think I don’t know the things you say about me, the names you call me when you think you’re alone: witch, senile, madwoman, old crone. But I hear them all, even when you’re alone. Especially then. I know all of you. I’ve been here longer than anyone, and I know all of you, even better than you know yourselves. I’ve seen some of you grow up from children, so yes, I know you, each and every one, your secrets, your sins. I know where you go at night, what you do when you think no one’s looking – and that’s why I know that not one of you, not one of you can judge me. That’s why I don’t mind what you say about me, why I’ve let you go on saying it all this time, and doing it, sinning and keeping all your secrets. That’s why I’ve forgiven you.” She nodded. “So you can believe me when I say it’s the truth that I did not ask you all here today because I wanted to punish you. Not at all. In my heart,” – she put one hand on her chest – “I admit that sometimes I did want to – oh yes, I did – I can admit that. Pride is no stranger to me, no more than vengeance, and anger, and even bloodlust; yes, I can admit it. But today I want to say I have forgiven you all. And what’s more, so much more, is to have asked that He forgive you, as He has forgiven me, so that we all might be witness to what happens here today with eyes and spirits free from blindness, ignorance, and sin.”
While Tuffet had the stand, it would have been wrong for anyone to interrupt. But in this pause, Jean Morrow got to her feet anyway and put up her hand for attention.
“Does the speaker recognise Jean Morrow?” she said.
“No, the speaker does not. And for that matter the speaker will not recognise anyone else until the speaker has had her say. Until God,” – Tuffet jabbed a finger up to the heavens – “has had His say.”
Jean’s voice was kind, affirming.
“The Morrows have always been good to you, Nell. It isn’t right for you to – “
“She breaks the rules!” Tuffet screamed, the sound piercing the room. “You all saw, Jean Morrow is a rulebreaker! A sinner and a rulebreaker, just like the rest of you! I will not be silenced by the likes of you – not while I deliver His verdict!”
Jean Morrow sat down again. Everyone was looking at each other, wondering what it all meant – but from that point on, nobody else spoke.
Tuffet was watching the crowd with a glint in her eye.
“That’s right,” she said, “sinners and rulebreakers – and you all know it, don’t you? You know what He’s seen, because you’ve seen it for yourselves, in your hearts, and in the eyes of the mind. What you’ve dreamed up every night in your beds and your outhouses; disobedience; distorting His will. Thinking you know better. But you know nothing, nothing of this world, its… its terrible mysteries…”
He squinted from his view far at the back of the room. It looked like tears were winding down her wizened cheeks, reddening her eyes. She wiped at them hastily.
“That is why I’ve brought you here today: to show you. To teach you as I used to.”
A collective remembrance spread throughout the townsfolk. It was true: many decades ago, Nell Tuffet had been a schoolteacher here. No one there could quite remember exactly what had happened to change that reality; the idea seemed so incongruous now, a strange false memory. Yet suddenly she did begin to take on the manner of a teacher, straightening her back, crossing her hands.
“Today… today, I am going to tell you about something unknown to any of you, something, in fact, that almost no one knows – none but We lucky few – because to know it, you have to know God. You have to know God.”
She stooped over to rifle through her own satchel, which had been sitting at her feet.
“Yes,” she went on, “We; the chosen few whose spirits have been blessed by the touch of His grace, His light, the light that makes seers of the blind.”
She pulled something out of the bag, but he couldn’t see what.
“Drink your tea,” she said.
In one united movement, every single person who had received a serving of peach tea drank it. Even those who had already finished their cups raised them to their lips again to sip at the remaining drops. The forty or fifty others who had not taken any could only watch in amazement at the instant synchronisation of the crowd, unnatural in its order and perfection.
He clutched his baby tight and looked back to Tuffet. Now he saw what she had produced from the satchel, what she was presenting to the audience in her hands with reverence and pride: it was a goblet.
“Yes, my brothers and sisters, drink, and wash the mud and filth from your eyes so that they may see God’s will in all its glory…”
Tuffet pulled her head back and tilted up the goblet sharply, pouring its pale-yellow contents all over her face, her hair, her robes, and into her open, gulping mouth.
“Now you will see,” she sputtered through the stream, “now – now -”
All at once almost everyone was on their feet, shouting, braying, rules and decorum forgotten in a flash. He saw a burly man in a middle row shoving and elbowing his way to the aisle over old folks and children alike. He saw a mother shrinking in the corner, clutching her two children close to her, a look of utter horror plastered on her face. He saw the woman who had offered him her seat flail and cry out as the rear bench keeled over backwards, its wooden legs snapping, its occupiers suddenly spilling out onto the hard stone floor in a chain reaction of collapsing, writhing bodies. In no time at all the room had come alive with movement – but it took his eye a moment to understand that, somehow, there were really two groups occupying the hall now, and they had sprung into action for two very different reasons.
First, there were the forty or fifty who, like him, hadn’t drunk any of the tea; most of them were simply standing still and gawping, reacting to the chaos, trying to make sense of it. Then there were the Others – those like Old Tuffet, who was kneeling on the stand now, running her hands through her wet hair, and laughing – the Others, because yes, they were no longer the same as they had been moments before, that much was obvious. These Others were attacking the rest, pulling them back from the aisles and the walls by their robes, their feet, their hair, piling over them, swarming them.
He turned to the door. Right beside him, he saw a man running tackled onto the floor, kicking and screaming, by three others. He saw a jet of blood spraying into the air, splashing white robes red. There were sounds coming from all over; he thought they sounded like chewing.
He did not stop to check. Dashing at full speed past the ones on the floor, he leapt straight out of the door while, unbeknownst to him, many others behind piled out to flee the church in all directions with the Others in close pursuit. Some, they caught and dragged back through the door by clawing, bloody hands. Some made it to the forest which bordered the church, and disappeared among the murky trees. Some were pushed, or tripped, and fell straight down the great hill, and the Others threw themselves after them.
It’s a nightmare, he thought, it has to be, barrelling down the rocky path on sandaled feet in a kind of vaulting gallop, certain he himself would slip at any moment. He glanced down once to find his daughter looking up at him and giggling, as if it was all a game.
As he ran he saw them tumbling past on either side of him at great speed, blurred white shapes which grunted and cried with each bounce, followed by rolling red-and-white ones which did not. Though he couldn’t hear it, the Others were laughing, too.
He supposed he had meant to run home – not that rational thought had played much part in his escape so far – but as he approached the bottom of the hill he could see there were already too many of them to get by, perhaps seven or eight in total. While most were busy dealing with the people who had fallen down the hill, mounting them and shaking and mauling them somehow, as the full scene rushed into focus he saw with looming terror that one of them had locked its eyes right on him. No sooner had he noticed it than another one did the same. They were smiling. He was running straight towards them.
Time seemed to halt for a moment as he felt his body fold and his arms jerk up to wrap around the child strapped to his chest. It was trying to brake which ultimately made him fall, and now he was the one rolling, curled up tight with his eyes clamped shut to the spinning streaks of grass and mud that filled his view, every new bump yielding terrible impressions of his daughter’s bones breaking, her little head cracking.
It did not stop until his back hit something solid, which buckled with the impact, and he knew it was a person’s legs.
He opened his eyes.
It was one of them, fallen over now, but another was running up to grab his kicking feet; he screamed as the thing dug its nails into his ankle and dragged him closer. He thrashed and fought, and kept on kicking – he did not know what else to do – but his arms remained stiff, hugging the baby in defiance of the awful awareness that she wasn’t crying; why wasn’t she crying?
He tried to get a look at her face, but he couldn’t; the thing was still pulling, clawing at him, and as he kicked, he swung his head in pain and saw that the Other who had fallen over him just a few feet away was getting up now. It smiled again with dark blood dripping from its teeth and mouth.
Summoning as much force as he could bear, he shoved his right leg out and heard a sudden snapping sound as the Other let go. It yelped and rolled over backwards onto the grass, blinked for a moment at the broken sandal in its hands, then laughed, and held it aloft for the others to see.
He was up again instantly, sprinting away madly with one bare foot, running from their laughter, and somewhere in his periphery he knew that the people they had been attacking were getting up now too, their own laughs joining the rest in a rising, joyful chorus. He didn’t see, but instead of running, this time they walked after him.
When he thought he’d made enough distance – though hoped was more like it – he ducked behind the front wall of a house to check on her, and what he saw sank his heart.
She wasn’t moving. Her eyes were closed. He took her face in his trembling hands and pried her eyelids open – then let out a mad, hoarse laugh as she yawned once, and went back to gently snoring. She had slept through it all. Thank you, Lord, he prayed, thank you. He kissed her forehead.
He needed to think, and that was good, because thinking was all he seemed presently able to do. They must be coming for him – he knew they must be, but he dared not turn around to peer over the edge of the wall he was leaning against and risk being spotted. He had fled towards the western side of the town, not too far from his own street. When he saw the handmade mailbox standing on the front lawn, he realised the place belonged to the Sappers: Hope and Aaron. They had been at the church along with everyone else – sitting near the front, he thought – but he hadn’t seen them again after it had all started. After Tuffet had begun to speak.
He wondered whether the Sappers had drunk the tea or not. He wondered if they were still alive. He wondered how many the Others had caught, and how many had been like him, and gotten away?
But he hadn’t gotten away, had he? Not really. Not yet.
End of Part One
