Beguilers (6 page)

The shawl, blanket, whatever it was, disappointed me. I had expected Hemmy to produce some sort of magical items which would help me on the adventure, but I couldn’t see what use that grubby old thing would be.

‘It doesn’t look much,’ she said, ‘but you’ll wonder how you ever lived without it when you come to use it.’

‘Why?’ I said.

‘I have no idea. But the person who gave it to me told me that and I have no reason to doubt him.’

‘Who was that?’

Hemmy looked at me sideways as though wondering whether I could be trusted. Finally she said, almost like an admission, ‘Dabbo.’

I had succeeded in keeping his name out of my mind, but it seemed that I was going to have to think about him. He was legendary, the madman of the village. Even though I didn’t remember him at all, I felt that I knew him. Everyone in the village had stories about him. He wouldn’t talk to people, they said, only to chuffies and goats, with whom he preferred to live. He spent most of each year in some hermit hut up on the mountain and only came down, dirty and ragged, when the weather was too bad for him to survive up there. Then he would refuse to go into any house but stay outside with the yard chuffies. People said that he used to spend hours at night staring up at the mountainside, even in blizzards, and sometimes he keened or whined to himself and all the chuffies of the village couldn’t comfort him. He was harmless to others but a torment, it seemed, to himself. And he was, of course, a beguiler-hunter.

‘He left these things with me before he died,’ said Hemmy, looking back into the trunk. She pointed to a little coil of gut and I picked it up.

‘Is it for catching them?’ I asked.

Hemmy snorted as if I had said something foolish. ‘Don’t you know that there’s no rope in the world will hold a beguiler?’

I nodded, slightly embarrassed.

‘No,’ she went on. ‘This is to hold you. To catch yourself. Whenever you’re on the track of a beguiler and you find yourself in a dangerous place, tie one end of this to your ankle and the other end to a tree.’

‘That?’ I said. ‘But that would never take my weight!’

‘Leave it, then.’

I looked at the coiled-up string and knew that whatever I thought about it I wouldn’t leave it. I wrapped the corner of the yellow shawl around it and tied a knot, which seemed to satisfy Hemmy. But she was not finished yet. She stooped still further into the trunk, pulled out a sheaf of stiff, woolly-edged papers, and handed them to me.

I leafed through them. They were drawings, made in charcoal and green grub-wood ink. Most of them just seemed to be scribbles; dots and spirals and pairs of wild-looking eyes, floating in mid-air, like the crude scratchings that small children make. Only one of them resembled anything real. It was of a small, stone building with a flag-stone roof, standing on the brow of a hill. The detail was perfect, and it was hard to believe that it was drawn by the same hand that had produced the other chaotic sketches.

‘Did Dabbo draw these?’ I asked.

‘Hmm.’ Hemmy was still rummaging around in the bottom of the trunk, and at last she found what she was looking for. In her hand was a small leather bag like a coin purse. She rattled it and it made a sound like peppernuts knocking together.

I reached out for it, but she moved her hand away from me, behind her.

‘Not so fast. Can you follow orders?’

‘Orders?’ I said. ‘Whose orders?’

‘Anyone’s orders. Life’s orders?’

I was about to say that of course I could follow orders when some more honest inner voice intervened. It was not true. Following orders was one thing that I was particularly bad at. I regularly failed to succeed in my Intentions and resolutions which were, I supposed, my own orders. When it came to the things that other people asked me to do I had a strange attitude. My first reaction was always to feel indignant and refuse. Following that would be a reversal; I would feel guilty and bend over backwards to accommodate the person who had asked me the favour, but it was often too late. And as for life’s orders, that was self-explanatory. Would I be going off hunting for beguilers if I was a natural follower of life’s rules and regulations?

Hemmy let my silence run on until the answer to her question was obvious. Then she said, ‘Nor could Dabbo.’

I said nothing, looked at the wild drawings in my hand, thinking about how he ended up. After a while Hemmy went on, ‘He was a bit like you in some ways. Dithered about his Great Intention until he was nineteen, then went out into the were-woods and killed a snowbuck, to prove that he could. Although he hadn’t yet made a Great Intention, he was nevertheless a man. A year or so later he announced that he was going after beguilers and was gone from the village for more than twenty years.’

‘Twenty years!’

‘Yes. We all assumed that he was dead, but one night in autumn as the snows were beginning he came back. He was as thin as a broom handle; even the lice had abandoned ship, I think. My husband, Bream, had been killed in a landslide the year before, and since that left me with plenty of space and no responsibilities it was natural that I should take Dabbo in. No one expected him to survive, but he did, and as soon as the snows melted in the spring he set off again up the mountain. That became his pattern after that, to come back to the village during the worst of the snows and leave again after the thaw. He wouldn’t stay in my house the next winter and never did again, but we had become friends of a sort and he would visit me quite often.’

The water in the pot began to steam and Hemmy, who had been slowly straightening up as she told her story, now moved around the wall of the room towards the fire. She didn’t speak again until she had come to a halt and balanced herself. Then she continued.

‘Dabbo used to wear out chuffies like no one I’ve ever met. Even worse than me, he was.’

I looked at the exhausted creature on the floor and wondered how much longer she would stay. Hemmy had, indeed, had quite a succession of chuffies.

‘It’s just as well there’s no shortage of them,’ she went on. ‘Otherwise the village might have had to take action.’

She threw a small handful of eazle-corns into the boiling water and then began to crumble dried puffberries. It was one of my favourite brews. I shaved the sugar for her, then we sat back and waited for everything to infuse.

‘Where was I?’ said Hemmy. ‘Oh, yes. Dabbo. As I was saying, he used to come and visit me quite often. His mood was very changeable. Sometimes he would sit perfectly quietly, and at those times there was no point in talking to him because it was clear that he wasn’t taking in anything that you were saying. Then, at other times, he chattered non-stop. I don’t know how much of what he said was real and how much of it was made up, but it was during those times that he told me about some of his exploits with the beguilers and about these things that he had.’ She nodded towards the articles which I was holding in my lap. ‘He used to leave them with me when he was down in the village and collect them again when he went off in the spring. They were the sum of his possessions and they never changed. He was here in the village when he died, which is how I come to have his things. I’ve had them now for thirteen years, wondering what to do with them. That was why, when you announced your Intention last evening I quickly revised my own.’ She smiled, rustily. ‘I was going to say the same thing again.’

I laughed, struck by the absurdity of it. ‘You may be well prepared for your death by now, Hemmy, but I don’t think your death wants you.’

She nodded, the smile still on her face. I dropped the drawings back into the trunk and poured out the brew. I tried to wake the chuffie for her share but she was still a long way from morning.

‘You haven’t told me what it was you meant when you asked me if I could follow orders,’ I said.

Hemmy slurped her drink. ‘What Dabbo told me, or what I managed to gather from his rantings, is this. The shawl will never let the cold into you. The coil of gut will never be too short and it will never break. Those things are easy, he said. But what is not easy is the rule of the beguilers’ eyes.’

‘The what?’

‘That’s what fills the little bag, so he told me.’

‘Beguilers’ eyes?’ I said, with ridicule in my voice. I began to tug at the knot which secured the top of the bag but Hemmy said, with more urgency than I would have believed possible. ‘No, no! Whatever else you do, you must never open the bag unless you need to. That is the rule, the order that you must be sure that you can follow. Never open the bag unless you need to. Can you stick to that?’

It seemed absurd to me. ‘Why shouldn’t I?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Hemmy. ‘But Dabbo couldn’t. That’s what made him mad.’

A chill ran through my bones. ‘How do you know?’

‘He told me so. Or at least, I gathered it from some of the things he said. The first year he was back. He warned me about the bag.’

It was easier to be sceptical. ‘Maybe he was mad anyway?’ I said.

‘Maybe,’ said Hemmy. She finished the rest of her drink and then said, ‘Maybe you are, too.’

The chuffie groaned, disturbed by the changing emotions running through the room. I did my best to control my feelings. The poor creature had enough on her plate as it was.

As calmly as I could I finished my drink. Then I tied the little bag into another corner of the shawl, which I folded and laid across my shoulder.

‘What else should I take with me?’ I asked Hemmy.

The old woman shrugged. ‘It’s up to you,’ she said. ‘But remember. On this kind of journey you can never travel too light.’

M
Y WAY OUT OF
the village led past my house. No one was there, so I slipped in and went to the room I shared with Lenko. I was shocked to discover that all my things had already been cleared out, and for a long time I stood staring at my empty corner, unwilling to believe what I was seeing.

Until then, I suppose that it had all seemed like a game; a test perhaps, of myself and my parents. But now I knew that it was real. I had offered my Intention and separated myself from the family. They had, according to their duties under the Given Law, already removed all reminders of me from their sight. Whether they liked it or not, as far as they were concerned, I no longer existed.

My despair drew Tigo in from the yard. He snuffled around at my face and tried to wrap himself around my legs.

‘It’s all right, Tigo,’ I said. ‘I can handle it.’

‘Wopplecryst?’ he said.

I nodded, numbly. ‘I’m going,’ I said. ‘I just wanted to collect some things.’

He helped me search until we found my belongings, stuffed into two cloth bags in the winter coat-room. At least they were still in the house and the discovery lit a glimmer of hope in my heart. Despite the Law, some small corner of my parents’ lives still had room for me. Perhaps this separation was as difficult for them as it was for me? The priests could regulate their actions, after all, but not their feelings.

I emptied everything out and sorted through it, hampered continually by Tigo’s desperate efforts to cheer me up. I chose warm clothes and precious bits and pieces and put them into one of the bags. But as soon as I hefted it on to my shoulder, I knew I had chosen too much. I emptied the bag again and, after a long deliberation, decided that Hemmy had been right. I needed to travel light. I was starting a new life and couldn’t afford to encumber myself with the trappings of the old one. When I left the house, I was wearing my winter boots instead of my sandals, and my filled water-skin was slung over my shoulder. All the other things, even my snowbuck jacket, were back in the bags where I had found them.

The boots looked and felt ridiculous as I walked through the hot, dusty streets of the village. But I soon realised that it didn’t matter. As far as my community was concerned, I wasn’t even there. No one looked at me at all. I could have been wearing a pair of antlers and a tail; it wouldn’t have made any difference.

I couldn’t leave the village fast enough, but as I walked along the path which led to the hill-side I was plagued by reminders of all the things that I had grown accustomed to having at home, and needing. I had no food, no spare clothes, no bed-roll. I had no matches to light a fire and no pot to heat water in even if I’d had food to cook in it. Before I was out of sight of the village I was, despite the fur-lined boots, beginning to get cold feet. Very cold indeed.

I might have turned back if there had been anywhere to go. My heart was still heavy with the memory of what I had found at home, and I didn’t need any further confirmation of my ostracised condition. But I was about to get it, anyway.

Ahead of me on the path, coming in the opposite direction, was a small group of women who were bringing head-loads of firewood down from the trees. On another morning I might have been among them, bringing an extra load for one of the elders who couldn’t fetch it for himself. But today I was very much alone. I moved off the track on to the bank as they passed by, and not one of them greeted me or acknowledged that I was there. Not even the woman who was bringing up the rear. My mother.

Her eyes were cast down and her expression was hard and inscrutable. My heart went out to her, imagining her pain at having to deny me. But what I saw next changed my feelings abruptly.

A young chuffie bumbled along at her heels, full of enthusiasm and, quite clearly, bursting with pride at its new appointment. I was unprepared for the shock that its appearance created in me. Perhaps I was wrong about my parents’ sentiments. Perhaps they were only too pleased to be rid of me. Now, at least, our family could be like the others in the village.

I walked on again, trying to pretend that I didn’t care. But I did. The incident had been painful, but worse than that, it had made me aware of how utterly alone I was.

I saw a few other people as I climbed; some of the men and boys harvesting timber in the forest, a group of girls gathering twine-cane for making chairs and a couple of smaller boys cutting eazle-wood. I went over to them to ask for a piece because my teeth felt furry after the sweet tea, but they ran off, giggling. That made me angry. If I wasn’t mad yesterday, how could I be mad today? It made me want to prove to them all that what I was doing was as valid and purposeful as the way they had chosen to spend their lives, and for a while I strode on with renewed resolve.