Beguilers (17 page)

They abandoned their day’s work to accompany me home. The young apprentices ran on ahead with the news while I made my way more slowly back with the potters. They gave me some of the food they had packed for their midday meal and I ate as I walked, feeling my strength revive bit by bit. I knew I must look strange, but it no longer mattered to me. As we criss-crossed the neat terraces I took great delight in seeing the crops growing there, the way signs of order are always pleasing after times of chaos. I supposed that I would stay in the village, for a time at least. I could make some part of my living from my jub trees, and I would enjoy growing food now, or helping to. If that didn’t work out I might turn my hand to some other trade. My life seemed to be spread out before me like the rich parklands of the plain, full of potential. Anything could grow there; anything could happen.

I looked up, alerted by a shout from somewhere ahead. The apprentice boys were returning, racing hell for leather along the network of dusty paths. As I watched them approach, I saw that there was a girl among them, her hair flying behind her as she ran. It was Temma. She stopped a little distance away and stood still, searching my face. Then she shouted my name and flung herself into my arms with such vigour that I nearly lost my feet.

‘You’re back!’ she cried. ‘You’re back, you’re back, you’re back!’

Before I could reply, she was gone again, sprinting home to confirm the news, the apprentices hot on her heels.

When the potters and I reached the edge of the village, most of the inhabitants, including the chuffies, were gathered there waiting for us. The priests were standing with my parents at the centre of the wall of faces, but it was old Hemmy who came pushing precariously through to greet me first, wobbling on her sticks. I stopped in front of her, and before she spoke she looked at me carefully. Then she said, ‘You did it, didn’t you?’

I grinned at her in delight and winked. ‘I have a lot to tell you,’ I said.

‘Then you will come home with me and stay for as long as you like,’ she said. ‘My house is your house, and it will be your house when I am dead, if you want it.’

I hugged her warmly and looked around. My parents’ faces were tense; unreadable. Temma was tugging at my mother’s hand, pleading with her to come forward, but she kept glancing at the forbidding faces of the priests and seemed unable to move. My father was holding Jan in his arms. Jan was waving and cooing, but my father wouldn’t meet my eyes. I started to go over to them, but the priests moved forward and blocked my way. Their eyes were mistrustful, even hostile, but they didn’t disturb my calm. My journey had delivered me to truths beyond their imaginings, and neither they nor their dry old books could censure me now. One of them began to speak, but as he did so, something happened. He must have moved slightly to one side, and in the gap between him and his neighbour I could see along the street right through to the mountain wall at the back of the small plateau. The priest’s words were irritating, like the drone of a nipper beside my ear. What I was looking at was infinitely more important, but at first I couldn’t understand why. It was just the scraggy hill behind the village, that was all. I had seen it every day of my life and it had never seemed significant before. Then, with a flash of inspiration that made my head spin, I knew.

The priest was still talking, but I hadn’t heard a word he had said. I waited until the world stopped going round in front of my eyes, then held up my hand as politely as I could to stop him. Because I had realised during that dizzying spell of illumination that the stream which had carried me from the drowning pool must run down behind the steep mountain wall and right underneath the village. But in all the generations that people had lived there, no one had ever known that. I pointed at the spot that had caught my attention; a patch of greener vegetation hanging on to the crumbling earth. The stream must almost reach the surface there, and the roots of those plants must tap into it.

‘There is water there,’ I said. ‘There will be no more need for us to wear ourselves out at the drowning pool.’

The priests looked at me suspiciously, but most of the villagers were peering at the mountainside and discussing what I had said. They might never believe what I had to tell them about the relationship between chuffies and beguilers, but if I could prove that I was right in this, I would have a better chance of persuading them.

‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Why wait? Let’s get ropes and picks. We can work instead of talking, and if we find the water there, then you might like to hear about the other things I have learnt.’

The priests were glaring at me in fury. Behind them, the villagers muttered among themselves, some of their voices curious, others affronted at my presumption. I saw my father walking away purposefully, little Jan at his heels. Lenko had appeared and seemed to be arguing with my mother.

There was a murmur among the crowd and someone said, ‘But everyone knows there’s a spring up there. Why should we bother with it when we have all the drinking water we need in the well?’

‘It’s more than drinking water,’ I said. ‘There’s a stream running through there which will water our crops all summer long.’

The crowd was dissenting. I could see several people shaking their heads in ridicule. The most hostile of the priests was watching them, too.

‘Well?’ he said, looking directly at me but addressing the gathering. ‘Will you go with her, hunting water spirits this time, instead of beguilers?’

Someone laughed. Someone else made a feeble attempt at a beguiler’s howl. I sighed, becoming bored of the situation. If I had to go up there on my own I was perfectly prepared to do it. But the priest was warming to his game. He turned to the people now, a bemused expression on his face.

‘Oh, come on, now. Surely there’s someone here who’ll go with her?’

A high, reedy voice like a forest hen answered him.

‘I will.’

It was Hemmy. Much as I appreciated her support, the image of her swinging from the cliff face on a rope didn’t do much for my case. But she did command a certain amount of respect in the community, and a polite, if embarrassed silence followed her words. It was broken by a second voice.

‘And so will I.’

My father had returned. In his hands were a pick and a dimmock and a coil of rope hung over his shoulder. Behind him, looking round belligerently, was Lenko.

It was enough. The priest’s injunctions were lost in the swell of voices as the other villagers decided the matter. All at once, people were running for tools and ropes and in among them the chuffies were going wild with excitement.

As I set off towards the nearby fields, Temma caught up with me and took my hand. The eager crowd followed, but at the edge of the village I stopped and let them all pass, remembering old Hemmy and her difficulty in walking. She was still standing where I had left her, heroically fending off her young chuffie, who was trying once again to give her a ride. When she saw me looking she raised a wobbly stick and waved me away. I laughed, and was just about to carry on when I noticed another figure standing nearby, also waving to me. It was my mother, busy restraining my furious little brother. I wanted to run to her; to forgive and be forgiven, but Temma was impatient to be on the move. I waved back. She would still be there when I returned.

The sun was already heating the surface of the ground and I noticed that my other boot had gone missing as well. I must have lost it in the drowning pool or the racing stream. The shawl was gone too, and the coil of gut, and the bag of beguilers’ eyes had been dispossessed of its magic promise. There was nothing left now of the things I had started out with, except for the empty bag. I would have nothing to hand on to my successors, if there ever were any. Perhaps there wouldn’t be? Perhaps the things that I had learned would put an end to beguiler hunters? But as I walked between the parched fields with Temma I knew without doubt that there would always be people like me; one or two in each generation.

If it wasn’t beguilers that they sought, it would surely be something else.

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2001 by Kate Thompson

Cover design by Michael Vrana

978-1-4804-2423-4

This edition published in 2013 by Open Road Integrated Media

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