Beguilers (4 page)

The whole of the night before I lay awake, listening to the soft wind that blustered through the peppernut trees outside my window. Now and then a warm, friendly breath of it nipped into the room and told me which direction it was blowing from. It had come across the dried-up marshes and become flavoured with water-rose, and after that it had come through the orchard and picked up all the scents of the fading fruit blossoms. I remember thinking how strange it was that the flowers of those trees smelled nothing like the fruit. Their scent was something you might drink, but never eat.

That warm wind which blew in across the marshes was rare. Some of the old people say that it is a bad omen. They say that the East wind pushes the rain-bearing West wind back on to the other side of the mountain and away towards the sea. It’s supposed to be dangerous to cross the pass in such conditions, because the two winds do battle there and might throw a traveller who got in their way out over the precipice.

No one believes it much, not these days. No one believes the other thing the old people say about the East wind, either, which is that it brings failure to all Great Intentions that are offered during its passage. But I couldn’t stop thinking about it, all through the night when I couldn’t sleep.

On the other side of the room Lenko was snoring like a family of buzz-bats. On another night, I couldn’t have stood it. I would have thrown a sandal at him or got up and pinched his nose. It was safe to do that at night because he never woke, just turned over and carried on sleeping. In the day-time it was different. Being the alleged cause of Lenko’s foul temper I was seldom allowed to forget it.

But that night he could snore to his heart’s content. There was no chance of me sleeping in any case. None at all. In a few hours it was going to be morning and, a few hours after that, it would be time to announce my Great Intention.

A
T THE MEETING EVERYONE
was exhausted, and before the proceedings had begun several of the younger children were already fast asleep. But I was far too nervous to relax.

The Intentions began; a bland repeat of last month’s meeting. It made my skin crawl. I wished that I had produced some worthwhile water scheme to prove that I wasn’t just a dreamer, and I was still wondering if I might give some explanation of my lines of thought when it came to my turn.

The priestess was standing there with her hands on her hips, looking up at me. I jumped, snatched the bone from the last speaker, and was about to stand up when I remembered that Great Intentions are always offered at the end of the section. I would have to wait until the boys had finished. I passed the bone and smiled weakly at the priestess, who looked at me a little oddly and moved on. But very few of my friends and relatives heard what the first of the boys had to say. They were all looking at me.

I didn’t dare look at my parents. It was unheard of to offer a Great Intention without consulting them. I could feel their eyes boring into me from the other side of the fire and I kept my face turned down. The voices around the hall droned on, the boys making the expected promises. I didn’t listen to any more. I looked down at my feet, noticing for the first time that my sandals were getting too small for me and wondering how long it was since I last washed between my toes. Temma was trying to get my attention but I refused to be drawn. I was suddenly tired, and sick of the droning voices. It was absurd to be here and making crazy promises. I wished I had stayed at home with the chuffie.

After a while my thoughts were interrupted by another silence, a longer one this time. I looked up, wondering what was causing it, and saw that the priestess had come back to me. My blood ran cold. Her eyes were worn and patient but not forgiving. I was already disrupting the meeting, even before I said what I had come here to say.

Someone pushed the bone between my rigid fingers. I stood up. My mouth felt dry and incompetent as though it were stuffed with a piece of old rag.

‘I wish to offer …’ The words sounded indistinct and distant. I cleared my throat and started again. ‘I wish to offer my first Great Intention.’

Foolishly, I allowed my eyes to slide round the hall and they met those of my mother. She was staring at me with a horrified expression on her face. Beside her my father had hidden his face behind his hands. I almost failed. I almost backed away and sat down again, but something else within me acted first.

‘My Intention is to spend as much of my life as is necessary to seek out and catch a beguiler.’

The clarity, the certainty in my voice surprised me as much as anyone else in the hall. The silence that followed was as heavy and as perfect as the first winter snow and, like the snow, it was both magnificent and terrifying.

‘You always want to be the centre of attention,’ my mother used to say to me. If it was true, if that really was what I wanted, I achieved it at that moment. But if I felt that it was glorious, that feeling was short-lived. The priestess nodded and turned her back. No one else in the village was announcing a Great Intention that day, so our section was finished. Beside us, in the young adult section, people were passing the babies from lap to lap, ready for their turns. I sat down and as I did so, my head felt as though it would burst. I didn’t look at my mother’s expression but I could feel it anyway, the way you know what a chuffie is feeling when you lie up against him. Her rage and shame were beaming across the fire at me. No matter what happened she would never forgive me for this.

I wasn’t sure whether I would be able to forgive myself, either. The spell of the beguilers had worn thin and any glamour or romance that I had associated with my search had dissolved. What I was left with was the stark and unnerving knowledge that I had just effectively cast myself out from the protection of the village. The day before I had been a slightly eccentric young woman, probably destined for the priesthood. Now, abruptly, I was mad, not to be trusted, and certainly heading straight towards my own doom. Some of the people would probably be relieved, believing that if the age had already claimed its beguiler-hunter then the other children of the village would turn out normal enough. What was harder for me to bear was the sympathy that others would feel. ‘Poor girl,’ they would say. ‘You would never have believed it, would you? She seemed so bright when she was younger. Never entirely normal, I suppose, but you wouldn’t have expected that she would go as far off track as that.’

The anger that these thoughts produced was probably all that kept me from melting into a quivering jelly right there in the hall. I didn’t know why, and it certainly didn’t make the kind of sense that it had before I started, but I had done it. Around me the meeting droned on, Intention after Intention, voice after voice. But I didn’t hear any of it; not one single word. The same thought was circling my mind, over and over again. I had taken the plunge and announced my Intention. Now there was no going back.

T
HE PRIESTS VANISHED QUIETLY
through their own door into the small room at the back where they would disrobe and return to the status of ordinary citizens until they were next required to work or give advice. The order of the hall broke up as families rejoined each other and neighbours gathered to gossip. I caught a glimpse of my mother moving in my direction but I stayed where I was. The others around me, those who had been my friends, moved away from me quietly, seeking a safe distance before beginning their exclamations of astonishment. Temma sat silently beside me in a sort of resigned loyalty. I appreciated it, small gesture though it was. You choose your friends after all but you can’t choose your family.

After a while, I saw my mother again and, as I had anticipated, her face was already drenched with tears. She had been waylaid by her best friend Meeta and one or two other women who were no doubt offering her their sympathy and advice. Already the village chuffies were beginning to arrive and gather round the small group, drawn by the unusually high level of distress. Meeta turned her head and shot me a look of vicious scorn which hit me with almost physical impact. She had been like an aunt or a godmother to me but there would be no more sour-blossom tea for me in her house.

I thought of making an immediate departure, and I might have done if it hadn’t been for old Hemmy who came hobbling across to me with the aid of her knobbly bullsback walking sticks. She stood at the bottom of the climbing tiers of benches, freed her right hand carefully from its stick and waved at me. At first I thought that she was making an angry gesture of some sort, her ancient equivalent of shaking her fist. I suppose that was all I expected from anyone. But it wasn’t that. She was beckoning me down to her. Temma nudged me in the ribs, thinking I hadn’t seen. I nodded and began to climb down.

People were making their way out of the wide, ornamented doors at the front of the hall. Those who passed me as I went down pretended that I wasn’t there or that they hadn’t seen me. It wasn’t particularly pleasant, but it was preferable to Meeta’s kind of response. Across on the other side of the hall I could barely see my mother for the shoving crowd of chuffies, driven frantic by the desire to get close to her and soak up her anguish. I looked down at my feet, suddenly aware of my tiredness and stress and the strange sense of disorientation that they were causing. The last thing I wanted to do now was to fall and make a fool of myself.

Hemmy’s hand was back on the stick. It had been quite a feat of co-ordination for her to balance on one, and I was intrigued to know why she had made such an effort to summon me.

‘Hello, Hemmy,’ I said. ‘Were you calling?’

‘Of course I was calling you, child.’

I smiled rather foolishly and waited. After a minute or two she said, ‘Didn’t you hear?’

‘Hear what?’

‘My Intention?’

I looked at her blankly, trying to imagine what her Intention could have been, apart from yet again preparing herself for her death. She scowled at me and raised her elbow in an unmistakable gesture. I took the bullsback stick from her right hand and linked my arm in hers. Then, slowly and painstakingly, we made our way out of the meeting hall and through the crowd that had gathered outside the door.

‘Gossiping,’ said Hemmy, purposefully loud. I kept my eyes averted but I could feel the attention that was coming my way from all those people. It made the hair tingle on my scalp.

We crawled on, Hemmy and I, every step a major undertaking. It was as though all her old joints were seized and she had to swing her legs along without bending anything. After each step she came to a brief halt, as though gathering strength for the next one, so when she actually did stop it was some time before I realised.

We had left the crowds behind and were standing in the middle of the market street. There were only two markets here a year, one in the spring and one in the autumn when people came from all over the area to buy our goods and to sell us those things that we couldn’t provide for ourselves. I always dreaded those times, mostly because the village filled up with chuffies looking for work, and although it made everyone in the area extremely good-humoured, it was murder for me with my allergy.

But that night the street was empty apart from Jeppo’s goat who cleared up the peelings from his fritter stall every day. Since he did a great trade with the porters who passed through, she was fat and sleek, her udder larger and fuller than any other goat in the village. She was dozing in the corner beside the closed shutters of the stall. I spoke to her while I waited for Hemmy to get her breath back, but she shook her head so that her long ears slapped together then stretched herself out on her side to ease her bloated gut.

I must have made an impatient gesture of some kind because Hemmy snatched her arm from me and reached out for her stick, which I wedged quickly under her hand before she began to topple. A buzz-bat zipped down and snapped up a nipper from right under her nose, but she didn’t even blink.

‘My Intention,’ she said, ‘was to give you a good start in your quest.’

My heart, which had been numb since my turn to speak at the meeting, came to life again. At least there was one person in the world who was on my side. I felt tears begin to heat my eyes and I swallowed hard. It was lucky for me that most of the village chuffies were back at the meeting-hall attending to my mother.

‘Well?’ she said.

‘Thanks, Hemmy.’

She began to totter forward again and I took her arm. As we made our way across the village to her house, people from the meeting overtook us on their way home, but no one spoke. It didn’t seem to matter to me any more that our journey took so long. Hemmy had stuck her old neck out for me and I was willing to do anything for her.

As we turned into her street a chuffie came bounding towards us. Risking her balance, Hemmy waved a stick at him but it didn’t stop his advance.

‘Shoo,’ she shouted at him. ‘Go away, you stupid beast.’

The chuffie lolloped up to us and turned himself round so that his rear end was right in front of Hemmy. She stopped and tried to hit him with her stick but she was too feeble to make much impression.

‘He’s the most stupid chuffie that ever lived with me,’ she said. ‘He wants to help me along and he has this idea that I can ride on his back. But whenever he gets near me he knocks me over and I have to lie there and wait until someone comes along to help me up.’

‘Why don’t you sack him?’ I said.

The chuffie looked at me belligerently.

‘Why do you do it?’ I asked him.

‘Kersnaffle hopple,’ he said.

‘Of course I can’t ride!’ Hemmy yelled at him. ‘I’m ninety-seven years old and my legs have seized up!’

‘Humph!’ said the chuffie, and trotted on ahead to open the door.

‘He can be useful at home,’ said Hemmy as we followed at her snail’s pace. ‘He brings in wood and water and he takes messages when he remembers them. He just can’t get it into his head that I have to take my time, that’s all.’

We walked a little further, then she said, ‘Besides. An old woman without chuffies is in great danger. There’s little else left in the world that can raise her spirits in the same way.’