The Fiends in the Furrows

by David Neal

  At that moment, he heard the quiet murmur of voices drifting up. Others from the village had gathered and were joining them for the hedging. Anna was not amongst them. “Go,” he said to Erik. “Go and fetch your mother. Tell her she must attend.”

  Erik did not hesitate. He was learning. A good boy. Or perhaps he just wanted his mother.

  Lem stood at the front of the group, a relieved expression on his face at the sight of both his sons even though this changed to one of concern when Erik ran past him.

  “Family,” said Johnny. “This is a time for family.”

  Lem moved up to the gap. “Have you decided?” he asked, his shaking hand snapping a piece of the discarded wood.

  “Yes. We need to repair and reinforce. The weakness on this land has been building for too long. Your father and brother caused it and you allowed your sons to follow their path.”

  Lem rounded on him angrily. “I did no such thing. You took my father when I was a child. You forced me to witness his sentence. Do you think after seeing that, I wouldn’t take heed of Hweol’s laws?”

  “Not consciously, perhaps,” said Johnny. “But enough now to endanger us all. This land does not live by outside laws. We are left alone. And you prefer that, don’t you? To be left alone?”

  Johnny knew there would be no answer. They were all aware of what went on beyond their borders. Taxation, crime, poverty, war. None of that affected the people of the Weald. They were able to continue their lives autonomously, bound only by Nature’s cycle. Almost an invisible world, outside minds slid over what they saw, blurred into nothing. But more and more Johnny sensed the pressure against their borders. External influences infiltrated the land via devices which shrank the globe to a cell, allowed instant communication. He could see the appeal to a younger generation, understood the need to explore but they were also needed here. Each generation served and turned the Wheel of Nature. If they left, if they were allowed to escape there would be nothing. Hweol would not permit that and nor would he. There was a movement amongst the crowd. It parted to allow Anna and Erik to make their way to the front.

  Johnny stood quietly for a moment, took in the faces of everyone present, his gaze meeting the eyes of all. They were being noted, a census of a kind. They understood and remained respectfully silent.

  “Sometimes it is necessary to re-establish the maternal bond with the land,” he announced. “The mother is the bringer of life, the protector. It is she who wraps her arms around her family, defends them from attack.” He took Anna’s hand in his as he spoke. It felt small and soft but there was a firmness there and he could sense the strength running in her blood. “You did what you had to,” he said to her, “for your children. Do you regret any of it?”

  The tiny woman—no more than a bird, really—seemed so fragile, an appearance belying the iron within. “No. If it meant I kept my sons from Hweol’s influence that bit longer.”

  A mother’s answer.

  “Lem?”

  Her husband stepped forward. “I disagreed with some things, but…I like a quiet life. Perhaps I am to blame for all this.” He was standing up straight. “I have, and always will, serve Hweol. As the head of the family, I am the one who must be punished.”

  A father’s—and a husband’s—answer.

  Out of all of them, Lem was the only one who truly knew what was to happen and he stepped forward willingly. But that was not enough. The land needed more than the young. This time it needed nurturing, a mother to look after it. Johnny shook his head. “A noble gesture,” he said, “yet one I cannot accept.”

  The air shifted, shimmered so he could see the Otherworld wrap itself around them, saw the shadows of the woods and the path, the canopy beneath which Hweol still stood, his company of Hunters at his side. The Wheelborn saw them, too. Murmured and moved closer together. Such a gathering had not been seen for a long time. The hedging had taken on new importance.

  “We gather,” cried Johnny, still holding Anna’s hand, “to renew weakened borders and protect our family. We gather to honor and protect the land that has fed us for centuries. The land needs its mother, is crying out for its mother…”

  He tightened his grip on Anna as he detected the first flutterings of fear. He moved closer to the hedge, pulled her with him. “You protected your children,” he said with a smile. “That shows you have strength. I was going to take one of them, as you knew when I arrived, but…I am a charitable man. I will take you in their stead. If you wish.”

  Now he could sense the terror rising in her, watched her turn toward her children, her husband. She had wrought this, even though others had started it. She had allowed the border to continue to weaken by her misguided actions. The consequences now were hers.

  “I am Hweol’s.” She said eventually; there was nothing else. Her eyes had emptied and she no longer looked at any face beyond, was taking herself away into some small corner of her mind where she could separate herself from everything to come.

  He was satisfied. She had good limbs, a mother’s arms. He nodded at Lem, who lined his sons up in front of him.

  “You must watch,” said Lem, his voice shaking at first until his wife gave him one last look before she allowed herself to vanish completely. He rallied, his voice steady once more. “This is Hweol’s will and you must learn it. Understand that and you will survive and live long.”

  “Mother!” All three sons called out to her, lambs bleating in the wilderness.

  “You cry for your mother,” said Johnny. “But there is no need. She will always be with you. You will watch and you will learn.”

  The world around them had dimmed and now all stood in the between place, the fine line between the real and the Other—although in the Weald who could tell which was which. The creatures of the Other moved closer, surrounded the Wheelborn, who watched only Johnny. He felt the pressure build, the sense of expectation rise, excitement in one world, dread in the other. Rarely was the hedging female. He moved the unresisting woman further into the gap, positioned her where she could be woven with the tendrils now reaching out to her.

  First, he would capture her voice. The tip of his billhook sliced into her throat, and she sang out in pain. He withdrew the blade, let her sing a little longer, her ballad of blood nourishing the earth at her feet. And whilst she sang, three of the onlookers came forward and calmly dug a shallow trench around her. Into this bed Johnny lay the vocal chords when they were done singing and the eyes when they became sightless, the ears when they became deaf. Then the displaced soil was returned to its home and the hedging continued. His blade stripped cloth from flesh, flensed flesh from bone, the last becoming a reverential ceremony, religious and holy. Anna’s blood carpeted the land and now Johnny honored the ivory of her, teasing out bone, gently pressing it into its new home, splicing wood and bone together so they united in a communion of sacrifice. First was the scapula bridge, woven into the height of the framework, then it was the turn of the arms, the sturdy humerus stretched to help the skeleton hang freely whilst he placed each bone. And against the backdrop of his work he could hear the sobbing of her children, the song of approval from Hweol. The boys thought him a murderer but soon their mother would speak to them once more and they would understand.

  “Can’t I take them home?” asked Lem, his voice choking.

  “No,” said Johnny without turning his head. “They must witness this. It is law. They have heard her sing one song, they must stay to hear her sing another. Sons must listen to their mother.”

  He heard a slight rustle as Lem retreated, still hushing his younger child and failing to still his weeping. Johnny turned back to his work. Gently he placed the skull between the feet. That would be gifted to Hweol. The mother would serve in both worlds.

  Delicate carpal bones and phalange-tipped hands gripped unformed shoots, the rib cage opening up to embrace creepers already shyly approaching this newcomer to their home. Johnny continued to work respectfully, weaving a lattice between old and new,
creating a trellis of skeleton and wood. Pubic bones formed a cradle in which life would once more be enveloped, a reformation of the womb. Femur and tibia provided a forked base, pushed into loosened soil, each nicked with the edge of his billhook to allow other saplings to graft and mesh with them. Young branches began to writhe and dance around the new framework, coating the body with a new dress, a robe provided by Nature herself. The whole hedge seemed to come alive as the last of Anna’s bones were embedded and melded to the existing wood. A sigh ran around him, the pressure lightened. He could feel the strength return to this place of crossing. They had pushed back against the Outside and the Weald was safe once more.

  Johnny glanced down at his hands, raw from his work and the cold, caked in dirt and sap and dried blood. He held them out to Anna’s children. They moved forward, unwilling, but obedient.

  “Come closer,” he said. “Listen to wood and bone.”

  Closer still to the hedge they went, heard a gentle voice singing a lullaby, just as it had when they had been babes.

  “She didn’t suffer,” he said softly. “And she isn’t suffering now. Here she is still your mother, has become a mother to us all. You must tend this borderland. Feed it, nurture it. She is doing this for you. You must do this for her. Do you understand?”

  Solemn expressions nodded at him. The grief etched on their faces tinged with acceptance and understanding. They would not leave the Weald. A tie had been made. This was the way of the land, the way of the Mother.

  *

  The nights hung in smoke and spilled drinks. The myriad of recollections and rotting futures fighting their way through the haze, those stagnant points like great pinnacles of ice hanging overhead, they couldn’t get to him there. It was only in the blare of early mornings that things started to get bad again. Some stain on a coffee cup, or a hole in the wall, they would get their hooks in deep, they would split the blinds to let him know that they were still there. A restaurant passed would pummel him with a thousand pellets of reminiscence. The lines dragged into his mind held fast, the perpetual shiver in his gut nagged of what couldn’t be fixed and what would never be built.

  That first time, hunched over the counter with a thick coat of smoke on the inside of his mouth and a tear in his jeans, that was when a splash started to find its way into his coffee. It was just a little nip, just enough to clear the head he told himself, but how it grew. The night sky, out there with its cool breezes and softened lines, would feel eternally distant while those four half-walls penned him in, and he would put in a few drops more. Some old acquaintance, some face lost in the split that he most likely hadn’t cared about anyway, would cross his path on a morning thick with evaporating dew, and he would need a big sip right from the bottle. But still, it was the physical things that drew him to those dangerous places the fastest, the most malignantly. That was when he pulled the bottle tightest.

  He stuck to the places with the red light, they were the easiest to swim through. The easiest to trick himself away from the path in. The easiest to lose Laura in. He would rub at the grooved line that ran around his finger, and the red light would hide how pale the stripe still was. Three months after and he had only let it see the sun again two weeks earlier. Would the groove ever go away? Ten years is a long time. A lot of things change forever in less time than that. Someone lit a cigar at his side, a cheap stub of tobacco that always smelled like an old litter box to him, and his lit a cigarette. Life was full of little ways to hold back a tide.

  Work was a problem, but at least it served as an occasional distraction. What the hell would he do with two weeks?

  He tripped onto the landing where the stairs turned, and crawled a few steps before remembering where he was and pulling himself to his feet. Maybe he had had a drink too many a few drinks before. The slot shifted and danced before his key and he closed both eyes and took a breath before steeling himself enough to open one and try again. He choked the handle, locked his knees, and ground the key against metal until it hit the target.

  * * *

  “So, what are you going to do with your vacation?” Mark asked.

  “Is that what we’re calling it these days? Because I’m pretty sure that Tom said, ‘Joe, I don’t know what’s going on but you’re fucking up. Take a couple of weeks to get your head together and, when you get back, we’ll take it from there.’”

  “I mean, was he wrong?”

  Joe put the mug down on Mark’s table, Mark’s mug on Mark’s table. Like it or not, he couldn’t, and shouldn’t, forget that. He was a guest there until he could ‘get back on his feet’.

  “I…Shit, I don’t know,” Joe said. “I guess not.”

  “Can you use a coaster?” Mark said, and waited for him to slide one under. “So, what’s your plan? You can’t just mope around here until you can go back, worse off than when you started.”

  “Wait, I can’t—”

  “You know that’s not what I meant. It’s just that, maybe, just maybe, getting out of town for a bit might help. It is technically a paid vacation, why don’t you treat it like one? Get something good out of it.”

  “I don’t know, maybe I’ll head back home for a bit.”

  “Thrill a minute, aren’t ya?”

  “Haven’t been there in a while, and, well, I can’t think of anywhere else.”

  “Whatever works for ya. When are you thinking of going?”

  “No time like the present, huh?” Joe took a big gulp of coffee before setting it down to the side of the coaster.

  “Tell your pop I said hi.”

  Joe went through the dresser in the little blue room that he was staying in. A dresser, bed, and a cramped, tiny table in the corner, that was all that he had but luckily that was all that would fit. Three pairs of jeans, four shirts, and a week of socks. He emptied the drawers into his bag, took a sip from the bottle of whiskey before wrapping it in one of the shirts, and zipped the bag shut. Glancing around, it was like no one lived there at all. It wasn’t a room for living; it was one for waiting.

  The air trembled with heat and motion as he left the darkened tunnel of the subway and stepped onto the sidewalk. Bundles of bodies in suits or t-shirts talked in a jumbled mess as they strolled or stood in the bus exhaust and honking cabs. Music blared from the endless strip of restaurants and shops, all competing to be the loudest, the most noticeable in a truly mediocre mob. It took Joe a minute to take it all in before his nerves calmed and he made his way towards the train. The constant, unrelenting assault on his senses whenever he was downtown, it had become a weight over the years. Did he really want to leave this, just to go to New York, the same thing on an infinitely grander scale?

  The question was on a quick loop in his mind as the bell jangled. He took the short step up, and entered the train station coffee shop. It was all smells—coffee grounds, baked sweets, perfume, and wet dog—a consumer fog, all hot and damp. The woman in front of him took a step forward, and so came the quick, jostling sound of suit pants, briefcases, and light jackets like the false-starting of a worn-down steam train. An ancient man hobbled back, with the transparent hint of remnant hairs across his liver-spotted scalp, nudging between the tables as he made his tenuous way toward the door. Some dull jazz, or maybe something foreign that he didn’t know, was playing at the head of the line. Calla lilies were fading to the same shade as the wallpaper’s background, with buckshot thumbtack-holes scattered all through their delicate, spiraling petals. The espresso machine gave off a mean hiss and, for no real reason other than to have something to seem occupied by, he pulled one of the pins, took down the business card for a real estate agent, and pushed another hole into another flower.

  Joe slid the card beneath his nail, cleaning the invisible grime that he knew hid somewhere deep and hoping that he would make his train, as a shadow fell over his hand and a new smell came to him. It was roses, and vanilla, and cool, vibrant growth somewhere far from man. He pulled his eyes up just in time to meet hers as she passed. They were g
reen, but a green that he had never seen, like a mile-deep emerald, or some deep-lit sea from someplace with cleaner waters than he knew, flecked within that deep field, jagged slivers of crimson floated and seemed to glow in their brightness. Around her neck, a tight band of black and burnt orange was tied. She approached the corkboard by the door, pulled something from her bag, and pinned it into place.

  There was a slight twinge of guilt, that second guardian that gave him a step-from-the-high-dive discomfort whenever he felt anything in another woman’s stare. His morals had yet to read the divorce papers it seemed, didn’t know that those guarded days had burned to ash. Some dance music, just memorable enough to leave a shadow through from the mid-nineties, was playing as he waited for his Americano. Water dripped from one calcium-coated tap and the creak-creak of one of the chairs was only rivaled by the sniffles of some summer cold. Joe dropped a dollar into the jar, pressed back through the crowd, and only just let his curiosity stop him before he made his way out onto the sidewalk. On the corkboard, alone save for a yellowed ad for guitar lessons, was one shining placard pinned and swaying from the corner. He slipped it into his pocket, rolled the thumbtack in his fingers, and replaced the real estate card with its bent corners.

  VISIT HISTORIC BERNARD MILLS!

  Rustic Life—Historic Tours

  Seasonal Festivals—Family-Friendly Activities

  Only minutes from beautiful Hammonton

  and Cranberry Hill Observatory.

  la Fête Faucon

  Summer Festival | August 21st–23rd

  GET AWAY AND BREATHE

  He read and reread the lines as the train rolled on, his unused ticket to New York pressed between the pages of the paperback at his side. Through the grime-spattered windows, wooded backyards and suburban streets grew more sparse, chain-link fences replaced by rows of vegetation that raced toward the horizon, lawn mowers grew to mammoth, rust-blemished tractors. Weathered and burned backs arched over blueberry bushes, nimble fingers plucked and dropped, plucked and dropped. Joe pulled the bottle from his bag and took a hit as the intercom announced that they were approaching his stop.