Monsters

by Peter Cawdron

  It was a beautiful day outside. As they walked out into the warmth of the sunshine, a couple of young dogs played in the overgrown weeds. They pounced and snapped at each other, rolling over and growling.

  “Aren’t they cute?”

  Bruce tried to force a smile like hers, but the concept still jarred his mind. “As cute as little carnivores can be.”

  They returned to the village that afternoon and arranged to marry in the spring.

  Throughout winter, Bruce ventured from his farm in the hills down to the village to visit Jane. He braved the cold, the storms and the monsters to be with his fiancée, and that drew Jane even closer to him. She told him he was silly, crazy to be taking such risks, but he assured her they were calculated risks, that he'd meticulously planned out all the possible routes, that he carried survival equipment and only ever traveled when the cirrus clouds high overhead spoke of fair weather.

  Jane asked Bruce to stay in the village. He had nothing to prove, she said. He wouldn't admit to the pride involved, and yet it was there. He was showing off as he courted her, but he couldn't admit that to himself even when she tenderly pointed it out. Jane told him there was nothing more he needed to do to win her heart, and yet his instinct said otherwise, and so he braved the winter.

  Jane taught Bruce to read. He was a quick learner, eagerly devouring books and content to listen to Jane read aloud those books that were beyond his grasp.

  Her father was supportive, although he'd never bothered learning to read for himself. During a particularly windy snowstorm, old man Smith asked Bruce, “Why read?”

  His question took Bruce off guard. Bruce had been helping out on the forge for most of the day while Jane baked upstairs. The two men had talked about so much as they worked with the glowing red steel, talking about everything from his background in the militia to his hopes for the farm. On retiring for the evening, Bruce had been bringing in firewood when the old man asked, “Why would you bother to learn to read when Jane can read for you?”

  “Well,” Bruce replied, thinking about it for a moment. “That's a good question.”

  Jane was quiet. Bruce looked over at her, noticing she was struggling to suppress a smile as she stirred a stew over the fire. She clearly wanted to hear what he had to say.

  “I guess it's personal. Reading is something you do for yourself.”

  “Does that make it selfish?” asked the old man.

  “No,” Bruce said. “At least, I don't think so. Reading is solitary. A writer may control the words on a page, but what those words mean is up to the reader. It’s all about context. Writers may control the context within a novel, but they cannot control the context of life in which a book is read. Life has its own twists and turns. Writers don't make a book great, readers do. No two people will get the same thing out of the same book. They'll both see something different, they'll take something different away from it, and what they take with them will enrich their lives.”

  The old man mumbled something under his breath. Jane couldn't help herself, Bruce could see that in her smile. Jane had to jump into the conversation. She must have been trying to get her father to read for years.

  “Think of the most beautiful flower you've ever seen, Papa. You could describe it to someone else, but until they see it for themselves they'll never really know quite what it's like. The same is true of books. You have to read them for yourself.”

  “A man should be tending the fields,” her father said. “Planning for the future, not dreaming about the past.”

  “My dreams are only of the future,” Bruce said.

  Jane wiped her hands on her apron and began dishing up dinner. She must have sensed this wasn't going anywhere as she changed the subject and started talking about the wedding. The following day, once the storm lifted, Bruce insisted on returning to his farm.

  They married in spring, with wildflowers dotting the countryside.

  The villagers remembered how Jane had been attacked by the wild dog and survived not only the attack but the possibility of contracting rabies. They took the couple's nuptials as a sign of a good year ahead. The mood of the villagers was raised further by light rains on the day Bruce and Jane married: a good growing season lay ahead.

  Bruce and Jane spent their honeymoon in the library. Shakespeare and Sherlock left presents for them, a fruit cake and a copy of Carrying the Fire, the story of Michael Collins' exploration of space in the Gemini and Apollo spacecraft. Bruce was fascinated by the concept of traveling to the Moon, the thought had never crossed his mind before, but now he was electrified by the idea. Jane half-heartedly complained, saying she'd have preferred something by Charlotte Bronte.

  “Tell me about them,” Bruce said, cuddling Jane as they sat on the leather bench seat inside the top floor of the library.

  “Who? Shakespeare and Sherlock?” Jane asked. “I don't know any more than you do, other than that they're older than me. Or, at least I assume they're older. I don't really know. But they've been coming here longer than I have. We exchange notes. Nothing of any real substance. We're not supposed to even do that, but I can't help it, and I suspect they can't either.”

  “It must be hard,” Bruce said. “Not being able to talk openly with the only people you feel you can really trust, those that share your passion for reading.”

  “It is,” Jane replied. “Whenever I come here, the first thing I look for is a note in the ledger. We treat it as a diary of sorts, cataloging our fleeting correspondence. Most of the comments are general, not directed at anyone in particular. They're notes about incursions by hunters into the city, circulating books between locations, a list of the books someone has borrowed and when they'll return them, stuff like that. But, occasionally there's something personal, and that's nice.”

  “Don't you think we're a little exposed?” Bruce asked. “I mean, how many other people in the territory got married this spring? There can't have been more than half a dozen at most. If they figure out the village we came from they'd realize there was only one marriage, ours.”

  “They wouldn't betray us,” Jane said, quite adamant in her assertion.

  “You don't know that.”

  Looking in her eyes, he could see she knew he was right. “They wouldn't want to, but no man can tell how he'll bear up under torture. Just be careful, Jane. Don't say too much.”

  Jane's head drooped slightly as she nodded, agreeing with him.

  “So,” he continued. “If they've got elaborate names like Shakespeare and Sherlock, what's my nickname going to be?”

  “Oh. You don't get to choose your pseudonym. It gets chosen for you.”

  “Really? So what's mine?”

  “Promise you won't get mad?” asked Jane.

  Bruce was silent and a little nervous. He didn't want to promise anything. His curiosity was getting the better of him and he gestured to her with his hands, prompting her to carry on.

  “You're The Cat.”

  “The Cat?” he asked.

  “The Cat in the Hat.”

  Bruce laughed. “You told them, didn't you?”

  Jane smiled sheepishly.

  They spent three days at the library. Bruce was curious about the town so Jane took him for a couple of walks with the dogs, using them for protection and early warning about any predators in the area. They explored the surrounding factories and rundown houses over several days, collecting trinkets and anything that might be of some value. After that they returned to his farm and settled into married life.

  The farm stretched out over almost five square miles and would have been impossible to manage alone, but several other families on the outskirts pitched in to help for the right to catch insects in the fields and share in the harvest. During spring, they could be seen in the early evening, walking through the new growth of wheat and barley, swirling poles around them, catching crickets and grasshoppers in their vast nets. With cockroaches reaching the size of a man's foot, and the largest grasshoppers being the size of a man's
hand, they were good eating, providing plenty of protein.

  Bruce preferred his roaches deep-fried in vegetable oil, but Jane was more economical, boiling them and making mash from the leftovers. Dried crickets would keep for months on end, making them ideal for a snack-on-the-go. Although the summer harvest of crickets tended to go a little moldy through winter, they were still edible well into the following spring.

  Bruce would bring in hired help for a month or so at a time, but he was hard working and tended to shoulder more than his fair share of the load. He had one beehive, on a hill in the northwest corner of his farm. It was well fortified, as much to keep the bears away from the main homestead as it was to farm honey.

  Spring tended to bring the bears, but they quickly learned there was no easy meal to be had and would return to the forest.

  The hive was located in a small thicket of trees on the brow of an exposed hill. Like everything on the farm, it was the result of generations of work being handed down.

  Deep pits had been carved into the rocky ground and lined with spikes to deter any critters from raiding the hive. Being exposed, the winter winds tended to keep the snow from building up within the trench. Drainage channels allowed the spring thaw to wash away.

  Bruce would swing a drawbridge across the moat to reach the hive, using smoke to keep the bees subdued when harvesting honey. He'd once snagged a bear cub that had fallen into the pit and impaled itself. The bear skin lined his cabin wall, taking a place of pride among his possessions.

  The bees were the size of his palm. If they got beneath his heavy clothing, a sting could ache for weeks. Depending on the health of the colony, Jane would have him bring back honeycomb with immature larvae as a special treat, but Bruce didn't like to weaken the hive. Jane thought they should have more hives but for Bruce, honey was secondary produce. There was more money in wheat, if he could keep the locusts at bay.

  If a mild winter passed, Bruce would switch tactics, planting only a thin crop, knowing the locusts would come in strength and decimate the fields. Instead of focusing on wheat that year, he'd plant just enough wheat to draw the locusts in to the area and would use the empty silo as a trap. The smell lured them in. One year, before his father passed away, Bruce caught thirty tons of locusts in a single season. Unfortunately, some of the capture spoiled before he could prep it for the markets, but he still made more that year than he did from both wheat and barely the previous year.

  Although the southern markets were almost thirty miles from his farm, Bruce and Jane made the journey down to the village of Amersham several times a year, if only as an excuse to follow up on Jane's father.

  After a couple of years, Bruce was starting to read some of the classics, but his interest lay with the newspapers and the fleeting glimpses they provided of the Fall. Life had never been so good, at least from his perspective.

  Jane was melancholy. As spring bloomed and color returned to the landscape, with wild flowers dotting the fields and birds singing to fill the days, Jane remained moody. Bruce knew something was wrong.

  “What's troubling you, Honey?” he asked, as they sat outside their log cabin in the early evening. Streaks of pink sat high in the stratosphere. Sunset cast long shadows on the ground, lighting up the sky in golden hues.

  She turned to him rather absently, still processing what he'd said. Jane paused before speaking, and he could see she was weighing her words.

  “I can't lie to you, can I?”

  “Nope,” Bruce replied, smiling. “You're a terrible liar anyway.”

  “I'm too slow off the mark,” she confessed.

  “You think too much. You over complicate things.”

  Jane sighed, leaning against him as he put his arm around her.

  “What could be bothering you on such a beautiful evening?”

  “I'm not with child.” It was an awkward sentence, which surprised him. That alone spoke volumes, revealing a glimpse of her inner torment. For someone so eloquent, with such an appreciation of English literature, it was a guttural, coarse statement, baring her soul.

  Bruce pulled her in a little, giving her arm a rub. He didn't know what to say. What could he say? A lump formed in his throat. He tried to swallow, wanting to push the emotion away. Looking at her, there were tears in her eyes. They rolled down her cheeks, leaving glistening tracks in their wake. She was looking for him to say something that would make this better, but there was nothing to be said. Words couldn't console her, and he knew it. The cry of a newborn babe was all she wanted to hear.

  “Well,” he said, forcing his voice to sound upbeat. “We'll just have to try harder.”

  “Oh, you'd love that, wouldn't you?” she replied, tickling him.

  “Hey,” he called out in his defense. “It was your idea. We should double our efforts and get started right away.”

  Jane laughed.

  They didn't talk about children after that evening. Bruce was tender, considerate, but it became an unspoken barrier between them. As much as Jane tried, it seemed she couldn't put this behind her, and he felt her anguish.

  Months passed, seasons came and went, and still she remained barren. Bruce could see she put on a brave face, not wanting to trouble him, but in the quiet moments he could see beyond her facade and longed to see her with child.

  After a particularly harsh winter in which the prevailing winds shifted, causing the drifts to bury the countryside for months on end, Bruce and Jane were anxious to visit Amersham.

  Spring brought the Sparkles in the early evening. For the villagers, the annual flickering flashes of light high in the sky were unnerving. Bruce had read about them in the newspapers. He understood they were nothing more than grains of sand, tiny specks of dust striking the upper atmosphere, but he couldn't say that. To explain what the Sparkles actually were would be to dispel superstitions. Showing he understood would raise questions about how he could be so sure. If tradition said the Sparkles were the spirits of the dead returning each year, if folklore spoke of streaks of light carrying evil intent, who was he to argue? Bruce hated that. Jane kept him in his place, making sure he understood how dangerous intolerance was when fueled by fear. For Bruce, the Sparkles were fascinating.

  Having read about the exploration of space, Bruce longed to know what it was like to fly so high in the sky. He'd read about the re-entry of the Apollo capsules and how they glowed like the surface of the sun, lighting up the daytime sky like a comet, just as the Sparkles did at night. Bruce tried to imagine what it must be like to enter the atmosphere in a ball of fire and survive unscathed. Such thoughts were incredible to his mind, schooled by images of metal forged in a blacksmith's fire. How could the astronauts survive when their capsule glowed red hot? Jane told him their heat shields were made from a special kind of glass that vaporized into a gas under intense heat, slowly peeling away behind the plummeting spacecraft. Whenever Bruce watched Jane's father at work in the heat of the forge his mind would wander to visions of space capsules blazing through the sky, glowing red-hot.

  While staying at the forge, word came that a reader had been caught to the east. The village chief announced that an audit was being conducted and that the reader would be brought to trial in the market square.

  Jane was beside herself. Bruce understood her anguish. Visions of Helena burning at the stake still marred her mind. It was something he'd never seen, but Jane's description was as vivid as anything he'd ever read. Even before he met Jane, he couldn't understand how people could be so cruel.

  Jane wanted to leave, to head back to the farm. Bruce was firm. He wouldn't run. To leave suddenly, when they'd intended to be there for a month, would have aroused suspicion. Besides, it was a trial, it was a public debate, a chance to air concerns. Jane pleaded with him not to get involved, but Bruce couldn't help himself. The injustice ate away at his soul.

  When the day of the trial arrived Bruce took his place on the bench seats arranged in the market square. Under a blazing sun, the circuit judge called out t
he charges.

  “Hugo Travers, you are accused of fomenting subversion by dabbling with knowledge beyond your ken. Through these dark arts, you have brought famine and pestilence on the villages of the east, a curse upon our crops and animals. How say you?”

  Hugo had suffered enough already, that was clear. The trial, if it could be called that, had already been staged in three other villages. At the conclusion of each, Hugo had been beaten to the verge of death, the fearful animosity of an ignorant people having been exacted on his body.

  Sitting there slumped in the judgment seat, Hugo was but a shadow. His hair was matted with dried blood. Scabs seamed his face. Dark blue bruises lined his neck and shoulders. Boils and blisters marred the skin on his bare chest, weeping yellow pus. He'd lost his left eye. A deep, dark recess was visible where his eyelid had been cauterized and sealed. Hugo's other eyeball was hideously swollen and deformed. He looked like a monster, but Bruce understood the real monsters were those that did this to him.

  In the time he sat on trial, Hugo's one, remaining eye never moved, staring blindly ahead.

  Looking at him, Bruce knew Hugo had suffered more than any man should for any crime, and yet he'd been kept alive as long as possible as a show to others, a freak to be paraded as far and wide as possible, a vivid warning against the supposed evil of reading.

  Hugo winced under the heavy metal collar around his throat. The rusting metal bit into his neck, drawing blood. A chain led from the collar to the troop of six guards escorting the judges.

  The villagers feared him, that was obvious. Hugo looked more like a beast than a man—a wounded, crippled animal. The look on his face spoke to Bruce. He'd seen that expression only once before, sitting in the mud on Bracken Ridge. Hugo had the resigned, sunken features of a man whose life was waning. Through swollen lips, Hugo answered.

  “Guilty.”

  Although this one, incriminating word was spoken in a whisper it carried on the wind, haunting the market.

  A scribe noted Hugo's response with a quill, writing in the Book of Judgment. The oversized, leather-bound book acted as both the register of laws and a ledger of prosecution.