The Dark Magazine by Prime Books

Author:Prime Books [Books, Prime]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Prime Books
Published: 2017-03-01T05:00:00+00:00

I’ve gone to the village for the last time now. It is true that I’ve come to love the stone houses with their pretty wooden roofs, their straight flowerbeds, the people all milling about, tending to the day’s business. There is a simple charm to the world they inhabit, how their years are governed by the planting season and the reaping season and yet it is amazing how little they know of the true mechanisms of the earth! But that is unfair of me for they are hardly scholars and perhaps only the barest gleanings of nature’s operations are enough for survival if one requires little enough.

The grocer would not look at me. His face was a red mask of suffering and I could see the way his fists clenched. He would have hurled stones at me if he could. “There shall be no food for you, Miss Arkwright, not ever again. So don’t you come back, d’you hear? No more of that devil’s bargain, there shall be nothing given between mine and yours, not ever!”

But I did not make the journey to speak with him and so his curses meant very little to me. It is as Nan said, they will not touch me, not ever—for it is they who are afraid and their fear is well deserved.

Tom has filled out very nicely even without his handsome black suit. His hands are strong worker’s hands with thick pad on his thumbs. He has been raised coarsely but even I can see there is finer stuff within.

“You there!” I call to him.

He’s mute.

“Tom!”

“What is that you want, miss ?”

“I wanted to tell you about your mother.”

“My father is watching us right now,” he tells me sullenly. “He’ll go get the others if there’s any trouble. The deal’s broken now, isn’t it? We don’t want no more of it. You shouldn’t be here.”

But I ignore all this. The agreement isn’t necessary any longer. I’ve found a way to manage on my own. I have looked to my studies just as Nan said.

“Don’t you want to know what your mother had to tell you?”

He looks at me uncertainly. I know this is cruel, that I’m teasing him a little, but he was cruel to me once as well. I can’t help it.

“Very well then.”

“Wait!” he calls as I begin to cross the street. “Please! Wait, miss! What did she—” he’s almost shuddering now “—did she say something to me? Did she give you a message?”

I turn to look at him once more. He’s standing at the edge of the porch, straining forward. I can see that he’s breathing very heavily and his eyes are wet and shining like glass.

“She said she loves you very much. She says she longs to hold you in her arms once more. Will you come to her?”

I do not tell him the truth. I know what she whispers. She whispers, “ Morieris ”—and so it is, but not yet, not yet.

“I don’t know what you mean, miss.” I watch his Adam’s apple bob up and down.

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