The Kindly Ones by Cliff James

Author:Cliff James [James, Cliff]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lethe Press
Published: 2021-04-02T00:00:00+00:00

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The cloud settled densely over the forest as though it had made up its mind to stay. It came with an icy chill that muffled the air and made the house feel unnaturally quiet. Rhea opened the stove and threw another log onto the flames just to hear some noise. Careful now, she thought; she did not want to wake Francesca. Rhea had sat beside Fran’s bed all night, listening to her dreamland whispers and cooling her fever with water and kind words. It was a strange sickness that had struck the girl without warning. She had been working too hard under that sun, Rhea suspected. And Ky going this morning, and Matthew too, and now this sudden chill. It had all been too much for Fran to take: the poor dear was exhausted, that was the cause. But this cold spell, this uncanny drop in temperatures, how could she explain that? It made Rhea nervous. More than that, it scared her. A cold spell was the right phrase: it reminded her of some dark tale of childhood, a nightmare from when she was little. Nature turning upside down and doing what it should not; an unsettled Earth throwing a tantrum.

Rhea wished that Ky had not gone, not today of all days. At least Lugh would be home from the farmyard soon. She tried not to notice the cloud that her breath made in the cold air and took up her book, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers. She would face this moment philosophically.

Epicurus was reassuring: he seemed more human and less condescending than Plato. Moreover, he made much more sense to Rhea. After ten minutes or so of reading, she forgot her unease and found comfort in his simple proverbs, committed as many as she could to memory.

‘It is impossible to live a pleasant life without living justly,’ she said, looking up at the window and repeating the phrase as though this were the answer she had been looking for all along. It was no such thing, of course, for it told her nothing about the nature of justice, but she liked it nonetheless. She took up the ink pen and underlined that sentence. It was not her book and it would have to be returned to the old man’s library one day, but she wanted the sentiment to be noticed by someone else, some idle reader in an unknown future. There were other phrases she liked too and, once she started underscoring, she realised she could not stop. Finally, she found what she thought she was looking for.

‘Natural justice is to prevent one man from harming or being harmed by another,’ she read aloud. It was such a pithy formulation that she wondered whether it could really be that simple, if that were all there was to it. She had harmed a man once, sharply, bloodily, in the back without seeing his face, and she had done it to prevent him from harming Francesca. When she thought about it now, that terrible night in the last house, she knew she had only done what was necessary.

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