Eutopia: A Novel of Terrible Optimism by David Nickle

Author:David Nickle [Nickle, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Horror, Fiction, General, Literary, Occult & Supernatural, Psychological Fiction, Eugenics, Idaho
ISBN: 9781926851112
Publisher: ChiZine Publications
Published: 2011-04-14T00:00:00+00:00

PART II

Nature

16 - Saint Lothar

The Oracle woke a-screaming that night.

Before she was done, she was joined by her sisters—Missy, who was waiting up during that part of the night anyway, hunkered in the crook of a fallen tree—and then Lily, who slept on the flat of a creek-side rock.

The three girls screamed until they lost their wind and paused, looking around blinking to see what attention it brought them.

It took time to find out. The rest of the Feegers were camped downstream, most all of them out cold from the labour of the past days, preparing the march and making that first hard climb, down rock-face and scrub slope, carrying all they needed. By the time they got down to the stream, a spot in the crook of two mountains like the bend of a lady’s middle, they curled up and slept like the dead.

And you don’t wake the dead with just a shout. So it took time, and that did not make the Oracle happy. She demanded to know where the Feegers were. Just to show she meant business, she swatted Lily a good one across the ear.

“I have word from Him,” said the Oracle Patricia. “Gather my people.”

And so Lily and Missy took off for the camp, and the Oracle was left alone a moment before they came. She calmed herself, hand on belly, walking into the rushing stream that was made dim silver by the moon. She caressed her belly, which was still small.

She dropped to her knees in the cold mountain water, felt the ice travel up her thighs to her middle, where the Host waited for their larder to fill. If it weren’t filling, they’d start in on her straight away—but they were wise enough to know that there was a proper time of things.

Oh soon, she thought, and smiled a little. You can thank old Lothar when the time comes. He will be a Saint for the part he plays in making you strong. . . .

And her smile fell away, as she recalled the cry that had awakened her—not a cry for help, but one of dying. A dying son; a dying grandson.

Murdered by the hand of ignorant heathen. Like those others, maybe, who stole the Son. Those ones though—those might be sinners: folk who, with strong application of word and stick, could be made to see to their God. To see to Him right.

Not like these killers. . . .

She stood now, and stared down the stream, where around the bend she saw the light of lamp and torch, as her Feeger kin made their way up the bed, to see what their Oracle wanted now.

When they got there, she made it clear that it was only a little thing, a few drops of blood, scarce an ounce of courage, and doing it would not take them long from their path.

“But there ain’t a choice,” she said. “Wicked heathen folk did a thing. They got to be shown.”

The sleepy-eyed Feegers didn’t know what to do with that at first, and for that instant, the Oracle felt a sliver of doubt.

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