He studies the old time village—the city—conscious now that he is seeing it for the last time. He will never dare come here again.
Was it really that they ran out of cargo, the way the village often ran out of stored food during Great Hunger Month in the early spring? Or was it like gramper said: that they wouldn’t let themselves go out and look for cargo, that they wouldn’t let themselves dig or drill or build those big workshops anymore? And after a while no one could keep things running or even knew how to do it. That’s what Mom always said… gramper would tell him.
No one would ever know if the stories had been true. What did it matter anymore?
“They’re all gone now?” Jace asks. “The books?”
Nob says nothing for a while. He studies the faint pall of smoke rising above the edge of the cliffs. Someone has built a fire, he decides, down on the flats where the rivers join. In the still air, he hears distant whinnies and a faint irregular hammering. “Yes,” he says. “The books are gone.” Then, more brusquely, he shakes out his clothing as if to air it, and says, “On your way, Jace. Mind the mud. See if you can find any foxglove on the way back.”
Nob walks slowly and Jace, with a little boy’s energy, races ahead. The old man does not quicken his pace, nor does he call on the boy to wait. Instead, he walks alone; or as nearly alone as a man can who is haunted by spooks.
Ma Teffny comes to him as the gloaming changes the greens to black and the forest seems to hunch closer around Moren’s Run. It is the hour when children shriek to bedtime stories. And the hour when Nob seeks the solace of his jug and the potato liquor. It is called ‘moonshine’ for this very reason.
He has put himself outside of half the jug when she pushes aside the curtain to his hut and steps inside. There is a wooden bucket that Nob uses to bring water from the creek, and Ma Teffny upends it and sits herself upon it. Her face is haggard and Nob can see lines in it that he does not remember from earlier visits.
“Berto and Charz found the dell,” she says. “You was right. Will and them set up a store. No doubt about it. Oh, Earth! What am I going to tell their mothers?”
Nob takes a drink from the jug. He thinks he hears his mother’s voice and does not turn round lest he see her. “That’s where we men are lucky,” he says. “We never know which kids are ours.”
Teffny studies him a moment. “Sometimes, you can guess. Hand me the jug, Nob.”
Nob hesitates, then extends it to her. The priestess puts it to her lips and her throat works. “Oh, that’s sweet!” she says, lowering it. “That’s a knife in the brain.”
“I drink to forget,” Nob tells her.
She considers that. “Yes. You got more to forget than most. Nob, you can’t think I want to stone Will. My own sister’s son? But how can I make an exception? First there was that dam…”
“He thought he was doing us all a favor, that it would irrigate the fields.”
“A dam! On a stream! You may as well put chains on your mother’s hands. What kind of favor is that? I thought the caning would teach him something.”
Yes, thinks Nob. It taught him to hide. But he keeps this in his heart. Oh, Will! What have I done to you? He takes the jug back from the priestess and takes a long hard drink, willing the oblivion that he seeks nearly every night; willing dreamless sleep, now that there is one more spook to haunt it. “Telling you about that store,” he says, “was the hardest thing I ever done.”
Teffny puts a hand on his knee. “You did the right thing, Uncle.”
He shakes his head. “No, I didn’t. There wasn’t no right thing to do.”
She takes the jug away and sets it on the dirt floor beside her. “Must you drink every night?”
“Oh, yes.” And he lays his long face into his hands and weeps. “I’ll never see him no more!”
“Nob! No, Nob, listen to me. He’s better off.”
“It’s my fault.”
“Well, yes, Nob. What’d you expect? You bent him with those demon-stories you used to tell. All that magic… It makes folk unhappy.”
Nob gathers himself. “Magic? Haven’t you seen the Great Pylon just outside the village, with the wires still dangling from it? What of the towering O’erpass that carries the old highway over the river? Men once built those.”
“It gotta be magic,” she answers. “It gotta be. Because we’ll always live in their shadows. Better they be magicians than men. Better that their magic went wrong and destroyed them. Or else we’ll always yearn for something we can never ever have.”
Nob rubs a sleeve across his nose. “That why Will gotta be stoned? For our peace of mind?”
Teffny stands. “Worse than that. When Berto and Charz finally found the dell, they were gone, all three of them. Charz tracked them as far as Seederville, but they didn’t go there. They went down into the Old City.” She shivers and hugs herself. “‘S death to go there. All those spooks… The Seedervillers told Charz they been hearing sounds from below the cliffs. Trees cut down! And they heard some sort of awful chuffing, and they glimpsed a demon swimming up the Southbound River belching fire and black smoke from its rear. Stoning would be kinder than to fall into the hands of demons.”
“They ran… “ says Nob.
“Yes, and that is your fault, you drunken old fool. The directions you give us were off. Charz and Berto went the wrong way and they got all tangled up in the stickerbushes. All that thrashing around musta warned Will and them, and they panicked.”
The old man nods slowly. “Ah.”
Ma Teffny studies him for a moment. “Just how drunk are you, Nob?”
“Very.”
The priestess grunts. “I won’t press it. Lend me a torch. It’s getting dark and the wolves will be a-coming down.”
Nob lights a torch from the hearth and hands it to Teffny. He stands in the doorway in the cool of the spring evening and watches until she has reached her own hut. Then under the meager light of the fingernail moon he slips around back to his potato patch, where he drops to hands and knees.
Finding the flagstone by touch, he grunts it aside and claws away the dirt until he has opened the clay-lined storage pit it covers. His hand gropes within… and it is empty. The books are gone, both of them.
Old Nob rocks back on his heels. “Ah, Will,” he whispers yet again. He never will see the boy again. There is no assurance that whatever folk have come upriver and settled at the Forks will treat Will and Kenn and Shairn with any kindness. But there is a chance, and that is more than Moren’s Run would have given him. The old man brushes a tear with his sleeve and he turns his face to the pockmarked sky. No one sees his tears except the fingernail moon, half hidden by scraps of clouds.
Night has fallen and the darkness is almost complete.
But not quite.