Beguilers
Authors: Kate Thompson
Kate Thompson
For Jane
PART ONE
CHAPTER ONE
W
HEN I GOT BACK
from the drowning pool that night there was no one around apart from Tigo, the chuffie who lives in our yard. When he heard me coming he sat up outside the hen-house door and tried to look vigilant, as though he were actively guarding the place instead of just sleeping there.
There were one or two leaf-lanterns burning in our house. It looked peaceful and inviting, but I didn’t want to go in just yet in case there was someone still awake. The questions would be too awkward and I would need to be ready. I had to spend a bit more time getting myself re-orientated and clearing the dreams from my eyes.
For a while I stood looking back the way I had come, towards the mountain side, but all was dark and still. Tigo made no move towards me. He had learnt not to approach me unless I asked him. I lingered a moment longer, then decided to risk it. I would have to pay with a few sneezes and maybe worse, but I needed to share this with someone and, given the circumstances, only a chuffie would do.
Tigo stuffed his nose into my ear as I sat down beside him. Despite my allergy I like chuffies, always have, but I still wish they wouldn’t do that. I wiped my ear with the end of my shawl and said, ‘I’ve been up beside the lake. I’ve been watching the beguilers.’
‘Phhoowow!’ said Tigo and moved round to look quizzically into my face.
‘There were three of them,’ I said. ‘One of them came really close.’
I suppose I must have been a bit more dreamy than I realised. Tigo looked worried and slopped around my face with the wettest part of his nose. I pushed him away and got up. ‘The hole is in the back wall of the hen-house, Tigo. There’s no point at all in sleeping beside the door.’
‘Whap?’ he said, indignantly.
‘But you were sleeping,’ I said. ‘You only woke up when you heard me coming.’
‘Wumbleguff sniffdoddy huffhuffhuff,’ he grumbled. As he stood up and began to move around the side of the building, he gave me a wallop on the shoulder with his thick, bushy tail, accidentally-on-purpose.
‘Whoops!’ he said, but he didn’t hang around to hear my reply. I tossed a couple of pebbles after him but they lodged in his fur and he didn’t even feel them.
I stayed where I was and waited. The lights didn’t necessarily mean that there was anybody still awake. My family would be sure that I was staying overnight at someone else’s house, but they would still keep a few leaves burning for me and the back door unlatched. It was an old custom, laid down at some time beyond memory when it was still considered safe to go out alone after dark. No one ever did that now. Not unless they were …
My chain of thought was conveniently broken by a sneeze and I didn’t return to it. I looked up at the sky, trying to work out what the time was. The moon was still high, still bright. On the mountain slopes there was no more sign of the beguilers. There was no knowing where they might be.
I decided to wait it out a bit longer. It would have done me no harm to have company just then; I could tell that I was still mesmerised and inclined to sink into my own dreams, following the beguilers. I wished that I hadn’t offended Tigo. He wouldn’t hold it against me, chuffies never do, but I couldn’t go crawling after him now.
It all began earlier that night. The moon was full and the village was holding its monthly gathering. For reasons I could never understand, most people looked forward to these meetings; anxious to hear what everyone else was up to and what their latest plans were. I seemed to be almost alone in finding them utterly tedious. And this one, I knew, was likely to be even worse than most. The summer rains had failed, for the fourth year running, and the drought was upon us again.
I could predict, almost down to the last word, what would happen at the meeting. I would have cried off; pretended to be ill, but I knew my mother wouldn’t believe me and would make me pay for it all week with withering glances and stony silence.
So I went.
It started like any other meeting. I was sitting beside my younger sister, Temma, in the juvenile quarter. I was just about the oldest of the girls in that section. A girl can offer a Great Intention at any time from her fourteenth birthday onwards, which is two years before a boy can. Most of my friends couldn’t wait much beyond their fourteenth birthday. The first Great Intention for a teenager means the beginning of adulthood and, for some reason that I could never quite understand, nearly all of my friends thought they wouldn’t start to live until they had moved over to the next quarter, among the young men and women. But I was in no hurry.
The thing is, there are so few choices. We can’t get out of here. The plains people don’t like us because the way we live is peculiar to them, and the other villages that used to exist in the area have been abandoned because of the way the weather has changed. If it wasn’t for the drowning pool, which provided us with water during the frequent drought, we wouldn’t survive here, either. So you get married and start a family or you get married and don’t start a family. That’s what life amounts to. If you’re unlucky you don’t get married and then you might enter the priesthood. For as long as I could remember, my mind had been bashing against those paltry alternatives like a blue-bottle in a butter-box, but all I could ever come up with was the vague certainty that there had to be more to life than that.
I said it to my father once and it was a great mistake. I should have had more sense. When you’re different anyway it pays to keep quiet and not spell things out for people. Since then I’ve kept my mouth shut, but it made me even more determined not to relent and do the normal thing. My brother Lenko felt a bit the same, I know, although we have always had problems about discussing things honestly together. He’s a boy, after all, and I’m a girl. My parents didn’t say it, but I know they blamed his restlessness on me. They blamed everything that went wrong in our family on me. Me and my allergy.
Anyhow, that night, the night when my life’s adventure began, didn’t seem any different from any other. If anyone was expecting either of us to offer up a Great Intention, they were heading for disappointment. It was warm, so my little sister Temma and I had chosen to sit as far away from the central fire as we could. We were surrounded by the other girls from the village, from the age of nine upwards. Most of them lolled about and leaned against each other, weary from a hard day’s work in the forests or the fields or the kitchen. Temma had been out with two other girls watching the village goats that day, and she was almost asleep where she sat. I had to wake her up when the meeting began.
We were all supposed to be sitting in orderly rows, so that everyone would know when it was their turn, but in fact it never worked out like that and there was often confusion about who should speak next. The Intentions began, with the youngest as usual. The only difference from the ordinary, boring old stuff was the arrival of the drought. Temma’s friend Simka was the first to speak. She stood up and took the old white bone that the priestess handed to her. It was shiny from its passage through the hands of the village population for more years than anyone could remember. The priests held that it was the shinbone of the Great Mother who gave birth to our people a million years ago, but most of us believed that it had once belonged to an ox.
‘I have succeeded in my last Intention,’ Simka said, ‘which was to bring an extra load of wood every week to my grandmother. This month I will help my family to carry water to our crops.’
The priestess bowed her head in acknowledgement and Simka passed the bone to her twin sister Anna.
‘I have succeeded in my last Intention, which was to pick and preserve enough eazle-wood to clean the family’s teeth for a year. This month I will help my family to carry water to our crops.’
The priestess bowed her head again and passed on. The next to speak should have been the twins’ older sister, Hansa, who is about nine months younger than me, but she declined to take the bone and I knew why. She was going to offer a Great Intention, and I was fairly certain what it would be. A little further around the hall, my cousin Bick was nervously rolling and unrolling his shawl. He also intended to offer a Great Intention. Those two would speak when all the others had said their piece, along with anyone else who had a major announcement to make.
Great Intentions are made rarely in life. Once a young member of the community has come of age, they are expected to come up with one over the next year or two. It doesn’t have to be marriage, of course, although it usually is. But it has to be something that is fundamental in life, a major change, probably the biggest step that a person has ever taken. It’s a serious matter to offer a Great Intention, and if it fails it can cast a shadow over the rest of your life.
Temma got up. ‘I have succeeded in my last Intention, which was to sew a new dress from the material my mother gave me. This month I will help my family carry water to our crops.’
The bone was handed on. In strict order of age it was passed around the juvenile section and every voice repeated the same, monotonous intention. I fell into a moody reverie, and the sound of the meeting grew distant and echoey. And then, suddenly, it was my turn to stand and spout.
To be honest, I find the whole business ridiculous, but it is our custom and I go along with it in word, if not in spirit.
‘I have failed in my last Intention,’ I said. Usually people give an excuse of some kind when they fail, but I never bother. I knew that my parents didn’t like it. I could feel their discomfort from the other side of the hall. I didn’t know it then, but it was nothing compared to the discomfort they were going to feel in another few minutes.
I went on. ‘I had intended to read and understand Chapter 17 of the Books and speak to our priests about it. My Intention for this month …’ I stopped. I hadn’t given it any thought, but the idea of blithely repeating what everyone had said was repugnant to me. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to help with the crisis. I did. I just couldn’t say the same words.
‘My Intention for this month is to spend time working out a more efficient way of getting water to our crops.’
It was something I had thought about a lot in the past. The system we had worked all right, but it was highly labour intensive and inefficient. I was sure there had to be a better way. Sometimes my mind would manufacture strange devices, with levers and wheels and tubes. I had a theory about gravitational pull, and once I had come close to working out a system of clay pipes and sluices that I was almost sure would work. I was convinced that, with a bit more time, I could have come up with a working model. But if I had thought about it, I would never have dared to say it.
An oppressive silence fell over the hall. I handed the bone forward to the youngest of the boys in our section. It was taken from my hand, but no one spoke. The priests were still glaring at me, and so was everyone else in the congregation.
What could I do? I shouldn’t have said it, I know. The traditions of the village are sacred and change is resisted rather than welcomed. And when it does happen, it is always at the behest of the elders. It is never, never instigated by the young.