The Gathering Storm

Page 348

“Look at how wide open everything is! Look, there’s a hamlet! Look, I’ve never seen those people before! Hey, there! Hello, there! We’ve come walking all the way from Shaden! What’s this place called? Obstgarten?” In a lower voice. “Isn’t that a peculiar name, Uncle? Just calling themselves ‘orchard’? Look! I’ve never seen an oak tree so big! We could live inside that trunk if it was hollow! Is it much farther to the miller?”
His stomach hurt. Although the others had taken cheese and baked eggs for the journey, he was so hungry he couldn’t wait for midday so he had eaten another half a loaf of old bread that morning, the last of the hoard stored in the deacon’s cupboard, too precious to waste although it had become so desiccated that it tasted like rocks and gritted between his teeth.
This countryside seemed vaguely familiar to him, although he wasn’t sure why, but every time they came around a curve in the path the sight of that particularly unmistakable oak tree whose broad, leafy crown seemed to hide half the sky, or an apple orchard, or a hollow lush with alder made his eyes hurt and his head throb until he thought he would go blind again. His fingers were cold, although it was a late summer day so hot that the heavens had a tendency to shimmer.
“Storm,” said Uncle, pausing to rest while he wiped sweat off his brow. He pointed southeast where the land was most open. “Coming up that way.”
Thunderheads piled up to form a huge wall of cloud, white at the top and an ominous green-gray color along the base.
“We’d best take cover,” added Uncle.
“Can’t we make it to the miller?” asked Brat anxiously, biting on a grimy finger.
“We’ll go a bit farther. I don’t see any likely place here and we passed that village too long ago. I don’t feel rain yet.”
“I’m hungry.”
“We’ll eat when we’ve reached shelter.”
The leaves danced on the trees, spinning and whirling until he thought he saw daimones at play in the rising wind, laughing and teasing as they sported in the branches of the broken woodland through which they traveled. Meadows and fallow fields cut the woods into clumps and strips where humankind had hacked out a place for themselves; they could never leave well enough alone. They delved deeply where they weren’t wanted and chopped down the forest because it made them fearful, and in time they would flatten and consume everything like rats set loose in a storehouse of grain.
He walked behind Uncle and Brat and the cart, wondering why his fingers, which had been so cold, were now beginning to burn as if he had thrust them into flames and yet here he just walked and there wasn’t a fire anywhere except maybe the one in his head because his head was burning, too, a conflagration so fierce that although he could see, it wasn’t like true seeing where a man touches an object with his vision and notes and measures that it is there and thinks about it and makes a judgment or a decision of what to do regarding what he has seen, only there were objects before him moving or not moving and he wasn’t sure what they were any more only that he had to avoid smashing into things which was getting more and more difficult.
“What’s he babbling about, Uncle?”
“Hush, child. He’s a holy man. Don’t offend him.”
“He’s scaring me, Uncle! He’s a crazy man! Fire and judgment and the world burning. Is he seeing the end of the world?”
“Hush, Brat. Hush. Look there! Thank the Lady. It’s the miller.”
A little river glimmered in front of them, but it was the turning wheel that made his head spin so badly that he staggered sideways until he stumbled up against a fence, which he hadn’t noticed. Two white clouds moved in the field: a pair of sheep running away from something.
“Why are they building that wall, Uncle?”
“I don’t know, Brat. Best you keep quiet and let me do the talking.”
Rain spattered, flecking the dirt road. The wind tossed the boughs in a stand of apple and walnut trees lining the path. A pair of ripening apples fell and bounced on the ground. A branch heavy with walnut fruit whirled past on a gust, sank as the wind dropped off abruptly, and landed on the earth with a thump and crackle.
“Hey! Hey, there, traveler!”
A pair of men dressed in the coarse tunics of workmen strode out from the settlement, which consisted of a pair of houses and the laboring contraption that was the wheel and the grinding house. A half-built stone wall rose between the mill and the path like a fortification. Treu loped forward to place himself between Uncle and the men, barking.