The Twins of Noremway Parish (11 page)

***

“
In all the excitement, I completely forgot about this,” Decon said to Teret in a low voice as people filed in. Plague wouldn’t be coming; he was caring for the child in his office. That was fine. The sheriff and chancellor came in together and stayed in the back, near the atrium. That was fine too. This would be a quick affair since the bodies had already been interred into the earth through fire.

“
Good thing that kiss didn’t last any longer than it did,” she replied with a smile and brief giggle. It felt so good to finally let lose, to be free–although they weren’t
really
free, and they wouldn’t be unless some things changed. “What’s funny—well, not really
funny
—is that this could possibly be the happiest moment of my life. And I’m up here with you just as you’re about to preside over a funeral.”

“
Things are changing. They really are,” he said. He glanced up to the sheriff and chancellor. They seemed a little off from their usual selves today. Perhaps it was the long night. Hadn’t they gone back to the Waterman House to take care of a few things? Maybe they were out all night. In fact, he had expected to hear back from either of them first thing in this morning, but neither had come to see him. Maybe they had forgotten, or had nothing substantial to report.

No matter. He would just touch base with them later.

When everyone was seated, he spoke off the cuff about Tomias Waterman. He didn’t have a prepared speech because he had been too distracted with the baby, the mutant child, and everything else that had happened over the past several hours. As he spoke, his mind drifted to the kiss he had shared with the lovely Teret Finley. Sister Teret–there was not a single doubt in his mind that this was something he wanted to pursue.

But in the moment, his speech was going well and he concluded with: “Tomias was a dear friend, a great mayor, and would have been a wonderful father.” Cheers roared through the worship hall at this finale.

As the applause continued, the rumbling of thunder tore through the cathedral, bringing with it another reason to celebrate: the harvest rains had arrived, and they were early.

***

The rain was indeed coming down—and fast. Just minutes before, the sky had been a light blue with a hint of yellow from the sand blowing in the air. Now it was a dark gray, almost black. The clouds overflowed with falling rain and dancing lightning. Thunder rolled almost directly above Noremway Parish, scaring the children as they filed out of the cathedral with their parents. Teret and Decon had trouble keeping everyone calm.
If only parents could take responsibility for their own children
, Teret thought. She wouldn’t have been surprised to know that Decon was thinking the same thing.

One question disturbed Decon Mangler; what could cause the clouds to roll in so quickly? The rains weren’t due for weeks, and they usually arrived like clockwork–the same time every year, give or take a few days.

He had never seen such jubilation over the rains. Of course, the harvest rain was always an exciting affair.

Tomias Waterman had worked out a system in which all the underground reservoirs would be replenished. Without the mayor here, it was up to Ghora, Franz, and Decon to work together to ensure this happened.

Everyone was encouraged to hold out their own tarps, buckets, and other means of collecting and storing the water when they returned to their homes. The more water stored, the easier the next year would be. They hadn’t had to resort to rationing this past year (with the exception of water going to Morgan’s Orchard), which was the first year that had ever happened. “Let’s go for year number two!” parishioners chanted as they collected the rain.

Over the previous week Ghora had divided the task of ensuring parishioners were ready to collect the rain with Franz and his deputy. They were generally cooperative, with the possible exception of Rita and James Morgan, who demanded to have control over the water reserves. “We have an orchard here, Chancellor,” Rita said. “Our trees will die without enough water.”

“
Rita,” Ghora said.

“
Don’t even start, Chancellor. The trees are dying. They’re not getting enough water. The most effective means of—”

“
Look, your trees get plenty of water. We don’t have enough resources just to hand out whatever you want!”

“
Oh, you do too!”

“
Rita, I can’t manipulate the system.” Rita scoffed and stomped away.

Now, in the present, Franz said, “Hey, Chancellor,” awakening him from his thoughts. “Or should I call you ‘Mayor’ since you’re the acting mayor now?” He carried the crossbow slung on his back. Ghora once had asked what the crossbow was all about, and Phoenix replied: “I like it because it’s intimidating. People can see it.” This was even in light of the fact that in recent years there hadn’t been a more serious crime than Overholser’s boy scaring the horses and sending them running around the parish. “I just like it, you know?”

“
So, Ghora, let’s figure out a plan for the caravans. We need to be on top of this. You know them caravan-folk aren’t exactly the friendliest brutes, but you gotta love ‘em.”

“
Aye, I know, Sheriff.”

What happened the night before in the Waterman House still weighed heavily on his mind, especially the wolf attack—his arm was swollen, the bite marks far from healed; and he felt sick, absolutely sick, weak, powerless. But he didn’t remember much else from the time in the house. There seemed to be something blocking his memory.

Franz felt similarly about his memories from the night before. There seemed to be something missing from them. He remembered entering the house, and the wolf attack, and he remembered shooting it with an arrow that had also penetrated Ghora’s stomach. Ghora had not yet seen the doctor, and oddly had experienced no discomfort in that regard. But something was different. Something had been awakened in him: something sinister.

“
Let’s hatch this out, Ghora. Come on.”

***

The chancellor’s house stood past the cathedral on the southern end of the parish, the opposite side from the mayor’s residence; an inconvenience for someone currently assuming both roles, Franz was quick to point out, but Ghora didn’t mind. “I don’t know why, but I want to stay as far away from that place as possible,” Ghora said, tugging on his beard, and it was true.

The chancellor’s house was larger than the mayor’s residence. It held living quarters as well as a courtroom, which hadn’t been used in years. Infractions of the law were so often of such a minor nature, punishment could easily be handed down without the need of formal proceedings. This fact turned the courtroom into an artifact of an ancient time, as well as the ideal place for the sheriff and chancellor to discuss their impending dealings with the caravan-Folk, the
Ujimati
.

Not much was known about these nomads, but that did not stop the people of the Inner-Crescent from developing narratives detailing who exactly they were. Some of the information was good, some not.

Some said they were nasty savages, willing to eat their own young, often glorifying the act by dehydrating the heads, shrinking them to a fraction of their original size, and carrying them around their necks as a status symbol. These heads would often be passed down through generations so that every man, woman, and child in the caravan carried at least one shrunken head about their neck. Because of this, along with their sharpened teeth–another tribal tradition–they had gained a reputation for being demonic, satanic, cannibals the likes of which Noremway Parish should steer clear of.

In fact, this description of the
Ujimati
was part-fact, part-fiction. These people were in reality the remaining members of the Outer-Crescent parishes, all infected with the Darkness. Despite their demonic infection, they still needed water, and Noremway Parish often offered them some water rations in order to prevent a possible attack on their walls.

“
Protection isn’t cheap,” Franz said as they entered the courtroom. “We give them water in exchange for a token amount of resources from other parts of the world, but what we really buy ourselves is security.” He walked to the judge’s bench and continued explaining the underhanded deals more to himself than to Ghora, who knew exactly what was going on.

He explained: The
Ujimati
were rumored to be on an eternal quest searching for “Blue Gold,” also known as a never-ending source of water. A vast ocean thousands of miles across was rumored to exist just below the surface of the earth. The trick was to find out where it could be accessed, and then the water could be excavated, and used as a source of great power and influence. They could make the Inner-Crescent hostage to the resource if they had enough of it, and hold a monopoly over a large enough supply. As far as the secret annual dealings were concerned, they struck so much fear in the heart of any man, and their demands were so little, it only made sense to appease them. A few thousand gallons of water—funneled off the allowance for Morgan’s Orchard—bought a year of guaranteed peace. Since this had been an underhanded dealing since the beginning, no one could say how long Noremway Parish had been making this same deal with the local caravans, but Franz was sure it’d been going on for centuries, and would continue for centuries more.

“
Are you done?” the chancellor asked when Franz stopped talking.

“
I find it so fascinating. I might write a book one day.
The History of Noremway Parish from Ragas to Phoenix
. Nice ring, don’t you think?”

“
Interesting. Franz Phoenix, a scholar.”

“
There’s a lot more up here than you give me credit for, Ghora,” the sheriff said, pointing to his head and laughing. The laugh echoed throughout the chamber, sending a chill down Urey’s spine. The chancellor thought a laugh like that only came from someone planning something wicked.

Suddenly a man stepped out of the dark and said, “Let’s get this started.”

Chapter 7

The
Ujimati
had travelled these lands for centuries unknown. Grains of sand stretched in every direction. The air was dry as the dust of crushed bone in a death pit. Despite the dark rain-filled clouds overhead, these lands would remain barren forever. As Garish eyed the great wall surrounding Noremway Parish, he debated the best way of entry. The large concrete blocks composing the wall showed no sign of crumbling, so breaking through was not an option, and they were too high to scale. This was his first time coming to Noremway Parish. He knew that the men who’d come before him to collect water had entered in some way.
Yar, look to the south,
Massa had said when they sent Garish on his way. He brought two large wagons with him, each pulled by a pair of camels. Each of these wagons carried large containers capable of storing many gallons of water.

Be wary, young sa,
Massa had said.
They of the parish fear us, so they do. And I’d be a barren wolf if I wasn’t proud to say it. Keep ‘em scared. Keep them scared aplenty, I say.

Yar. Understood, Massa,
he said and left. He wore the necklace of his ancestors containing fifteen shrunken heads. These were not heads of his family as those in Noremway Parish told each other. If Garish had known such a story he would have laughed until his stomach split. No, around his neck he wore the shrunken heads of their fallen comrades in that long ago battle that saw the defeat of the Outer-Crescent. He remembered that day clearly because he had been there. They talked about it amongst themselves:
Oh, to be human again. Such a wonderment ‘twould be. Yar, so it would.

But to all outward appearances (besides maybe their sharpened teeth), they looked human. They still carried with them the dialect of the Outer-Crescent even though it had fallen 2,000 years ago.

Garish’s teeth—recently sharpened—were menacing, like a wolf’s. If fear was what parishioners needed, then scared they would be.

Da sorlou la enk mach?
They would sometimes ask. But the answer, much like the question, meant absolutely nothing.

The question was on the tip of his tongue but he would never ask, because even though it meant something among their own kind (something like “What is the point of even doing this?”), Massa would likely have said, ‘the generosity of the token was a sign that they would be willing to keep up the deal year after year’. Those of the parish would keep doing so as long as the rains could be relied upon to give prophetic harvest–and as it so happened, they had continued through the centuries like clockwork. Once a year, torrential rains showered Noremway Parish, but not a drop touched the land outside it.

The magic that had been eroding since the time of Ragas had finally disappeared, never to return. He could feel the Darkness strongly here; and when the Darkness was near, the rains always ceased.

Garish felt along the wall and on the south end found an opening—a place where the stones were loose and could be removed, allowing a man to crawl through the wall. He pulled out the large block, which was much lighter than it looked. His large muscles strained a little, but the block itself looked like it could be several hundred pounds. After pulling it and the one next to it aside, he stuck his head into the darkness. The gap was barely wide enough for his shoulders but he managed to squeeze through with relative ease. The damp air rushed out, hitting his face, filling his nose with ecstasy. He’d never breathed air this humid before.