The Twins of Noremway Parish (8 page)

As she lay in her bed, images of Rita Morgan continuously flashed in her mind. Rita had been a thorn in her side since she became parochial vicar thirteen years ago. It all started when the most obnoxious child in the world arrived for her first day of school. “My mommy doesn’t like you,” said this stout girl with bushy brown hair and freckles. She carried herself with a presence of superiority. She just knew she was better than everyone else, but as far as Teret could see the only thing better about her was that she was certainly the best fed among the students, appearing nearly three times bigger than the second largest girl her age.

“
I’m sorry to hear that, Abby, I really am.”

“
My name is Abigail Rita Morgan!”

“
My mistake, Abigail Rita Morgan.”

“
My mom says you’re a horse and a witch.”

A horse?
She understood what was meant by a witch, but a horse? She suspected that “horse” wasn’t quite the word her mother had used. “Oh, is that right?” she smiled while attempting to contain her anger. It pained her that on her first day as parochial vicar, the thought crossed her mind to strangle a child.

“
She says you look like you ride around a lot, just like all of the horses. Boo to you!”

Whatever that means
, she thought. “Please take your seat, Abigail.”

“
How can I take my seat? You need to tell me where to sit.”

What a rude child
.

“
Right over there, sweetheart–the seat with your name on it.” She walked her to the desk while silently thanking Jesus the girl couldn’t read yet. The nametag said “Abby.” When Rita Morgan had enrolled her daughter, she had said, “She prefers Abby.” Teret was sure of it. She remembered the words as clear as day.

It starts at home. What a snotty brat
.

As she taught history that day, then science, and then theology, Abigail’s hand repeatedly rose so she could tell Teret she was wrong about this, this, and that. Abigail found it necessary to contradict every other word that came out of her mouth. It was infuriating. And what was worse, Abigail clearly did not understand what she was saying. She spoke as if reciting lines she was forced to memorize.

That first afternoon, after classes ended, and after consulting Brother Decon, she had sent off a letter to Rita and James Morgan, explaining the incident, and inviting them to come in for a conference with her and the friar to discuss solutions to their daughter’s disruptive behavior.

“
My daughter’s disruptive behavior?!?!?
” Rita had screamed, bursting into the cathedral later that night. “As my Aunt Millie used to say, you must be
trippin, Sister!
I demand you apologize at once!”

“
Rita, please,” Decon said. “We can resolve this.
Like adults.
”

“
Don’t patronize me,” Rita said. Teret couldn’t hide the smile that crept up on her face. “What is so damned funny?”

“
Rita, look, maybe we can make some arrangements to accommodate your daughter’s personality.” He had shifted his eyes from Rita’s to Teret’s.

“
She’s a witch! And showing off that body of yours to those children—how
inappropriate!
” Teret’s outfit was standard for parochial vicars. She wore a red, form-fitting robe with golden crescents up the arm sleeves. There was no skin exposure, but Teret knew that what Rita was really railing against was the fact that it fit so tightly and that she wore the outfit well. Rumor had it that men’s eyes were straying toward this innocent, untouched woman, including James’s.

“
Rita, we mean no disrespect,” Decon continued.

“
No disrespect? You defile our daughter’s name, and what’s worse, you teach lies.
Lies!
”

“
Rita, please,” Teret responded. “What I teach—what Noremway Parish teaches—is what we call
consensus
information. Throughout Earth’s history, scholars from all fields have come to certain conclusions based on the evidence they’ve gathered. That is what we teach. It’s not a dogmatic approach. We teach what is generally considered to be true by a majority of experts throughout history.”

“
Only God knows the truth, dear.”

“
My point is we teach what most people agree is true. We don’t aim to teach non-orthodoxy.”

“
What do you know about orthodoxy, Sister Teret? Hmm? I suspect you could write what you know on your thumbnail. Come, James, let’s get out of here. Abigail will
not
be coming back.”

“
That’s too bad. I was hoping we could work this out.” Despite her strong feelings to the contrary, she found that she truly did hope they could. Teret and Decon then filed a joint report with the chancellor and mayor to allow the Morgans to send Abigail to a neighboring parish for schooling.

The memory of that day would never leave her. She felt so angry…and so disrespected…but she had to find the strength to move on, to forgive and hopefully forget. Neither seemed possible, not with that woman’s constant bickering and bullying.

Back in the present, as these thoughts danced in her mind, sleep took her in its merciful hold.

***

“
We need to go out to that house,” Urey said as he and Phoenix left the cathedral. “The remains need to be collected. The funeral will be held tomorrow.”

Phoenix smiled. Everything seemed funny to him today for some reason. “I’m more interested in those three demons that attacked them in the field.”

“
Aye, agreed. The wolves are a known quantity. These demons are something else entirely. For the safety of the parish we should investigate.”

“
Let me get my crossbow,” said Phoenix and he started heading toward the jailhouse, which was nearly a quarter mile away, while the chancellor readied Jasper for another ride. “You might want to arm yourself,” he called back.

“
I have my knife,” he replied.

“
Knives; I much prefer my crossbow. It’s a real man’s weapon.”

“
Just be careful,” Urey warned. “It’s night so the wolves are out.”

“
Yeah. I know. That’s why I’m getting my crossbow.”

He continued on to the jailhouse at a jog. Urey looked after him, growing weary of the sheriff’s growing disregard for his authority, but decided it wasn’t important enough right now to worry about. Franz Phoenix had always had an independent streak in him. It seemed more pronounced than usual tonight, but in the grand scheme of things, it probably didn’t matter. The sheriff was sworn to uphold the law, and uphold the law he would, even if he was the occasional pain in the ass.

The stables were near the jailhouse anyway, so he would just pick Franz up when he got Jasper ready. The horse was not in any kind of mood to go back out that night, but the other two horses that were available for public use—Rhizo and Haman—were asleep, and it wouldn’t do well to wake them.

He climbed aboard the carriage and began riding it to the stables. Jasper was thirsty. Water was always hard to come by, but the rains should be starting again soon; maybe even tomorrow.

He had to think about Tomias’s funeral, as well as Lynn’s, and their baby’s. The services would be the next day, maybe sometime in the afternoon. Have it soon, but not so soon that anyone who wished to speak would be short on time to be able to come up with anything thoughtful. Oh, how he wished he could prevent Rita Morgan from attending. How he wished she would just go away and keep her thoughts to herself. It would be one thing if she had an opinion worth voicing, but listening to her rants was like listening to a child in a sandbox. A child who didn’t want to share with the other children, and didn’t want to acknowledge that she wasn’t privileged or entitled to absolutely everything her heart desired.

When he got to the stable, which the stable boy Johnny had nicknamed “The Three Mares” after the three public-use horses, he untied Jasper from the carriage and walked him over to the trough to get a drink. The horse was thirsty and so was he, having not had a fully satisfying drink in at least a week. The water rations were running a little thin, but scarcity in the water supply was common at this time of year. All that would change when the rains started.

He imagined the somber event of the mayor’s funeral interrupted by the jubilation-causing rainfall. Tears of sadness would turn into tears of joy as the life-giving substance—that had been so plentiful in millennia past—once again fell to the earth in continuation of the cycle.

“
If I didn’t know better I’d think that was a camel,” Phoenix said, coming to the stable from the jailhouse, carrying the crossbow on his back. “That deputy is an idiot–just sitting in there playing solitaire and asked me to join him, as if I have nothing better to do right now.”

“
Not to mention it’s a single-player game,” Urey said.

“
Well, yeah that too–goes without saying. Good thing we never have any prisoners. I can tell you, trusting that guy in there alone…it’s dangerous enough just to have him around to keep my desk warm when I’m not there.”

The chancellor smiled. “You ready? Let’s go.” He nudged the horse, which immediately quit drinking and walked to the carriage.

They started on their way to the Waterman farm. Fear was not something either of them felt. Wolves seemed to be in short supply tonight, which seemed odd, but the night was silent for once. A typical night in Noremway Parish was filled with insidious howls that lasted until dawn.

The house glowed with the reflection of the full moon. The blue-gray siding was usually bland, but combined with the moonlight it offered the sight of a pale ghost.

Jasper stopped suddenly with a jolt. The wolves had come out. More precisely, the wolves had materialized from nothing right in front of them, and begun biting at the horse’s legs: intimidating bites.

No flesh was torn, no thirst for blood satisfied: just the scheme of these mangy creatures to scare the horse into going no further.

“
Looks like we’re here,” Phoenix said, jumping from the carriage, not giving a second thought to the wolves. They weren’t here to harm them. This was a fact that Phoenix seemed to intuit almost on a conscious level.

Urey wasn’t so sure. As he surveyed the group, he noticed two or three that looked as though they wouldn’t be satisfied without a human meal. About four other wolves seemed intent on eating horse. Their howls were loud, their growls vicious.

Suddenly a wolf, which had until then been hiding in the shadows on the porch, leapt at Urey, tearing at his cloak, and succeeded in sinking its teeth into his right arm. He tried shaking off the creature, but its bite was strong, passing through the thick material of his cloak, into his skin, and lodging into bone.

Phoenix stood ten feet away, looking up at the majesty of the house, not giving Urey’s predicament much notice...or seeming not to.

Nonchalantly, he said, “Get off him.” The calmness of his voice was eerie given the situation, but not unlike him. He was more apt to be laughing under these circumstances than desperately coming to the chancellor’s aid.

The wolf didn’t let go. Perhaps it couldn’t. Urey was a strong man with large muscular arms. He struggled with the wolf, swinging it back and forth.

***

Franz Phoenix raised the crossbow and fired. The arrow sailed through the air, cutting through it with the ease of a sharp knife through blubber, and entered the wolf’s back. What he didn’t anticipate was that it would continue through the beast’s body and enter into Ghora Urey.

The wolf dropped, and so did the chancellor.

The arrow was jutting from his abdomen. It had punctured either his stomach or liver. He didn’t know, nor was he all that concerned. He’d live.

“
Get up. We have work to do,” Phoenix said. Miraculously Urey stood, as if nothing had happened, and broke off the arrow at the head. “Good, now let’s move.”

Phoenix felt empowered. He hadn’t before given the chancellor orders, but for some reason he felt in charge here. He felt in control. And the fact that Urey was able to stand up and break off the arrow at his mere command intrigued him.

He turned toward the house again and gave it another longing look. It was time to go in.

Chapter 5

As Teret Finley lay in bed, wrestling with memories long past, and as Franz Phoenix and Ghora Urey entered the Waterman House, Decon sifted through books, documents, and any other literature he could get his hands on in an attempt to figure out what happened with the holy fountain. Why did the child dissolve when it came in contact with the holy water? And what was that business with the angelic two-headed child?

He still had to figure out what to do with the blood. As soon as everyone was gone, he locked himself away in the office just off the atrium near the cathedral entrance.
The Book of Ragas
was located on his desk. Above him was a painting of Ragas Moliere standing triumphantly over a dark beast of the Darkness. His pale complexion, flowing red hair, and strong build were displayed in exquisite detail. He wore a knight’s chest plate and armor covering both arms, which held the large Angled Cross above his head. The painting portrayed him as a warrior, although he most certainly was never a knight.