By Gregg Glory [Gregg G. Brown]
Chapter Nine "The Gods of Autumn"
The news on the radio that evening spoke of a high level of violence in the doings of the dockworkers. Some were climbing over the locked gates at the dock and breaking up machinery by the wharf. Several desperates had taken a boat out and dumped its catch of fish back into the inlet. Others were grilling townsfolk and taking down names in a great red log book, tallying who "was on the side of the angels, and who was not," and noting the addresses of the respondents. A few of the union organizers were demanding that the town paper publish editorials in their favor. Some were simply carousing non-stop at the Dublin House and Cwilliam's Pub, refusing to let the owners close after lunch between lunch and the evening hours because they had nothing else to do.
"Terrible," exclaimed Mrs. Tone. "What a herd of brutes."
"Ay, that's one possibility," admitted Mr. Tone warily.
"Well," Mrs. Tone continued, "at least its out of our hands."
"That it is," remarked Mr. Tone amiably. "Although, its still in our town."
"Hush," chimed in Granny Pansy. "There's an alert on the radio."
"....seemed a queer determined lot, y'ask my estimation o'it. They wouldna take 'No' for an answer. Not that they'd succeed. I daresay they knew well-enough that it were a fore-doomed effort. It just didna seem ta matter to them at a'....That was one Barnabas Burrbuckle, revealing the inside story of the Dockworkers' Union meeting earlier today. Stories and sources have been coming forth, claiming that the whole union is under some kind of, almost, possession. Peaceful protests and picket lines have been sparsely populated for the last few weeks in front of the Traeshurstaene Quay, and it seemed to most observers that, despite the strain on the quiet community, an accommodation would soon be reached between the Dockworkers' Union and the Traeshurstaene town corporation...."
"Come, that's enough of sorrow." Mr. Tone clicked the radio off authoritatively and put the day's newspaper in the rubbish bin.
Mrs. Tone and Granny Pansy united in protest.
"I tell you, those men are simply driven by evil!" cried Gwynnith. "You can hear it for yourself. They're reporting that they're possessed."
"Well, let's not bring the report of their evil into our home, then."
"Daffiyd, turning a deaf ear to the world only leaves you blind to you own benefit," advised Granny Pansy.
"Be that as it may, Mother. Let it rest. There's no more room in this house for the world's troubles."
"But Daffiyd, be reasonable," Granny Pansy and Gwynnith said in unison.
"I say enough. You two girls off to bed. You'll be staying home from school activities tomorrow. No soccer practice, or choir, or any of that. Off you go, and put those big eyes back in your heads. There's no profit in borrowing misery. That's one of your's, Mother."
The girls went up the stairs. But at their back, they could hear a heated conversation continue between the three adults. Long after they were under the covers, they could feel Mr. Tone's gruff voice shake the floorboards.
"Daffiyd, honey. We need to be available if the committee calls on us for special service tomorrow. We made a solemn oath that cannot be unsworn."
* * * *
Sarah awoke at midnight, clear and cold and fully conscious. Without any warning, she was abruptly and fully aware of her surroundings. Every crisp bit of frost on the pane spoke to her. She could count the filaments of the spiderwebs in the moonlight. She was alert and arose to her full height. Her nightgown fell from her in long scrolls of flimsy fabric, gossamer and light.
Sarah hopped off of the bed to the floor, and dashed to the window, which looked out on a moon-transformed landscape--the slope of the hill outside the house rolling seamlessly down to the edge of the inlet in the distance. There was a frosted quality to everything under the moon. The branches of the trees stood stark in their darkness. The storm and its wind had taken most of the colored leaves off of the trees. Sarah opened the window onto the darkness, unconcerned with the deathly temperature drop that had occurred outside.
The wind made itself felt vaguely against her skin, as though there was nothing beyond the window but the memory of winter. Sarah stepped onto the windowsill, and the out onto the sloping roof that extended back out over the kitchen. When she reached the gutter, she put her foot into the wet runoff and lost her wakened memory of the moment, gliding toward the gutter hole at the end of the roofrun.
Sarah felt like a mouse thrown down a mousehole. The drain opened up to a diameter to accept her plummeting form. Her wet foot led the way. Before she could blink, Sarah found herself gliding down the Mickleswift, a moveless statue in a fidgeting gown, beautiful and pale in the moonlight. Her face had a serious, almost grim, aspect to it, like the rain warriors that she had seen the other day at the well. Her volition was absent, and the world slid by like a slideshow pulled over a stark field of ice.
The shadows of the skeletal trees of the Welkin wood stood austere guard over her progress, long tall guardians of a darkness that appeared to be accepting Sarah into their midst. Their blurred aspect went by with a superhuman speed as Sarah raced down the Mickleswift to its interim destination of the well. There, the uneven surface of the stream threw Sarah off onto the cold grass, unceremoniously dumping her on a downhill slope that rolled her against the wall of the well, bathed in a moonlight that allowed her to make out the charms of the runes ringing the stone circle with an unexpected clarity.
The well was cooing and calling already when Sarah arrived. The eerie blue glow that had inhabited its depths was welling still over the lips of the hole. The clouded sky, now a solid midnight hue, arched over the small scene to lend a secrecy to its doings. The well sang out with a stronger voice than Sarah had heard before, a voice certain of its place in the order of things--as certain as Sarah was uncertain of her own place, it seemed to her. Her world, although having returned in many ways to normal during the school week, was still an abominable mess in Sarah's mind. Sarah wasn't sure of which way to turn, and new turns in the road seemed to be continually appearing before her as autumn rolled toward Christmas, and the deadest days of the year.
Around the well, out of the shaggy dark of the woods, shambling figures approached the blue glow, and Sarah, slowly with ungainly gaits. Almost as if hypnotized, the forms of muscular dockworkers moved toward the central light of the well. Their aspect seemed overlaid with a more elemental aspect than daylight allowed, which highlighted their individual stories and, as Sarah's Mother condescendingly referred to them, their particular "cases."
In an unbidden reaction to the implied threat of the dockworkers' immediate vicinity, Sarah found herself humming, and then singing, the tune and the words that had been suggested to her during the storm the previous Saturday. The well took the lead in the song; indeed, it seemed to have been singing without Sarah's voice all along. Now the well was the master of the duet, leading Sarah into a dream world she did not understand.
The witchy shadow that had been stirring the cauldron was absent, and there were no warriors--in the rain or elsewhere. The dockworkers had an almost sub-human appearance, as their brows jutted more morosely forward, and their shoulders were bulkier with thoughtless strength than they had ever seemed exchanging cigarettes and small talk while loitering outside of the Union Hall. Sarah began to look around for the watery soldiers. Although grim, something about their presence had been a comfort to her, and even though she had been disturbed to see herself as one of them when she had glanced into the well and saw her reflection. The blue glow from the well, instead of shedding a clarifying light on the clearing in the ash grove, actually obscured Sarah's vision, making her put up her hand and squint to try and see what was in the surrounding area.
The foot of the trees on the far side of the well had taken on an unusual character, she thought. They seemed to be actual feet--but of an incredibly large size. The height of someone with those feet would have to be.... Sarah sent her gaze upward toward the tops of the trees. And all along the way, she saw a sinewiness to the trees that she hadn't ever noticed before. It seemed the trees were flexing against the prevalence of the wind, moving and doing as they wished, and not as the wind suggested.
In the upper boughs of the tree Sarah studied first, a long twirl of branches seemed to form a great green mustache, with two stars shining behind a leafy face for eyes. Sarah questioned what she saw, but then heard terrible, rushing, roaring laughter pour down from the figure above her. It was alive! And not as a tree is alive, but as a moving creature would be. Sarah stared from tree to tree--and in each tree a different figure appeared. some with long beards, and some with strong, ugly features like a nightmare, and some beautiful women, with long flowing leafy gowns. For the trees of this ash grove had not shed their foliage yet, and clothed the night time figures with leafy dress.
"Adsagsona Aerfen Aeron Agrona Afagddu," sang the well distinctly. Sarah could hear each word, and knew somehow that they were the names of the figures around and above the well. Sarah sang the response, joining the well in calling forth what she knew now had to be the Gods of Autumn.
"Adsagsona Aerfen Aeron Agrona Afagddu," she sang, and the figures pulled themselves from the trees as if from a net. They had a shadowy blue substance now, as though drawn in a outline by the blue glow of the well. Soon, they were fully fleshed. Sarah continued to sing, fascinated by the gargantuan figures moving slowly around her. One goddess was combing out her hair and putting it into a giant braid. Several of the male gods were flexing their limbs, as if arising from a long sleep. They all had an active look in their eyes, as if they had been long dreaming of this night and were not prepared to let it pass idly by.
Two of the gods bowed deeply to each other and then began to dance, a long, courteous, and even grave dance to the music swelling up from the glow-hole in the ground. Other gods stooped to take a closer look at the strikers standing numbly around the well. One of these smiled when he saw the stupor on their faces.
Sarah felt calm, yet alarmed. She felt herself walking toward the well. The well was somehow the key to it all. If only she could understand what the well was about, she could understand what was happening around her--and to her for that matter. She was impelled by a sudden overwhelming curiosity to see if she would appear in the reflection at the bottom of the well as a warrior again. Would her face be weighted down by a steel bullet-cap? Or would the fish-scale armor be running from her shoulders instead of her filmy nightgown? Where had those warriors gone who had stood such grim guard in the rain the other day?
Sarah placed her hands on the edge of the well. The runic letters were glowing too--outlining the names of the awakened gods in the same burning blue that had swollen above the well like one half of a beach ball. They shocked her with their intensity, and a strange, strong current passed from the names into her hands. Sarah felt that the hair was standing up from her head. She scrambled to the top of the well, and leaped in.
Sarah fell and fell into sudden silence, thinking only that she had heard a heavy "Oi!" as she fell.
END OF CHAPTER NINE