As I Was Going to Strawberry Fair

Chapter 3

Cai

I hurried through the night, past fields where cattle lowed gently, through woods where crickets chorused night-song. Fireflies flickered over pools of ditch-water, mirroring their dance of light with the reflected stars. My purpose pulled me as the overhanging moon tugged the distant sea. Kitchen lights of farm-houses shone on far-away hills, lonely and yet comforting. A falling star scratched a line across the surface of the night sky, then vanished.

At length I came to a little country graveyard, fenced and flowered, ivy-grown and unafraid of time, unafraid of night. The truck sat parked by the gate, creaking faintly with the cooling of its engine. The cemetery gate itself leaned open and broken. I approached warily, peering over the ivy-vined fence.

A marble angel stood moonlit in the center of the stones, guarding, watching, white wings thrown back in outrage at what he beheld. I nodded my respect, as one shall do. But his gaze did not turn from the churchyard and his sleeping charges. There among the gravestones, figures worked with shovels, grunting, cursing, arguing low. Four black candles marked the corners of a grave, and by that faint light they heaved something up from the dark wet earth. The statue of the angel glowered at this violation. One marble wing-tip twitched, tail-tip of an angry cat.

One figure stood at the head of the grave, holding a torch that sulked red flame. He wore a helmet topped with antlers. Shirtless, the muscles of chest and arms twitched beneath red-fired skin. He stood legs splayed, entirely confident of his stand upon the opened earth. At the foot of the grave stood another shirtless figure, pale skin wrapped in tattoos of snakes. They writhed unpleasant in the torch light. He bent down and worked upon the box, aided by a third and fourth brigand.

A sound of tearing wood, and the clean night air roiled with the stench of death. The antlered man raised the red-dripping torch above the coffin and began to chant. My eyes narrowed. The chanted words opened a door to a darker, deeper night. A cold wind rushed through, sending leaves clattering. All insect song stopped dead. Surrounding trees waved branches in alarm. White wisps of form and face rose like mist from the ground, hovered about the grave. Began an eerie dance, moving in and out, in and out of the red torch light, waving fingers at the opened coffin, coaxing some shy creature out of hiding.

And of course a figure sat up from within the box. It was a young woman, ghastly in her moon-lit beauty. Long blond hair hung dank about her for a shroud. She stared up at the torch, eyes filmed grey as dregs of old milk. And then she smiled; white teeth grinning up at the red light, head tipped in greeting to old friends and cold winds.

I shivered. Dark magic and the raising of the dead; to no good purpose. But this was not my purpose. I turned and felt within me for direction, for my next step. It was near. I tiptoed to the truck. In the back a tarp covered something that twitched. Carefully I pulled it away. And there lay a figure bound with ropes. I drew the knife from my belt, my hand confident around a hilt I had never grasped. I bent low over the prisoner, guessing he would see me only as a dark shadow against the sky.

"Shhh," I warned. "They are nearby." I began cutting the ropes.

He made a mumbling sound through a gag across his mouth. "Quiet," I reminded, and pulled the gag away. But as soon as it was free he spoke aloud. He had a pleasant voice, though high and breathless.

"What an interesting night," he observed to me, or to the night, or maybe just himself. He held out his wrists so I could cut the ropes more easily.

"Shhh," I repeated exasperated. I looked towards the figures in the cemetery. They were chanting again. The red torch blazed, casting bloody shadows upon the headstones, the stern face of the angel, the fair hungry face of the girl.

"Sorry," he whispered. Then, "Ow. Ouch. Ow. Hey that hurt."

I turned back to him. "What is it about 'shhh' that you don't understand?" I growled low.

"What is it about the difference between skin and rope that you don't understand?"

"Shut. Up." I said, suddenly furious.

"Shhhhh," he replied smug. Then he grinned. He thought he'd won some argument. I reached to put the gag back across his mouth. But he stretched his freed arms and legs and began climbing clumsily over the sides of the truck. He made a ridiculous amount of noise. I turned in alarm towards the cemetery. The chanting had stopped. I studied the antlered man bearing the red torch, worried he had heard.

Then something went flying past me and over the fence, to land with a loud jangle far out among the graves. The torch swayed. The angel twitched. I jumped, turned. The man I'd freed had thrown something.

"Let's go, go, go," he whispered. Why did he bother whispering now? He had retrieved a backpack from the truck, and donned it, a burden for the road.

"Into the truck," I said, moving towards the driver's door.

"No point," he hissed. "I just threw their keys away."

"What?" I shouted astounded. "Why the hell would you do that?"

"Don't you have a car?" he whispered. "What did you do, walk?"

I stared at my purpose, measuring him with the honest eyes of one new to all things. I beheld a thin young man with a long thin nose, a long thin face, long thin hair; feverish eyes blinking towards me without seeing more than shadows, lacking my night-vision. Here was the reason for my birth in a special moment of stars and night and wind; here the goal of the miles I'd traveled, and all the road to come. Here before me stood the reason for my life, my heartbeat, my very being.

And my purpose was obviously a total idiot.