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Chapter Text

Chapter Text

Things can’t go on like this.

Because it’s not that the lesson’s getting nowhere, but that it’s run off at a dozen miles an hour in the complete wrong direction. The choir absolutely can’t sit still long enough to get through HALF a song. Someone’s pinching at the bridge; someone’s pulling someone’s hair at the start of the second verse, there’s notes being passed during the chorus; and would you believe it, someone fires a wadded crumple of paper and ink onto the white keys of her piano the second she stops playing.

And in a way that makes her proud, though she’d never admit it – nobody is fessing up. Not one bit. A dozen pairs of forward-facing eyes; pin-straight backs, clasped little palms on laps over pinafores and jumpers not quite as hastily brushed free of dust as her little audience thought they had. Silent, and beaming ear to ear in grins. Gods, she is so, so proud of them.

A silent room. She matches their grins, swivelling around on her stool to face them with one arm reclining on the top of the piano’s case. And says nothing. They, in return, say nothing more.

Smiles twitch. Her own, included. One of them will break first. A snicker. A splutter. Someone twitches. Little legs swing. 

Everyone begins laughing, so loudly all at once that whoever broke first is lost to time. And she’s as red-faced as the tie at her neck by the end of it. The end of it, which, should these lot be left to themselves, will be in about three weeks time. Snapping fingers, whistling, counting to ten, tinkling a bell – none of that would be heard above the din. So her hands take to the keys hard, until the fast, jaunty little melody catches the attention of her class. With a clap, she steers them back on track.

“Right!” Her voice was deeper then, with a rumble like the grind of metal against pebble and dirt. 

“Well, my little lot. Golly, with how much today’s tune seems to elude you – it’s to my reckonin’ you’re distracted by something. And with a peek at the time–” She isn’t wearing a watch. She peers at her empty wrist with a dramatic gasp. “Well, we’ve plum-done wandered into lunchtime. Time for a break in our little chorus.” A wink, and a thunk of the piano’s fall-board down again. With the creaking of the floorboard, she’s up and towering over the two rows of little chairs at her choir, hands planted firmly on her hips. Face stilled in a smile. Another wink – and they up and scramble out of their seats, squeaking skids of the chairlegs against the wooden boards.

And that gives her fifteen minutes to herself; a rarity this time of year. To be savoured. Last year, she hadn’t had a single lunch break without bunting to cut, paper chains to stick, any one of the hundred or other little-big tasks handed off to any adult in Milldread with a pair of hands that’d been empty for more than thirty seconds. This year, one of the few thanks she has, is that the festivities will be far, far more restrained.

Restrained is not the word she would use to describe her chorus. She has many words for them. And all of them are positive. Whistling over over the chorus-turned-cacaphony (but the hoots, whistles, cheers and shouts remain music to her nevertheless), she nevertheless finds some kind of work for herself. Call it a habit.

It’s not a new shirt by any means; they haven’t time for tailoring, and deliveries of the latest fashions from the port or down from Buzzhuzz are a luxury Milldread has never allowed itself. That’s why she’s stitching away during her lunchbreak. A few seams need menting, near where the arms adjoin the chest. The shoulders themselves are far too narrow for her; the waist too tight. But the fabric is soft. A warm orange, faded in the sun somewhat. It’s the most precious thing she owns just now. It had been a gift. There’s embroidery near the cuffs; twisting vines and budding flowers. 

The shirt she has on just now is. Fine. There may be an errant ink-stain or two. It isn’t stiff, but she wears it stiffly. The tie is very important; ‘lest she seem too serious to her students. It’s fun. 

Lunch-break is fun. They spend five minutes throwing chairs at eachover, and carefully replacing them. A five minutes of eating. And then another five minutes where they pelt wooden blocks across the room. The chairs are silent, so her choir is eating. When she has to duck from the letter G spiraling across to her desk, then she’ll know it’s time for class to start again. A steady fifteen minutes to do some handiwork while eating lunch. 

On the topic of hands, what she could really use right now, are more. Two extra. Or four. Make it up to eight, or a dozen. Because in the corner there’s a cluster, and a whisper to raised voice, and the jerky movement of the group in a way that means someone’s shoving someone , and none of that will do. And unfortunately, she only has two hands. Sewing aside, the hushed chatter of the crowd quietens as the sound of an approaching adult’s footsteps. 

Second time today, and she’s towering over them with a grin that tells them it’s about time to start behaving right now, actually. They step back; eyes on their shuffling feet.  And in the middle of it all is a small girl with the proportions of a yam and the general demeanour of a hamster, with the chosen expression of ‘confused, and about to cry’. She doesn’t speak with her teacher-voice just yet. The question is asked wordlessly. With an unmoving grin, and the tap, tap, tap! Of one foot on the floorboards. 

“. . . wuzzn’ me.” Is a muffled response, which receives a glare. The students know this game by now. “. . . wuzz maybe me.”

“Mizzth– He was trying to take my lunch!” – “No I wuzzn’!” – “Dat counts as piracy.” – “Shut it Blarn.” –”You hearin’ dis Misst?” – “Stop yelling!” 

Not the chorus of voices she wanted to hear. But yet, exactly how she’d expected that to go. Tap, tap, tap. The ‘I’m waitingggggg’ is unsaid, but present. Surprisingly, the teary-eyed girl is the one to shush them first.

“No shh – shhhh!! Don’t blame him!” There she goes. Speaking for herself. Good girl.

“Golly, Milda, sure looks like you’re in the middle of a lot of fuss! Mind telling me what that’s all about?” Milda hunches in on herself; shrinking. Looking ashamed for someone who isn’t likely to have been one of the shove-ers, but not upset enough to be the shove-ee. Oh, or is that. Embarrassment?

“. . .Bloom was tryin’ to make Fischer share his lunch with m’. But Fischer didn’t want t’. I tried to tell them not to make a fuss– honest!” Tut, tut, tut. What will those lot be like. But –

“Well, that’s a lot of fuss over nothin’. But – ah, little Milda. Why’s Bloom here starting that in the first place?” She waits a beat. Milda squeezes inwards on herself, and nearly whispers.

“Cuz. Cuz. . .I forgot m’ lunch, Miste– Miss. I. . .left it on the table at home.” Oh, now that won’t do. Hmm. Hmmmmmmmm. Oh, what’s that sat on her desk in a folded piece of parchment paper?

“Say, Milda, you a fan of. . .ham sandwiches?” Milda nods, small and hesitant, as her teacher steps backwards across the room. “Well, let’s play a game or two. First. . .catch!” It’s a light toss if anything. Milda doesn’t catch it, but one of the taller girls does, and the sandwich makes it’s way right to it’s new owner. Milda is beaming, but pauses with it an inch from her mouth.

“B– but Miss. Won’t you be hungry now?” Though she’s facing the whiteboard now, the teacher can practically feel the lip tremble with that. 

“Oh, no no no! Don’t worry about me. No, I’m still plenty full from dinner last night. Mmmmm. Had a lovely dinner of–” A pause for half a note, a grin quickly stifled. And quick as a quarter-note this time; her head darts around on her neck to face the choir – contorted into a frown, holding her cheeks gaunt and jaw slack, eyes half-lidded. “--missbehaving children. ”  The choir squeals. “. . . kidding! Now, the next game is called ‘we have five minutes left of lunch and need to get our sandwiches eaten and chairs back in order, or our teacher is turning us into soup’! Best get to it.”

And with a clap, they’re back to order. The growling complaint of her stomach is inaudible over the piano, once lessons resume. She’ll eat later. For now, the lesson goes on! And with a bit of luck, they’ll sound something like a choir by the end of the week.

Chapter Text

Today’s lunchbreak takes her to the coveted Forbidden Cupboard of the classroom – which she’s overheard the name of from a few of the children, and decides she quite likes the sound of it. Apparently, she keeps a collection of bootleg alcohol, human bones, murder weapons, secretly stashed snacks, and possibly a gun in there. Gods know how she finds room for all that next to what she actually remembers keeping in there – being chalkboards, chalk, new chalk which she saves for when she needs a treat, broken chalk which is too small to use but clearly can’t be thrown away. A lot of chalk, actually. Old schoolbooks. New schoolbooks. Anything that could be feasibly used as a projectile weapon.

And her sewing project. The sunset-orange shirt makes its return to the open air today. It makes Gail smile the second her hands brush against the soft cotton. They feel warm, her hands, as she attempts to tackle letting out the shoulders once more. She’s not a seamstress by any means, but like all of Milldread. She makes due with what she has.

They don’t see many outsiders. Tourists go around them directly to Hobbyhoo – which, the older folks tell her, has been all about flashy lights and gaudy shows ever since they got their pair of Gods. Then, visitors go through to the history and arts of Buzzhuzz. Or some instead stay in the port-town of the Cove. Which – is where Milldreaders are most likely to venture out to. On rare occasions, they ship in things from off-grove with the boats there. Extremely rare occasions. Much, much too rare than needing a new shirt. As much as her current white button-up makes her, in her opinion, look exactly like the sticks of chalk that fill most of the cupboard. That’s what the tie’s for. And her current project. Not even to mention the many, many more things she’d rather ship in than shirts .

Give it a few more spare minutes at lunch worth of work though, and a too-boring, stiff old shirt will be one less thing to complain about. Father Ezra did always tell the congregation – nothing good comes, without working for it.

A peek up from the desk reveals one chair which isn’t skidded across the floor, lodged in a window, or part of an elaborate fort as usual. It is empty, and exactly where she’d placed it this morning. And it has been empty from this morning, and remained exactly that way up until lunchbreak ends. It continues to remain empty even as the sun dips in the sky and the class filters out through the doors of the schoolhouse in an exhausted, excited cluster.

Everyone except for Blarney. Who she catches by the hood of a coat at the edge of the cluster.

“Blarnathan.” They don’t turn around to face her, and hunch deeper into the coat.

“Huzzo, mizztuh. Mizzuz Gail.”

“Quick little question, would’ja mind?”

“Nuzzin’ at all mizzuz.” Blarney, who is visibly attempting to wiggle out of the coat and scamper away, nods.

“Haven’t happened to see Bloom, have ya’? Been skipping the last few days. Sure hope he hasn’t come down with anything.” A mock frown curves down across her face as the expected nuh-uh plays out. “So am I to take it you’ve been chewin’ away at that gum there for the last week? Sure you ain’t skeedaddled on down to his for a sweet or two after lessons?”

“. . .not answerin’ wizzout a lawyer present Mizzus Gail.” And that’s the only answer she needs. She chuckles. 

“Alright, git with you. Sure as sure’s sure you’re down to cause some trouble with Fischer Baghley. . . . but one last thing before you scamper?” Holding the hood of the coat at the same spot in the air, her face moves in closer, closer, to the ear inside that hood.

“Wuzzit?” Blarney hasn’t noticed her moving in. Heh heh heh.

“. . . .boo.” And then she releases the hood. Blarney’s gone in less than a second. That leaves her to laugh.

Well, Lil’ Bloom’s coming up on nearly a whole week missed of lessons. Not mentioning the arithmetic and grammar, that means a whole week behind on the harmonies too. 

That can’t keep going on, or where will her choir be? Sun dipping on the horizon; door of the schoolhouse locked shut for the night soon to come, she turns the opposite way up the road to usual. Time to make a little home visit. 

The orchard at sun-down is a nice enough spot to visit, even if it’s after a day’s work and she still has to take herself home. And find something out for dinner. Her stomach complains.

The fruit-trees are, of course, bare, save a few mealy apples or bruised plums scattered about in the bare spots of dirt between the trees. ‘Harvest’ wasn’t just one day – she’d expected Lil’ Bloom to have been gone all last week helping with that, when it was all hands on deck. Every member of her class would pop in and out throughout the months. It was the fact that he’d been gone for most of the following week, and she knew darn well nobody was out picking still.

Someone’s home though. There’s smoke rising from the chimney; the doors are open, windows fogged in steam, and even making her way up the pathway she can hear the chatter of a radio – one of the few in the village. She was surprised they’d kept the thing. 

The front door opens up into the kitchen. It’s never locked. She doesn’t knock. It’s not just young Bloom in the house; she can hear sounds in the other room, him calling out to Ma Bulb. Standing on a stool; wooden spoon almost as tall as he is, is Lil’ Bloom. His ma has tied back his hair into a braid, and he’s stirring in an iron pot the size of himself.

It takes her every ounce of self-control to not spook the boy – the scene’s set perfectly for it, and he’s delighted by being caught off-guard on most days. But if she knows Bloom – that pot’s full of hot, molten sugar, and the stool doesn’t look too stable. So instead –

“. . say, looks like a busy day you’ve had. Anything fun you’ve cooked up?”, with a gentle hand on a shoulder. And instead of a dangerous flailing, he moves less with the tiny jump of surprise than he does laughing at it afterwards.

“Oh! Miss. Ma – Ma! Miss is here–” The stirring isn’t stopped. A voice in the other room replies; she hears half of it, “--told ya shouldnt’ve bunked from lessons!”, and Bloom continuing as though nothing else mattered more than the pot he has on the stove.

It’s a deep red; flecks of seed and skin and large, blistering bubbles. More steam than anyone could be comfortable with for longer than five minutes – the little lad’s rolled his sleeves all the way up, and looks slightly damp to the touch with condensation.  “So, jammin’ instead of jammin’, is it Bloom? We’ve been missing you down the chorus. But it seems you’ve been. . .hmm, busy.” Voice trailing off, she’s for now only just taking in the room.

At one point, when she was Bloom’s age, she’d been taken with onto a trip into the city. Not the big city, mind, a long walk to Buzzhuzz. Hobbyhoo. Buying something they couldn’t make, nothing exciting enough to even bother telling a child what it was. She hasn’t a clue what it was in the end.

Spent the entire time clinging to an adult’s leg and shuffling through crowds. At one point, they’d gone into a food-store, is what she’d assumed. Slipped away, not on purpose, clammy hands losing grip on a dangling sleeve. Alone for a moment. And stoodd before a refrigerated drinks cabinet. Electrical. There must have been a hundred glass bottles; still, carbonated, clear, green, a thousand words on a thousand labels. Beads of condensation dripping down the bottles’ sides. Transfixed – and then, a hand grabs her, a gentle “Come along, son–”, and she was pulled away.

She reckons that there’s almost certainly more jars, sat lined up on the counters, clinging condensation and full of hot jam, clinking away in a boiling pot of water to sterilize, or lined up into crates, than there were in that drinks case. “. . very busy, indeed.”

“Sorry, Miss. Haven’t meant to miss the lessons. I swear I’ll practise twice as hard next week–” A shush quiets the apology.

“Ah, the songs aren’t goin’ nowhere. I’d just thought you were here cookin’ up more marshmallows all night like last time. You know how you get tryin’ to get the recipe right.” He nods. The sterilizing jars clink. The pot of jam pops. Her mouth straightens. “. . soooo. Fancy tellin’ me why’ve you’ve enough jam to stick a houses’ full of wallpaper up and still have spare to do the basement?” He chuckles more.

“The fruit! Won’t keep all winter, Miss. Got to get it all into jams and – and some marmalades, done some jellies too – before it all turns. Ma says–”

Cutting him off is Buld, arms laden with another crate of empty jam jars. “ Ma says she could’ve done this alone and you should’ve taken your stems down to the schoolhouse like a good sprout. Evenin’.” The woman nods in greeting, and the teacher waves.

“When my boy started shoutin’ that ‘Miss’ was here, thought for a minute he’d finally been so badly-behaved, Mitternacht Herself had popped in to tell him t’ shut it–” Bloom is cackling to himself over at the stove, knocking the spoon against the rim of the pot, clingling seeds flung into the hot mash again. “--but it’s just the second closest thing, a teacher. Evenin’ G–. Gail?” A quirked eyebrow, a missed note, and a nod from the teacher herself. “Gail. You haven’t been visiting.” The tone isn’t chiding. Gail’s face reddens a hint regardless (maybe it’s the steam), hand at the nape of her neck to fidget.

“There’s a lot of work around harvest – you know yourself. Even in the . . more quiet years, with irony.” A look is shared, another nod. “But I had to pop in to make sure one of my best voices hadn’t come down with a cold, ain’t I?” Bloom is on the receiving end of a hair-ruffle. His whole head is damp with steam. 

“Ain’t that the truth. . . Bloom, pass me the spoon. You’re about to get heatstroke in autumn. Go on, stand outside a minute, cooler out there.” Not seeming one to complain, Bloom hands over the spoon to his mother with the air of a holy relic, nearly trips over a jar on the way out, and can be seen flopping over with a groan onto the cool dirt outside. The second he’s out of ear and eyeshot, Bulb’s face collapses inwards into a frown. “Don’t know what I’d do without that boy.”, a dry chuckle. 

“It’s looking to be a bad winter, Gail.” And all she can do is nod, looking at her feet. “Wind few months back lost us most the apples before they could ripen, then the rain made sure they’d rot on the ground too. That odd spot of warm we had’s left the plums so soft they splatter when they fall from the trees. And the humidity’s left the raspberries moulding still on the vine.” A tutt, a shaking head, and a ladle, going to fill up the last of the jars. Gail glances again around the room. 

“Not as much as it looks like, really. Not to live on for the rest of the year. It’s not just. Us, who’ve had another bad year, Gail, either. And that’s not to mention we’ve nothing of a surplus to flog to tourists or in that poncy ‘farmer’s market’ in Hobbyhoo.” Another ladle of red; gust of steam, and a jar is filled. Bulb shakes her head between each movement, tutting and frowning all the while. “Lil’ Bloom’s shoes are more patch than sole at this point.” 

All the response she can at first muster to that is: “We don’t have much to sing about this year, huh?” But muster she must(er), as Bulb frowns.

“. . .but you know. We sing anyway. We’ll. Find some way to make it through. Seen worse years and worst days. We take care of our own.”

A muffled chuckle of “Ain’t that the truth.” Marks the filling and sealing of the last jar. It tunks down onto the counter; Bulb reaching past it to a cooler jar to place with a brief “Eh?” into Gail’s open hands. 

“Go on then. Plum and raspberry. The boy’ll be back in school tomorrow, on Gods’ words. . . .well, some Gods’ words. Not, nothing of Huzzle Mug, at least. Someone’s . Maybe. . . .Bauhauzzo. God of memory, so he'll remember to show up, hah.” Warm glass in cold hands. The heat radiates into her chest from where she holds it. A look outside. Bloom should have. Been reaching a growth spurt about now, shouldn’t he? He’s not much taller than he was last harvest.

She can’t take this. 

“Have a good evening, Gail.” A back turned; hissing as the hot pot is dropped into the cool washing water. The sound covering the smallest tink as a jar is put down among the identical cluster. The sum of them all seems much, much, smaller, than it did at first.

Muster it up, Gail. “. . .He best be, or tell him – he’s going in the soup!” And she leaves the house laughing, empty, cold-handed. Waves to Bloom on the way past – he’s too busy talking to the scarecrow to notice. 

And Gail only remembers after waking up, come morning, that dinner went un-eaten in the pantry last night. Sliced ham and bread on the coldstone. Oh well. It’s breakfast now. Something to keep her going on for the day’s lessons.

Waste not, want not. 

Chapter Text

It is a mercy she attributes to any Gods willing that the Harvest goes without incident. For all her years on the Grove, she’s seen a way in which every element that makes it up may go wrong, and it is not a year for luck.

The decorations see no error, because there’s really no way to fail when they only consist of hanging a dozen lamps about the town centre, and tying a few bundles of hawthorn branches to the lampposts with red bows. 

The centerpiece of the festivities does not catch on fire part way through being woven this year; not that it would reach much of a blaze. They call it a husk; woven of bare stripped stalks and stems, thin dried branches. A tower of what is left after the harvest to creak in the wind. At the far edge of autumn the husk is burned; a bonfire on the brink of winter. Gail herself is taller than the husk this year. The shape it is made into differs across years, and for reasons she had somehow not quite picked up on, is in the vague shape of a bird. The children work together on it throughout the day and singing begins in the afternoon.

The choir knows their lines, has a steady grasp on the melody, and a half-decent attempt at harmony under their belt as well. One of the older children, taller too, situated at the back and unfortunately named Gilbason, is caught in a small coughing fit for about thirty seconds during the chorus of the first song. And that is about the only miss-hap. Nary a wrong note strikes the keys of the piano – not that it would with her playing it, that is. The instrument is tuned; rain does not dampen the sheet-music or lyric books as it had three years ago, and all goes well. 

She has never, in her life, felt shame in her voice and never will, a voice rumbling and whispering like wind itself. Voices quieter, smaller, however, deserve not to be dampened, and so she plays accompanying her choir through a series of songs. Less than a dozen small voices ring out into the sunset, a crowd listening in rapture to each shaky lifting note, every crack of a voice or uncertain mumble.

For the final song, they are joined – not only by her, but the entire crowd. It is the town’s song – Milldread’s song, and as Bloom’s voice drifts off from the final solo, the chorus rises up to meet him. Like leaves in wind, Gail carries them through the song in both voice and instrument. 

And once it is over, there is cheering, and there is laughter – people, and sound, all around her, echoing and spilling out into the town. It is Harvest. For that moment, all is well.

Father Ezra approaches her after the song. First there comes singing, later dancing, but for now – people feast.

Harvest is a time of abundance, and as such, is traditionally a time of indulgence. On most occasions, this is true. And today, though restrained compared to their best years, though each mouthful eaten is swallowed alongside guilt, they make their best attempt at keeping a semblance of tradition.

A short menu with portion sizes leaving more to be desired for today’s affair, but it is there. There is barbeque, meat that’d been smoking all through the night before, sauce usually rich with sugars and fairly expensive spice from the port, this year. . .bland, if not for the smoke. There are pancakes, hot, lightly graced with butter. There is casserole. A lot of casserole, actually. There is cider. There is jam. And there is cornbread. 

Good Gods, there could be a hurricane and a wildfire both at once, peak of the season, and there would still be cornbread at Milldread’s Harvest, she thinks. There are a distinct four or five styles in which the bread is made; a dozen more between each family and generation, and a divide right down the middle of town over sweet or savory. And a sort of diagonal-z-shape with the corners cut off for the parts of Milldread which adds whole corn or not. 

The Harvest meal is done on order of potluck; one family is chosen each year to make the cornbread. Like clockwork, there will be another family in the depths of recipe-based feud against whoever is chosen, and a rival cornbread will mysteriously appear upon the buffet table. The highest number Gail had personally seen was five, though she’d heard tale of upwards of twelve from her grandmother before her time.

This year, there is just one pan.

Gail will wait her turn. She will chatter on the sidelines, help children reach the table, she will watch as each person fixes themselves a plate from the table, each child two. As people circle to pick at what’s left she will gather lost lyric sheets to stack neatly, duck into other conversations when the topic of who will be handed the last piece of something or another comes up, and make herself busy. 

But she will not end this day without eating an inadvisably sized hunk of cornbread to herself. 

And that is how, as Father Ezra finds her, back turned, standing with her heels together and her face coated in a thick dusting of crumbs; half a hunk still in hand. “Hullo, my child.” He says. She does not reply. It is entirely because of the cornbread. “The choir did well this year, didn’t they.”

“Hmmhhmm.” She nods. She could swallow, and speak, but is reluctant to put this piece of cornbread down.

“Though – they did seem a tad, distracted? No doubt by the buffet table, of course, glad they can enjoy it. . .will be a while, before they see treats like this again.” It is dry. Very, very dry in her mouth. She continues to chew, nodding.

“Ah, nothing like the Harvest in a rift-year. Oh, those years, you – you’re how old now, again?” She places down the hunk, hands free to hold up fingers – two tens, and a two. “Ah, yes. But you were about – a few years after ten, by my reckonin’, last Rift.” He chuckles. She doesn’t. 

For cornbread reasons, mostly. 

A sweet recipe this year, cakey. And dry. So, so dry. She recalls Wheaver Bhagley holding his hands up, chuckling “You got me.” with his baking skills at question. People hooting about him needing someone who knows how to work with flour in the family. She’d been one of them. She will nonetheless, still eat the cornbread. Father Ezra is still talking throughout as she takes another bite.

“. . .more than two decades to go ‘till the next one, hmm? Ah. First the choir ever sees. .with Mitternacht’s blessing they all do.” Gail frowns, hums dismissively. Crumbs fall off her face into the dirt. The bread is nearly cloyingly sweet. Ezra hums as well. There’s almost a whole line of missed notes for that bar of the conversation. He attempts to, as she assumes, pivot towards small-talk.

“Aside from the school, how’ve – how’ve you been fairing, my child – Gail?” She nods, more sharply than she’d meant to. “With, the name – and all else. Any more thought? You’d mentioned that one being, erh, a ‘for nows’ sort of deal. Ah – and on Bauhauzzo’s sake, it’s a little hard to recall. Not much different at all to Ga–” And then, conveniently, she chokes.

She has a soggy clump of cornbread in her throat, and it isn’t quite stopping her breathing, but it's uncomfortable like nothing else. Sputtering crumbs all the way down Father Ezra’s vestment and everything. He looks mortified. 

Her saviours are Wheaver with a mug of cider, mouthing ‘sorry!’ and bearing a genuine look of remorse, and Bulb with a heavy-handed whack to her back and laugher loud enough to cover up the few wheezing coughs she has left. 

“Gods, Gail – trying to go join the Miss in the sky already? Must be, if you’re eating that dry . If the punchline of this joke is you passin’ out then you’re more dedicated than’s good for y’.” Ezra is too busy picking off crumbs to disapprove of that saying; Wheaver feigns a dramatic look of betrayal, and Gail manages to give them all a thumbs-up between swigs of cider. 

“Ah – well. I’m glad to hear you’re doing, well. The choir was beautiful.” Eyes watering, she gives him a dismissive hand-wave and another thumbs-up. 

Then, a long call of “EzraaaaAAAAA–” It’s Pollark, town brewer, was in charge of cider today she distantly recalls. Scruff of a child’s collar in each hand, both looking quite displeased with the situation. Gail is proud of them in an odd way. “We have two here who could do w’ a talking to of the stern kind about what Miss Mitternatch thinks on children who bite–” And then Ezra chuckles, excuses himself, and Gail regains the ability to breathe properly. 

Wheaver is, once more, extremely guilty about the whole affair. “Gahhhh – sorry! Sorry Gail!!! M’ no darn good in a kitchen, always used to tell you. I’ll send someone straight to the Drain one of these years with m’ cookin’--” Bulb is cackling. Gail is chuckling. Wheaver keeps going: “No, jus’ – don’t mind Father Ez at all, he means well, just – no good at small talk. N’ he’s been under a lot of stress this year with Harvest.” Bulb has not stopped cackling, and only manages to do so to talk. 

“Mean, really Gail. Jam’s right there– oh, what the Clack? Where’d that go. . .” A puzzled squinting at an emptied jar, practically licked clean of its contents, butterknife uselessly propped up inside it. Gail briefly remembers catching sight of a suspiciously sticky Blarney at some point, but thinks best not to mention it.

“Oh, uh! Snooze n’ lose, suppose. Got in to fix a plate a bit late, bu– Bulb .” The other woman is holding a second, entirely full, unopened jar of jam in the most menacing way a jar of jam could be held. “No – no. Drain, you know you don’t need to be goin’ and opening a whole jar just for me–” Kshh-pop. The sound of the lid metal crinkling as the seal is broken. 

“Got a reputation on the line, Gail! And every God we’ve got couldn’t save me if my boy found out his favourite teacher didn’ get to enjoy his jam. Go on.” Without even a chance to object further, jam has been liberally ladled onto the half-eaten square of cornbread she has left. “Besides – you must’ve finished the last jar by now. Take rest home, don’ waste it.”

“Well, gosh. Thank you Bulb – well, can’t go disappointing the soloist, ha!” Jam and crumb smear across her smile with this bite.

It’s much, much easier to swallow.

On her way home; having wheeled the upright piano back to the schoolhouse, helped carry and pack away chairs, tables, sorted lyric sheets back into their folders, stacked onto shelves, she trips over Father Ezra.

He lives about five minutes down the road past hers, but hasn’t quite made it all the way back. Chuckling to himself, lying on a dust-road, with an empty bottle. Gail chuckles as well. This isn’t the first time she’s helped someone too far into a bottle back home after Harvest – she’d been on the receiving end herself at times. 

Arm hoisted over her shoulder, stumbling down the road, he slurs out words. She pays him no mind.

“It’ssss. All, all too late, this year. You, you get past Harvest, that’s. Next year set in motion, my girl.” His chuckles turn to the occasional groan. “Then, ah, it’s just. Trying to get by on what the Gods give us until spring.” Dry hedgerows either side of the road rattle in the evening wind.

“What. What did we do wrong , do you think? If anything at – hic! All. We must have done, something?” Something like a sob this time. She pays him no mind. “We used to know Drain-well that, that a God can be. Wrath-full. Even, even before Milldread, we knew.” The old priest’s voice lowers to a near-whisper, as though speaking words of scandal. 

“They – tell me child, have you seen how they. Cavort, in Hobbyhoo? So. Blatant. They don’t work there, they. Play. They speak to Gods . It shouldn’t be proper, girl, it’s–” He stumbles, drops the bottle. Three last sips spilled. Waste. “Buzzhuzz, now, they respect , Gods, but do any of them truely worship? And yet! They, th– hah! Who sees harvests go bad, year after year, them? ”

She sighs. He continues. A vague semblance of a rant, voice dipping into accented twang, barely concerned with coherence.

“We – we don’t give , enough anymore, child. They, we – we were meant to revere Gods. To, to. Fear. And now look, look at this.” Gritted teeth, steps down the dust road, heavy weight on her shoulder. Bear him. No mind. He’s drunk. “Squandering away what little Miss sees fit to bless us with.” He tries to pick the spilled bottle up again. His hands clatter bluntly against it, squinting, and then he blinks.

“. . . . .oh, oh child. Forgive my ramblin’. It’s too late t’ change anything now. Harvest’s done. What we have, s’. All we’ll have now. We take care of our own. Take care of them our-selves.” And a final laugh, quiet, dry, horrible. 

“. . . who do you think we’ll lose before the next Harvest, hmm?” They come to a sudden stop; jerking the old priest upright again.

“Goodbye, Ezra.” A blunt goodbye she’ll forgive herself for making, just this once. Ezra blinks, stumbles, finds a handhold on his front-door. Mumbles something, an apology, a goodbye? Whatever it is, she tries so, so hard to pay it no mind. And takes herself home.

The jar of jam finds its way to a pantry-shelf, thick with dust, once night falls. Lid on tight, barely touched, to sit until dust gathers upon it too.

Chapter Text

She’s broken from another lunchtime reverie by Milda lightly tugging on the sleeve of her coat. The frost had started to creep in that week, and it was an uphill battle to keep the schoolhouse heated in winter; a part of why lessons halted towards the end of the year. Coats were worn indoors. 

This lunchtime, she’s at work grading a few end of year test papers; she liked to take the period between the Harvest and the bonfire at the beginning of winter to review. Sewing needles traded for a red inkpen, spending the break ticking away instead of darning. She hadn’t yet worn her little sewing project yet, and hadn’t for the Harvest. The hem she’d let down had started to unravel itself catastrophically, and then she’d far to much work to do, and had forgotten about it. It would be something to get back to, eventually. More things to worry about right now.

Namely, Milda.

“Miss Gail?” The girl’s voice is small, diminuendo. “Um. M’ sorry keep, doing it. But. Done it again.” And she places a late autumn blossom on the desk without taking her eyes off her feet; a cluster of small flowers on one stem, light purple thin petals and a yellow centre in each.

It’s far from the first time this season, this week, even. Each time, the blossom, the sprig of leaves or grass-seed, whatever little favour that seemed to be an apology for even asking, would be oooh’d and aaaah’d at with loud enough awe to draw attention to the teacher alone. Displayed with pride at a place of honour, the flower tucked into her shirtpocket beside her tie. 

Under the edge of her desk, she’d carefully swing a paper bag into Milda’s hands, pull a second bag out to replace the first, grin, and wink. Milda would eat her newly gained sandwich with the rest of the classroom, then get right along to playing a game. Recently, this was one they’d accurately named ‘Run Very Fast and Slam Your Entire Body Against The Classroom Wall’. A hit, that one was; very Buzzhuzzian. Watching that, Gail would then eat a handful of the crackers from the second bag, swallow them down with warm water, and tuck the bag away again. 

It wasn’t just Milda who asked, no. Gilbason had last week come forward with a red-faced grimace of wounded pride, and a dried stalk of lavender. Blarney the week before – a single strand of hayseed. Nobody had mentioned it out-right, that Gail knew of, Gods no, they’d never suggest something like that. But they all kept eyes away from the desk when someone quietly shuffled up front.

A routine it was, but a routine infrequent. And her memory has never been her best quality.

Her desktop is empty today, and she doesn’t quite know what to do about it. 

She can’t go back and remind herself to bring her own lunch today – she hadn’t forgotten, and wouldn’t be sure what she could bring, at all. And above all, she absolutely can’t turn this into a joke. What else is there to do?

Milda is closer to crying every beat of time passing. She’s seconds away from running from the desk as it is. There are words; every one of them, Gail is choking on. Unseen, but felt,eyes dart over towards the desk, slowly. If she’d had the pins out today you could hear them drop.

Something has to break the thin membrane of inactivity settled over the room. Something has to change. Someone has to do something. 

And Gail doesn’t. “Well, uh–” Choked from an empty mouth, and nothing comes forth. 

A panicked reverie has set in – but one, unexpectedly broken? Faster than she can object, a shout and a call over are made. Sandwich quarters shared, biscuits broken, crumbs falling between hands, and between themselves the children have fed eachother. 

With sticky-handed thumbs-up and grins towards her as Milda eats – they’re proud . 

A dazy-head passes her through the rest of the day. As she’d often joked, she could teach a lesson half-awake, and it seems she can. She even manages to gather together enough coherency to make a joke as they leave; finds herself sitting and grinning as the class sputters into peals of laughter and tumbles out of the door.

And once alone, she retches, spitting bile, red-faced and sweating, into the wastepaper bin. Half an hour spent with the room spinning, legs given way to the ground, awful stinging sour taste in her throat. Until she wipes her face, stumbles to her feet, and walks home.

She doesn’t forget to bring lunch after that.

Bonfire day creeps in like winter, along with the frost. The ground is hard in the morning, turning to mud near the afternoon. Coats are donned on the daily now. There’s a bite to the air that chatters teeth. In most years, she’s waiting bated breath for the holiday– on many occasions wishing there was something between the Harvest and Bonfire to tide through the cooling days.

It’s no Harvest, but Milldread doesn’t turn up an excuse for a shindig. There isn’t a particular event marking the Bonfire, but it brings to mind the God of Memory. A bonfire is an old thing, simple as fire alone, from when the ability to strike a spark of flint fell into the hands of humans. Everyone has a fond memory of Bonfire. Its date falls simply whenever it is needed. 

In the morn, the dry woven stems of the husk have begun to crackle with frost, and by afternoon sag with the dampness of the thaw. A sure-sign Bonfire is upon them. And a sign they best be ready to burn the thing before it turns to mush.

They sing – though there’s no performance. Wheaver plays cello for a while, and Gail’s taught the children a few good songs fitting the season when they have a spare moment. After, Bulb brings the radio out. The older children, the ones who’d like to pretend to be closer to adults than they are, are trying to sing along to songs Gail hasn’t heard before, but likes all the same. And everyone else a few generations above her tutt, but smile, about that. 

Soup is handed out; mugs, potato-heavy, salted, dried beans soaked throughout the day and added to the large boiling pot alongside tinned ham, cubed. Baked potato as well, a sliver of butter atop each, and a pinch of cheese. A few people have brought out tins, also of beans, baked in tomato sauce. A potato and bean feast. Ladling away from the large soup pot is Ezra, and charged with handing out the mugs to the crowd is Ruth. A woman three years older than Gail; they’d gone to school together, and passed notes instead of listening. 

Ruth’d ended up a seamstress. Today, however, it appears she’s taken a harsh pivot down the road of life, and she’s become a Guardian of the Soup. None shall pass her to aid in the Soup Distribution, for she is the arbiter of all things Soup. Or at least, that’s what Gail is muttering along the lines of, after being on the receiving end of a sharp elbowing away from the zone of work being done.

“What’d you think would happen? Ruth’s not gonna like it if y’ get all up in her business, not while she’s busy with the soup.” Wheaver admonishes her, gently, with the tact of a friend. His cello is laying down to rest, atop a folded scarf, Wheaver sitting on the cold ground beside it. 

Gail tuts out a response, alongside a playful shove to his shoulder. “Now, you know I was only trying to help.” Her palms begin to itch, a tight feeling, like they’re the splitting skin on the beans and potatoes inside the mug. Yet to take a sip, she doesn’t put it down, holding onto something does her good for trembling. “She had a face like I’d spit in the soup! Gods knowin’ I wouldn’t try a trick that nasty.” Gail is sat with her knees to her chest, resting her wrists on thin kneecaps.

Among every other group of people sitting on the ground, one thing is shared – they could be sitting on rock right now, and not be able to tell the difference. The scraping sound of a trowel finds her ears, a tinny ring – evidently the iced earth is the culprit. But a reason for why someone is trying to dig the top frosted layer off the earth is something of a more complicated matter. And near seconds later, hushed laughter answers her – muffled cheers, claps. Squinting against the setting sun, she sees that the glint comes from something glass, dirt being brushed away.

She started teaching at nineteen years old – coming into the job suddenly. Classes came in a mix of ages in Milldred; most finish schooling and go into apprenticeship between twelve and fifteen. And it’s the mixed group of teens she’d met halfway through their schooling in her first year that are currently digging up a bottle of corn whiskey buried right under the edge of the Husk. Someone’s parent was going to find it missing come New Year’s, no doubt. 

Gail could put on her best teacher voice, march over and sort them out. But why would she? She’d been the exact same as them barely six years ago; with Ruth, Wheaver, Bulb, and others. Hanging off each others shoulders in someone’s field until past midnight. Laughing so loudly the scarecrow they’d thought hilarious to dress up would have been out of a job.

The youth’s laughter is drowned out by one much closer; Wheaver, right into her ear. When she glances back she sees the gaggle scamper away, area being cleared away. They’re starting the lighting of the Husk. 

“What were you expectin’, girl! It’s her job. Y’ know what people’ll b’ like in Milldread, about things like that.” Gail scoffs, Wheaver shakes his head. “S’ her job. Father Ez gave it to her– she’s thinkin’, what’m I gonna do, have’m think I can’t do it?” 

She scowls this time. “If that's what she thinks, she can mosey on over n’ say it to me herself. Didn’t have to look at me like soured milk, did she?” And a second scowl, for good measure.

“Darn, y’ know what’m mean. Y’ too helpful for your own good you are, Gaily.”

Her mouth opens with full intent to retort, sharper than she’d have meant, finding itself drowned out with a chorus of cheering and crackling. The Husk has taken light; all a sudden, she’s cheering too. 

The mug of soup goes cold in her hands, but she can feel warmth flitting off the bonfire, off of Wheaver shoulder to shoulder with her, and she drinks. 

And in the depths of night later, after she’s had her fill of cold soup, after she’s snuck up behind that gaggle of youths, startled them skinless, stolen the two-thirds finished bottle of corn whiskey with threats to return it to whoever’s parent it was if she catches them again, and is about to retire home herself, beside the priest struggling with a folding table, she sees Bulb.

She doesn’t hear whatever’s said, between Ezra’s dismissive hand waves, Bulb’s futile grasps at giving any help for packing up. Not even when his lips quicken in a snap, face immediately drooping with regret as Bulb’s own firms. Not as the woman stills her brow, and with a curt nod, and turns to march away, does Gail hear a thing.

But it’s as Bulb, several ciders down and exhausted far past midnight, turns her head around and barks, does Gail hear. 

“You’d know Drain well I can take care of my own, Ezra  – question is, how’s about you, huh?” And then the only sounds are footfalls in half frozen mud, and the snapping together of the folding table.

Something clicks.

Gail walks home alone.

It clicks, and then everything else clicks. It’s Clickmass. 

Amidst the Pantheon, Click Clack, God of Stories, of Teamwork, was venerated all the same. Invoked in the work of their every day of living, and in the stories told during them. Milldred held a place in its heart for Click Clack. But Clickmass. . . less so. The God had brought the holiday with themselves, as the stories went. They had friends celebrating a childhood holiday; a ward against homesickness from far before stepping through the Rift, and then it became theirs. Clickmass was a tool at the centre of itself, a means to an end – a celebration in the winter, a reason to gather. A device of narrative. A vessel for a story. 

Milldread was never one to really celebrate when she was a child – her father always called it “More of a Hobbyhoo thing”. All electric lights and singing over the words in songs on the radio, buying things they didn’t need. Latching onto the exciting newness of something that wasn’t quite theirs. Hobbyhoo was always fascinated with things from off-Grove. Things Milldread did without. The newer generation, though, seemed to like it. They’d pick a tree to prop up in the burnt ashes of the Husk and wrap it in paper chains. Wrap other things in paper too – gifts. Feast when circumstances permit.

This year, circumstances did not. They had the tree, pale rings of paper chain sagging and sodden by the day-of. The choir was humoured with a handful of carols to sing. They didn’t gather. Gail finds herself mid Clickmass day in Father Ezra’s study.

In a wheezy breath he says; “Ironic, isn’t it girl?”, while tippy-toed up to reach a box on the high shelf. Coughing ever so slightly on dust; a stale, rich scent to the air. “The holiday at hand. Though I don’t know if it’s as. . .well known, about your generation. . .ah, here we are.” Another dust cloud scatters the air with the necessary file pulled from a shelf.

Gail fakes a gasp, posturing dramatically, with the largest frown she can muster, chin in her hands. ““You wound me, Father E, you’re woundin’ me deep. I’m the one teachin’ those history classes now; y’ know?” 

A stack of papers, brought with her, rests on the desk. Beside it are two of cups of bitter, hot liquid, a coffee of roasted dandelion root. Ezra has burnt it to the point of unpalatable. She drinks, regardless.  It had always been that the priest led Milldread, in spirit. Not in the sense of a mayor; they didn’t have those – but Ezra had found himself doing half the work of one at least. His study became something between an office and an archive, as had his porch to a vestibule; drawing room to a nave. His entire house became both a church, and a town hall. He kept records. 

“It is sort o’ funny – us bein’ the only ones who’ve nothing to do with a holiday from off the Cove. But we’ve never been for it.” She adds, with a shrug for good measure, idly shuffling papers about. Every year, they’d send off copies, end of year reports, to the University of Buzzhuzz. In turn they’d issue a certification of education. Something considered legitimate , institutionally, and by those off-Grove. Few ever needed this. For the ones who did, Gail put in the effort. The papers have found their home in the file, and Ezra’s back turns again to place it back on the shelf.

He chuckles through a response. “Oh – no, not that. Wouldn’t hold it against you; no doubt it’s not in the curriculum. We used to – ah, there we go.” The file finds a place on the shelf once more. “Celebrate – Clickmass, I mean, though of course we didn’t call it that, though. We had a very similar name, if you’d believe..” Gail raises an eyebrow at that; grins in an encouraging manner. She’d kick her feet up on the desk ready to listen if Ezra was anyone but the town priest.

Ezra continues. “Mind you – stopped long before my time. Any of our times, oho.” With a groan, he too sits. “It was something from before the Grove. They brought it with them – and, well. You know better th’ most that we’ve given up a lot of things the first of us came with. Came to do, at that.” He clarifies; acknowledged with a nod.

“You know enough already about what we were like, those days. In manners of worship. Ah – the holiday marked a sort of beginning to, well. The worship we were up to those days. Very important to us at a time, folks would make a right fuss over it.” A dryish chuckle that peeters off into a sigh follows, eyes down, slight hint of a frown. Not in his mouth – at the wrinkles about his eyes, behind eyeglasses. Just a moment, but she notices.

“Alas. Nothing ever really was fuss free, until, well – you know how it went. But that was what it was all about – the day they got their own sort of god. And it was very important to folks back then. . . .still, it is a nice bit of irony. We gave it up, and took to real worship, real Gods. Then those very Gods brought it right back, and we find ourselves less than keen.” 

Ezra pauses for a beat, adjusting his glasses, tucking locs away from his face, and adds hurriedly – “Of course, we see the meaning that the God intends, bringing their ceremony to the Grove. Click-Clack, they – they would see that though we find it no less holy, we just don’t celebrate in the same manner.”

Across the desk, Gail hums. “Huh.” She crosses one leg over her knee in the chair. Her arms are crossed similarly. She puts off a brash air, and knows it well enough to lean into it, exclaiming through a grin.

“So Clickmass is just us hangin’ on the coat-tails of some poor peach’s birthday? Ain’t seem fair to them – we’re darn near stealing the show!”

The air in the office chills for a moment; Ezra idly twirls a pen in one hand with an unfocused gaze at the desk,a sigh on his lips. Gail straightens up in her chair, uncrosses her legs, grin dipping. Until he laughs again. A dry, short laugh, and the pen clatters down again, his voice continuing right past the joke with a disheartened twinge to it’s tone. 

Breath almost condensing in the air, he speaks on: “We faced a good few decades of hardship, those first of us on the Grove. Those poor, wrong-minded early of us. Oh, but we. Persevered. We found our way. We found what was right – and the Gods blessed us as such. . . . .it’s. Begging such a question now, ain't it?“

“Hey – don’t. Don’t be like that now, Ez.” Gail cuts across his speech. “You’re a worrywort, always have been. But no sense in worrying now – we’ve got what, less than a week a-comin’ until New Years? Come on now. We’re doin’ better than we thought.” A look in Ezra’s eyes find her. She feels the sudden boldness sink away.

The dandelion coffee is intensely tannic. Bitterness isn’t the issue – the dryness is, finding it wicking away her speech as Ezra’s sighing continues, own mug untouched.

Forehead resting in his hand, sigh on his lips still, he continues. 

“People, don’t. Starve in Milldread – at least, not in the. What they’d call a cause-of-death way, ah. Not in this generation, at least. But, well. The older folks, after years of it. They don’t bounce back from bad years. You know it well yourself.” Her last sip of coffee rises back again, all tannins and bile at the back of her throat. 

Again, Ezra continues. “The children especially worry me; they. You’ve noticed yourself they aren’t quite, ah. Growing, as they should.” Her eyes stare into the deep brown mug, anywhere but meeting the priest’s. “And, just. Doc tried their best; I could, I could never fault them, not them, no. But – Gods, even in a good year, you, you know we aren’t, ah. Robust.” 

She hates the way that word sounds on his tongue. 

The priest’s voice dims; an unenthusiastic decrescendo. A mutter.“You know how they say it. In Milldread, we lean towards. Dying young.” 

Her mug clicks, a clunking ringing of ceramic placed onto the desk with force, bordering on a slam, just barely – suddenly up from her chair and a now-emptied hand rising in an accusative point. “Ez, don’t – I said. I said quit your hollerin’ on like that, ain’t getting us anywhere good, it just –” A groan of her own making cuts her off, lowering with a slouch into her chair again. “. . . .just not right to scare people. Like that, it is.”

The humming silence is barely allowed to hang in the air, before a mutter rises from the priest again. “I – I’m. Sorry.” 

She looks up to a sipping sound; he’s now taken up his own mug, drinking between mumbles. “Terrible thing t’ say, really, ah – pay me no mind, girl. Worrywort, like you say. Ah – we haven’t lost anyone yet, and there’s nothing going around.” Another sip echoes through the office.

“. . .I trust you, girl, that’s all there is to it. Someone in this town has to be. . .realistic. Pragmatic. On matters like this. It’s – hard to say, but I’m the one who has to say it.” Avoiding his eyes, she gulps down the last few sips of her own coffee – and again, as it rises up into her mouth, he finishes.

“. . .we can’t keep going on like this, Gail.” He says.

She swallows. And nods.

Night hides the footsteps left in the slight mud of the road behind her as cloud covers the moon. 

There’s a feeling of oddness she can’t place. A strange mood, rising in her stomach. A feeling like the midnight itself is watching her despite the curtain of night-time cloud. 

It doesn’t bother her, the idea that Miss Mitternacht would see her right now. The Midnight Lady. Caretaker of all. No, what rises up terror, or bile, something between the two, is the idea that some other person of Milldread will find her. 

Book cart by book cart, jars, tins, dry cardboard boxes. Things salted and sugared and rendered and desiccated. Part by part, a few trips a night over the week, discreetly packing her entire home pantry and kitchen shelves, into the small cupboard beside her desk.

Before anyone arrives each morning, she unfolds a few sheets of wax paper, wraps a single lunch together, secure, and stashes it in the bottom drawer of her desk, unseen. The cupboard remains locked the day long. It truly is forbidden now, and she does her best to stoke the rumours that it’s because she’s stashed a corpse in there by being charmingly dismissive to questions why. A grin, a giggle, a handwave, all go a long way.

By the time the New Year comes around, she’s feeding at least four of her children every other day. The thought of anyone finding out about this makes her stomach twist.

The children won’t tell their parents about this, and she won’t either.

The menu for New Year’s eve consists of meatloaf and bread pudding, the latter lacking as much sugar as she’d have liked, the former of a texture odd and spongy, made of odd ends of meat at the bottom of iceboxes. 

They gather in a barn; kept hot with the packing of warm bodies into the small space. Breath condenses in the air. 

Huddled about outside the barn, or the adventurous few atop it entirely – distant lights are visible. Fireworks from Hobbyhoo. She’s never been there on a New Years, but they get the occasional tourist who passes through Milldread on their way there. The general conception is that Hobbyhoonians simply get high off their gourd and watch pretty lights all night. From what she gathers that’s entirely true, but done in a more spiritual way.

Generally as well, that idea comes in tow with a tone of judgement; one she doesn’t quite grasp. Because isn’t that what they’re doing? Flasks are sipped, tumblers filled, bottles passed around, hot tea spiked, anything to either warm or numb them enough to not feel the cold, most of Milldread drunk as skunks and watching second-hand light shows. 

Thespius Green is a God of Mirth, a God chosen by them to revere merriment in all it’s forms. Folks about the Grove devote themselves to each God in their own ways, Milldread certainly no exception – in most cases they are the outliers. But is there really much difference between the festivals, discos, raves, that ring in the New Year in Hobbyhoo, to their shindig? 

Those not drinking outside drink inside, huddled around benches. Each wrapped in an average of four layers each, glasses in their hand dripping with condensed moisture and sweat. 

It is dark, it is warm, it is humid. It smells of body heat and damp hay. And it is loud – everything is spoken through raw throats, to ringing ears. She’s spilled more cider on herself than she’s drunk and is distinctly sticky. Barely half a minute passes between each time someone hangs off her shoulder or claps her on the arm, yells something in her ear or passes her something to send down the table. 

She, of course, is no better than them – having just leapt out from between bales of hay with a shriek, scattering the children’s little grouping on a blanket near the corner. They scamper, then group back in, at some point she’s been tackled to the floor. There’s a game of tag, then hide and seek. With all that done, the night is still young. The topic at hand now is what game can come next.

Trying her best to drink from her mug whilst lying down atop a hay bale, Gail raises her voice to a question. “Huzz, how about that Bloom? You planning to get dancing tonight? We need to put dancing lessons on the lesson plan, or reckon you’ve got the moves already?” 

Most of her class is with her, collapsed and taking a breather among the bales. Some sit against them, some are rapidly ascending to the top of the pile, some she can only see by their legs sticking out from underneath. Fischer she can’t see at all, but every so often a sneeze echoes through the entire building, so they’re safe to assume as alive.

Lil’ Bloom is skipping about in a circle; scattering about petals and completely unravelling the braid their mother had tried her best with. He’s barely distracted from skipping by the question. Gail asks again; a series of half-jesting questions; “Put on a tune or two on your radio; see what kind of music they got coming down from Hobbyhoo tonight?” She asks; between sputtering out a loose piece of straw caught in her mouth.

Bloom half-mumbles, tripping over their feet in a response; “Oh, uh! We! Ain’ have it no more. Think it broke.”

Gail is a teacher. She isn’t psychic, as much as she’d have her students believe. But she knows them – she knows every child of Milldread well, and she knows Bloom. She knows when he’s lying.

And she knows that Bulb wouldn’t’ve had the money spare to pay for those new shoes he’s tripping over, two sizes too big. Something like what they’d wear at the Cove, too. But that radio of theirs was still new enough to go for a fair bit even second hand.

Burying a frown, Gail lets that lie, and says simply “. . . . . . well .” 

She claps. Unsteadily, she comes to her feet – arms splayed wide. Her head pounds and vision blurs static for a few moments, something she’d grown quite used to, standing up too fast. 

“Well. Well well well.” Another clap. “Well.” Clap. “Well.” Clap. “Who’s makin’ the rules that you need music to dance? Certainly not ol’ Thespius Green, no! What would that old God say, do we think? Stand here all still and sad?” Little hands start joining along with hers. “Or maybe, dance away anyway?” Clap, clap, clap, clap, clap, clap, clap–

And the word ‘yes’ is inaudible through the cheers. 

Hands clapping, feet stamping, cutlery drumming on the bench tables. She spins about ni spite of the whirling of her head, skipping linked-elbow with lil’ Bloom, and then Milda, and then one by one with every one of her students. The dance carries out through the barn, Milldread’s thumping heartbeat – soon, everyone is on their feet. Spiralling, together, into the New Year. Not a chorus in word, a band of instruments, but a dance. A dance of footfalls on the dusty floor, cheers and claps and laughter.

By the end of it, she is panting humidity clinging between each layer of clothing, almost planting a face into the floor as she steps off the table she’d been just atop. Dragging hands, pulling her back to the dancing circle, are shaken off, her head shaking also, breathless – until she’s slipped behind the barn where there’s nobody but the muffled din from inside, and distant hooting holler from the roof. Night air covers the flushed raw skin on her face like a balm as she makes an escape outside. Wooden slatting rattles as the back of her head thuds against the side of the barn, near lying against the vertical surface, coat hastily undone halfway and gulping the cool air outside in frantic heaves.

“. . . .about partied to death, are we Gail?” A sudden voice asks, deep and quiet. 

Gail manages to choke on air at the surprise all the same.

“Oh, Drain – breath, girl, breath–” Murmurs Ruth, using a free hand to whack firmly between her sharp shoulder blades. The seamstress’ other hand is preoccupied with a glowing ember in the dark, a pinprick of orange, a lit cigarette. Gail squints at it enough through her coughing for Ruth to glance down at herself, and shrug.

“Hey– don’t give me that look now. Saved this one all month for New Years. My own little celebration.” Ruth exasperates, a barely visible curl of smoke escaping her lips, and the cigarette offered over.

To which, Gail doesn’t partake. “Oh, no. You know I wasn’t a fan o’ that, Ruthie.”

Ruth goes beyond a chuckle in response – she near guffaws.“Remember – like Bauhazzo do I remember! Slipping behind the schoolhouse during lunch with my da’s cigarette box. And the look on Ms Polette’s face when she’d heard you coughin’ up a whole lung from inside the building–” 

Peels of laughter take the other woman’s words and it’s all Gail can do to look at her feet and mutter. She doesn’t remember, not entire details – doesn’t seem to be a memory she’d want to hold onto. Vague senses of hot smoke in her throat and spitting out phlegm. “-- Bit like you’re managing to do on air alone, somehow .” Grins Ruth, waving at the other up and down.

They both drop to sitting, backs against the wall, as another round of fireworks goes off far away. The individual bursts of colour are too distant to see – all a haze of golden and red light. Finding a bottle tucked into the inside pocket of her coat, reaching through the opened front, Gail sips. And grimaces a bit.

“. . .The Huzz you got there, Gail?” A question probes.

“Tell the truth, ain’t exactly sure myself. Whiskey, something – decent enough, really. Been holding onto it.” The neck of the bottle is pointed to Ruth in offering – the seamstress simply grips ahold of Ruth’s wrist, brings the bottle to her lips to swig, and lets go. 

“ Oof , now girl, that’s a bit stronger than you’re used to. Where’d you find it?” The seamstress thoroughly inspects the label – the remnants of it at least, all too faded to read.

“Might have. . .we’ll call it confiscated. Hey now, can’t have my old students up and causing trouble? How would that look on little ‘ol me?” The last few sips inside the bottle slosh about as she waves the hand holding it, dismissive.

Ruth’s face drops. “That’s – that’ll be Polluck’s , Gail. Why didn’t hand it back, Mitter knows they wont’ve taken that with permission.” All Gail can do is shrug, and grin – but the furrowing of Ruth’s thin brows and pursing of her dark lips give suck a sinking feeling in her stomach. The grin slips away.

“Just– happened to slip my mind at the time, alright? Hardly more than a few sips left too – less than a quarter full–.” A voice lowered to a hiss cuts her off in retort.

“Come on, you know better than that, Gail – it’s. It’s a bad year , what does it look like for you if you’re –”

Cutting off again, Gail mutters a hasty dismissal; “I know, Gods, I know – wouldn’t’ve done it for anything more, just–”

“No, tell me Gail. What on the Grove had you thinking – because it looks Drain-well to me that, perhaps. The less-forgivable might be pondering where you’d get that in a bad year, Gail–” Ruth barely whispers, almost spitting the word/

“I didn’t–” Far too close for comfort, an echoing chuckle from the roof of the barn cuts Gail off, lowers her steadily rising voice again. She inhales. Ruth exhales. 

And speaks again, low and gentle once more. “. . .I didn’t mean to say that, honest, Gail. It’s – Gods, it’s been a bad year. I just. . . worry , you know? You know how folks get, about.” Like wind in the dried empty stalks of the field, a word is whispered, akin to a hushed slur, a sacrilege mouthed in the dark. 

“About hoarders, Gail.” A pause, and then a nod. It’s the only response Gail can give.

“I’m, sure-sorry about implying that Gail. People though, well they talk, a lot of things get said that can’t easily be taken back. I sure as Huzz know people talk . And they get Drain- mean about it.” Another exhale of smoke. “And when they get mean, well. S’ why I gave my old feller the boot – I hear he’s in Buzzhuzz now.” Ruth taps ash from the cigarette. “Good riddance. Never comes to visit me and my girl.”

Gail’s face grays, stills, and her voice is grave . “He knows what'd happen if he dared show his face again.” 

“What.”

And then she lets out a quiet, groaning screech – “. . . . . GRAAAGH.” – as her hand darts out, jagged to clutch gently at Ruth’s shoulder, who sputters out a mouthful of smoke. “He’d never be seen again!”

Between Ruth’s sputters, she gets out the words; “Hey now, hey – what are you, the same age as your class? They already think you’re one of their own. Saw you less than half an hour ago with my girl; her all stepping on your feet more than the floor and not one complaint from yours truly? You’re a dab-hand at it, girl.”

The teacher would flush, but she’s already red-faced. “Ah, well. You know. Milda’s – she’s a sweetpea. She’s got a good voice, yes ma’am, just needs to come out of the pod, if you catch my meaning. . . shy as anything.”

“And she loves you, Gail.” Ruth breathes, making a sound almost like a sob, halfway to a laugh. “Just – I’m thanking you now, Gail. Thank you for everything you do for her. Everything. ” 

Lowering her voice; as if the barn behind them was leaning ears against the wall. “. . . .I try my best, do what I can with what Mitter gave me. Not much of a market for new clothes in Milldread, this time of year, this kind of year, is there?” The seamstress sighs. 

A countdown begins. The blood in Gail’s ears rings louder than it. 

“I’ll guess that’s what the point of today’s all about though. A bad year behind us, a new in front.” Ruth squints while speaking, taps ash from the end of her near burnt away cigarette, contemplative. “I’m reckoning. I’ll give up smoking, how’s about that for a resolution?” She smirks. 

The barn behind them erupts into cheers. The distant skies above them fill with light, from three directions, the Grove around them cheering in union. Pinprick glow of orange at the tip of the cigarette butt flicked away into the dark, for a second joining the lights in the sky before flitting out on the damp soil. 

The other woman turns to Gail. “So. What’re you planning on givin’ up, hmm?”

Two sips left in the bottle. Gail swallows one. And the last sip spirals out as she tosses the entire bottle far, far out into the empty field; glinting with the reflection of fireworks as the drips patter down to join the same soil. 

Throat still warm with the drink, Gail replies.

 “Think of somethin’, won’t I?” 

Winter only truly reaches its peak after the new year begins. It’s a nice thought that the new coming year is a fresh start, but they carry the last year forward all the same. The cold only worsens, and will stick around for months. They won’t see new growth until spring – and the next Harvest is the better half of a year away.

So – they make due. 

The influence of the God of Innovation in spring is something understandable, unlike the God itself at most times. Its domain is built up with all things new – in the pinpricks of green budding about branches, the picking up of tools for a new project, the birth of a lamb. Huzzle Mug and all its newness burst forward like the daffodils that poke up in front of the schoolhouse each year, come spring. They’d have their own festivals for then. 

Winter, however, evokes a sense of stasis. Constant, unchanging, in a way. The same coat from the last five years unpacked from the wardrobe, the same stories told around a fireplace. Bauhauzzo. 

Gail hasn’t been to Buzzhuzz since she was eleven years old, and hasn’t since. A Rift year, that year. She doesn’t hold it against herself that she doesn’t quite grasp Buzzhuzz. 

But she finds routine in spring, yearly chores, and looking to old wisdom, planting schedules, the way flowers bloom year after year with their own clockwork. And she finds creativity in winter. The unpredictability of weather, the way the class decides to dress the snowman out front this year, the way despite all preparation, the season still finds it in itself to get the jump on them. She understands the duplicity of those Gods. One to mark the beginning of winter, one to mark its end. Both intertwined throughout. 

In the problem-solving mind she settles into throughout winter, she keeps Huzzle Mug in mind just as often as Bauhauzzo. Yet, this doesn’t stop her from silently praying, in half-sarcastic jests, that it doesn’t need to give them quite so many opportunities to be innovative.

It wouldn’t be right to suggest Milldread has nothing. They have meat, frozen, tinned, vegetables dried, jarred, fruit sugared – stores of oats, of wheat and corn. Come peak of winter, though, and they find themselves pitifully few of any the former, the latter beginning to dwindle, shared through small portions carefully weighted to last. Making due with sleeping hungry, waking hungry, with migraine and foggy heads, treading along. It was never pleasant, but Ezra was right in saying nobody would outright starve . 

They haven’t had nothing since many, many Rifts ago. Never quite reached the last drop, last grain, last tin, last piece. Though they never reach the point of nothing, they sit at a constant teetering spot of nothing to spare . At this step in the path to spring, every pothole becomes more of a ravine. Hurdles to jump.

Winter comes with challenge after challenge. An empty tea caddy; holes in socks, a coat worn just thin enough to be uncomfortable, boots that leak in puddles just a pinch too deep. These are faced with a certain degree of gritting teeth and pulling bootstraps – hot water, darning, an extra layer, hopping down the road just right to arrive dry footed. Putting things off, until they reach a roadblock they can’t edge around. 

Medicine cabinets running bare. A branch through a window. The corner of the schoolhouse roof sagging, splitting at an eave – steady drip of snow into a pile in the corner.

Lessons won’t start until spring, but the schoolhouse scarcely goes empty until then. The woodstove in the corner stays lit throughout the day; and there are the classroom toys stacked in the play corner. There’s her, making lesson plans, doing odd-jobs, and there’s the piano for when she takes breaks. A space to warm-up after snow-fighting outside, and to not be tripped over under foot at home. Last year, they were snowed inside the schoolhouse for a night – and this year, the children were wondering with hope in their voices if it might happen again.

The roof is something that can’t wait for spring.

On the outer edges of the Cove town there’s a good pawn shop. Very fair. And it’s one she doesn’t think the rest of Milldread might happen upon. It won’t be her first trip there this year, or before then. She’s gotten quite good at moving things about town late in the evening, without being spotted, and there’s a truck waiting at the edge of town. A means to an end, a problem solved, and a roof fixed.

If the children ask what happened to the piano, it’ll just be out for tuning in the off-season, like it has before.

If anyone notices her grandpap’s brass belt-buckle, something she’s worn polished and proudly every weekend, isn’t settled in it’s usual spot on her belt – she’ll have just misplaced it, it’ll surely turn up again in the spring cleaning.

The cupboards are a tad bare when she has someone over for tea – and so grocery shopping isn't until next week. Or was it the next?

Her balance falls from under her while reaching a board game from the top shelf, she hits the floor in a blur. It takes her half a minute to realise what’s happened. She uprights with a shriek just in time for the gathered students to laugh, and it’s a game. There’s nothing to worry about. 

Nobody will even need to worry about how her hair’s started to thin; the cold is reason enough to wear a hat indoors.

Solutions-oriented. There’s nothing to worry about. Problems are sorted, hurdles jumped, rivers crossed.

Just to tide them over until next spring. She’ll be fine until then.

She is fine, even. 

Why would they ask?

Chapter Text

Winter trudges on, and along with it does Milldread– a slow slog toward the spring. Toward the melting of frost, the speckling of green buds across the hedges and trees. The delicate snowdrops of spring have barely begun to open before the first cold shock comes about, just as sowing season begins. 

The planting calendar of Milldread is the closest thing they have to a Bible, so says their priest. Gail isn’t quite sure what a Bible is. But that calendar is written in metaphorical blood and held with the same respect as life and death itself. How many Rift’s worth of trial and error make it up; hand-me-down knowledge of what works, what to plant where and when? The result of countless years spent planting too early, too soon. And written by the survivors of those years.

In April, they plant corn.

In April the ground is just soft enough to dig– bringing an ache to her back as she works through each furrow. Lessons had been well underway by then – struggles or not, the schoolhouse sleeps for no-one. The town comes together in planting season however, and that is one of the few things that can twist her into cancelling lessons for a short while. Every hand not holding up the workload was an idle thing in the sowing season.

Throughout this season, thoughts start. They begin in a morbidly fitting manner, like a seed. A small half-concept in the back of her mind – not yet a sprout of an idea. Seeds planted all the same. 

Milldread works together like a well-wound machine, and they work from sunset until sundown. The planting window is precise. It is respected equally, if not more, to any God the Grove has had or ever will have. When the days darken too far to work further, they drink hot broth around campfires at the edges of the fields. Nobody dares dip into the usual topics of guessing what might grow well, and what might poorly. Instead, they talk of years long past. Good years. 

It’s not a memory she’s sure is completely real, but it returns to her at the fire. Sat on her grandmother’s knee. Couldn’t’ve been more than four. More asleep than awake – until she’s not.  She was at that age where her mobility had caught up with her curiosity. Nobody pays any mind to her toddling about– the whole village is there to keep an eye on the younger ones. A dozen people see her out the corner of their eye as she creeps about. Following along the footsteps of her grammy.

Gail had thought grammy was carrying a basket of jam jars at first. Though, why grammy was collecting those from Ozzie in the dead of night rose questions. It didn’t make sense. Oz was the butcher, as far as Gail knew. She babbles away behind Grammy who doesn’t even jump at the voice – she’d known Gail was there all along, of course. 

Grammy had a voice like a bough breaking in the wind. She didn’t laugh– she guffawed. But this time was the first and last time Gail would ever hear her chuckle.

“You think I’d be pourin’ good jam out in th’ fields? What, I got turnip for brains now?” She’d lightly flick Gail on the nose, and Gail would giggle. Turning to drip, drip, drip, the insides of jar along the furrowed dirt, grandmother sighs. “No, no, not m’ idea at all. Grandpap’s. You ain’t– you ain’t remember him, properly. Oh, he had turnips for brains he did. 

But he says– he says to me. ‘Nellia – that’s me now – you make sure to do this for me once I’m gone, or I’ll come haunt you’. And I ain’t looking to see any ghosts in my cupboards taking down all the tins, so here I is.”

Drip. Drip. Drip. Each droplet from the jar is unevenly thick. Gail’s eyes remain fixed on the drops, squinting into the dark, as grammy coughs into a fit for a moment. A lull in the story. Then, without a word on that all, the old woman continues. 

“He always said– ‘Nellia, every good harvest we had, I done this’ – ‘course, he did it all the bad harvests too, so who’s to say. But he says – ‘we have to give to t’ soil, to get from the soil’ an’ well I ain’t arguing with that. So– here I am. Oz helps’m out. Won’t do no harm at least.” The last jar has run empty, and grammy shakes it side to side, flicking out little spits of dark, gelatinous contents about the dirt. 

“B’sides. It’s all nutrients t’ the soil. Always did his tomatoes good. Doesn’ need to be superstition for it to do good. Come on, now– catch y’ death here.”

The lid of the jar twists back into place with a sticky, slick sound. Before she can glance another look to the ground, peer for where the soil has been dampened– she is scooped up once more onto grammy’s hip and back towards the glows of the campfires.

Amidst the same seasonal glows of this year, Gail sees Ozzie again. In the half-slumbering evening shindigs after sowing season – sporting many, many more greyed hairs, but with a face all the same. This year Father Ezra takes the jars from the old butcher  and quietly slips away from the congregation.

Gail sits alone at the edge of the campfire circles with the crackling tinder drowning out the groaning ache in her stomach, and watches him go. 

And she wonders.

It isn’t the topic of her schoolhouse which brings her to the priest’s house one morning, and given this, Gail doesn’t meet Ezra in his study. She finds the old man in his parlour.

The parlour is full of old things. Many things in Milldread are– hand-me-down clothes, good, wooden furniture passed down to grandchildren, heirloom tools with the head and handle both replaced a dozen times yet agreed upon by all to be the same tool. 

But the confession booth that sits in that parlour is old. Not simply in its age but belonging to an older time, something not quite of the Grove altogether. A remnant. A hint of a history that belonged to someone else, sitting in the parlour of a priest who isn’t quite old enough to belong to it either. Today Father Ezra also sits in the parlour. Inside the booth, waiting for the confession of a faith that holds no such sacrament. 

Gail doesn’t need to take two steps through the front door before she knows he’s drunk. Pickled as a toad in a barrel of brine. The strewn about boxes of bunting, streamers, (she thinks she can spy gardening gloves with holes in there too?) that are strewn about on the floor, just enough space cleared for a person, strike out any doubts he’s in there. So do the scant collection of finished bottles at his feet that the booth’s curtain is too short to hide and the fact that he’s combining every verse of his favourite hymn into one to slur through. She won’t even do that the justice of calling it singing. 

The priest squints at the light when she flips back the curtain. (It’s noon, she thinks). On the ground, back against the inside of the booth, boots sticking out from underneath that darn curtain. He braces himself (jeering complaints all the while) against the bench on the inside when she tries to lift, drag, wiggle him out of the booth. If nothing he’s determined. Determined on causing altogether more fuss than she had agreed to when waking up this morning. 

Nothing more can be done about it without a great deal more effort than Gail’s willing to expend. And so she does the only thing she can. Gail sits across from him, between the divider, with no secrets to confess but how tired of him she is. 

“Ah– hullo. Come, come to seek. Confession of ol’ Father E my child? Sit, sit. What, ah. Dastardly sins, misdeeds and dalliances could you of all people be up’t, Gail?” Interspersed with hiccups and coughs, the priest’s voice comes muffled through the divider of the booth.

Gail’ll humour him, she thinks. “Gosh, ol’ Father E, what sins have I been up to?” She says, with a sigh, leaned against the inside of the booth. “Hmmmm– ah, well there was the forgetting to say ‘bless y’ when Ruth sneezed last week.” 

The scoff that filters through the divider sends a chuckle through the woman. Ezra spits and sputters through words in half-formed offence. “Whuh– now you’re playing with me, girl. Awfully rude. Isn’t it meant– mean’. Meant to be rude to talk to a priest in that manner? Look how this generation treats th’-- their elders. Scornful.” Tutting, he rapps his knuckles against the wall. 

“Ez’. Settle y’ bones now. Ain’t here for chitchat and tea; no time f’ your nonsense today. They were sendin’ me to ask if you’d lend Dorothée for the cart-pullin’ – now hush again.” It’s as easy as stepping into her suspenders each morning that she steps into her teacher’s voice with a drunk priest. “Wasn’t me that wanted to take the old nag out of retirement. But we’re short a horse. And heavens to Huzzle, you know not workin’ her’s been raising eyebrows.” 

It’s uncanny how much her voice projects the exact image of standing with her hands on her hips, hushing disapproval at an unruly classroom. Ezra, however, is not one of her students, not one to shamefully quiet themselves and settle back in their desk seats to listen.

“Ah, isn’t that how it is. Horse that cannot pull, hen that cannot lay. Cull the unproductive. Trim the fat. No allowance’ – for – “ At the pause, Ezra swallows down vomit. “. . . .for anything but. And as thus, we. . .  manage by. Skin of our teeth, nape of our necks. Hah.”

Humid air and close quarters bring the cloud of alcohol and sweat that hang off of the priest much closer than she’d ever have wanted. He scowls and Gail can’t tell if he spits out of spite or nausea. She can hear the airy frothing of the last dregs of a bottle swirled around idly in his hand, like frothed soap. A thousand tiny poppings. Near inaudible, the clatter of the glass rim against his teeth, the grumbling swallow that follows. ". . . .you know, ah. I always reckon’ed– thought. I always thought the Gods went a tad bit . . . .easier, on us all. Whenever we’d lost a good animal too soon, or.”

He doesn’t finish that thought. In a complete refusal of allowing the two to sit in silence, there comes another thought spilling out from underneath a plywood divide, without a moment’s silence to mourn the passing of the last. 

“Now, your old grandmother – Cornelia, Gods, it's been years since we lost her hasn’ it?. . . . She had her quirks, but she understood. Would pretend she thought it all silly. But she understood. She wuz’-- she was, younger than y’ grandpap. About six years. An’ he was just old enough to remember that bad year. Nothing, nothing like the bad years we have now, those are tame, comparing. We come closer every year, but that year. Hardly remember it m’self. But he remembered. Gods, he remembered. . . .

It’s. It’s horrible thoughts I have these days. And Gods know I shouldn’t be saying m’ but. Gods– hells, Gail, you’re the only one that’ll listen to ‘em. Because I– I know you have them too.

I know our old gods, child, that’s– that’s my burden. There’s a lot of old stories, child. Stories about. . . .taking of your body n’ blood, of the love for y’ people so great, you’d give your kin – old stories, girl. Of salvation. 

An’-- an’ even before all that, all that. . . malarky, there’s these. Old, older stories, older gods. Before our Grove, before even what w’ had before. Before that – b’fore it all, Gail. People would – the things people did, to beg their gods. It all comes down to that in the end. 

All harvests. 

Just. Hungry folks, and blood on the soil.” 

And at last, the priest finally shuts up. 

Gail can hear him, swallowing his own spit, trying to sip from a long empty bottle, muttering away into the glass. Sitting here and drinking and rambling as though he hasn’t hidden himself away the better part of the week. As if he doesn’t have to face them, face people, face their young’uns, see the shame in their eyes as they turn them over to school without their lunches.

And here’s Father Ezra, who sits here making confessions on the wrong side of a booth they don’t even use. Things he isn’t supposed to be saying out loud – why did he have to pick her, she didn’t ask to listen, she can barely stop thinking about it on her own. Decided on his own that they’d have this shared sin between them, this confiding, this secret thing, and now he won’t stop talking about it, and Gods, she’s so hungry, and–

And when had she raised her fist? She must have at some point. It’s still pressed into the divider, knuckles digging into the splintering lattice of wood. She can see the beading crimson of her knuckles staining the dull surface. The whole structure creaks with the force of the punch still. She hadn’t even noticed it happen.

When Gail leaves, splinters of wood come away with her under the skin. Lifting the curtain, the space is illuminated and she can see the imprint she’s left in the dust on the bench. Ezra has gone so quiet now she could pretend he wasn’t there– if not for his boots still sticking out from the booth.

“. . . .I’ll let the rest know that you were, erh. Busy.” She says, not looking back. “They’ll want’n answer soon but they’ll– they’ll send. Someun’ else. Don’t know who, just not.” Gail stops there. 

Floorboards softly thud behind, and she is gone. Gail takes a little thought with her whilst leaving. 

Come March, the cold snap isn’t unexpected. It is unseasonal, it is unusual. It is devastating. And she had been waiting for it like one waits for the ground after falling from some height. All horrible suspense and a settling sense of futility. Nothing to do but wait for the impact.

Crystals of ice glitter on the seedling stalks of corn. When they melt the stalks will sag with them. Shattered from the inside out, cells lysing, drooping broken strands of cellulose. Seeping and sagging and rotting. Some folk are gathered hopefully prodding about seedlings, tutting, shaking heads. 

“Tsk. Bit of a shame, seeing the state of the field these days, right G?” Someone’s speaking to her, and she can’t see their face properly. When had her eyes gotten misty? The voice continues and through the dreary, flat tones Gail can distantly tell it’s Pollark. 

“.....not that I mean anythin’ of it, just. Field was in your family for generations. And the state of it now, gosh. What would your grandpap think – hold on there. You alright there, Gail?”

It’s the only memory of her grandpap she really has, the only one that’s not half-formed of stories told after he’d passed and impressions of him made upon someone else entirely. It wasn’t a cold spring. It was a wet spring.

It was just the two of them one afternoon. Rain battering down at the window all day, dripping out of that loose corner as it rattled. Grandpap, huddled inside in his winter coat. The damp made his hip throb and set his chest bad something terrible, but he was the only one left spare to watch the young’in that was her back then. Collapsed roofs, flooded cellars, pastures turned to bogland, a thousand jobs with change that the weather brought. And grandpap, swearing to himself about how he can’t even manage the walk to his own fields at this age. About how all the rest they’d put him on did him no good, how nothing good came to the idle and lazy. 

Just her and grandpap in the storm.

Herself, barefooted despite his protests, and jumping about in the mud of the flooded lane like it was the creek. Barely surefooted enough to walk at that age and yet charging about the place like a hurricane. Grandpap, bracing himself at the door frame to holler at her that she’d best come in if she didn’t want to catch something. A cold, her death, the end of his boot, the wrath of Mitter; a list of options she planned to ignore.

Until stumbling over in thigh-deep (to her) water, she catches a look on his face as he says this. One of such deep, genuine pleading, to come back inside, to come into the warm. That she’d trudged through that mud back through the door (tracking a great deal of it with her). 

Grandpap had groaned and swore through it all, but he’d cleaned her of mud, bundled her in warm blankets, given her a brimming mug of foaming hot milk.

The winter had come and gone that year, and taken grandpap with it. 

And the next summer the tomatoes left in his greenhouse came out red and swollen.

In April, Gail stands nodding, just nodding. Bearing a grin, grining and bearing it. Muttering something, anything – she’s alright, she’s not worth worrying over. Coming down with something, too many people in the crowd, had something a bit off for breakfast. Just until their attention catches elsewhere. Until there’s no eyes on her for just a moment.

Then Gail stumbles away from the frozen field and vomits behind the nearest hedge. Knees digging into the soft slush of frozen mud, and sour breath condensing in the air. The thoughts haven't been quiet all spring. 

Now, there’s the quiet whispers of ideas amidst them.

Lessons in the late spring, past the planting season, are seldom any cause for worry. There’s no looming exams to worry about. Nothing else anyone has to be doing. That’s what Miss Gail tells every student – so what’s making them so darn tardy, if there’s nothing to avoid and nothing else to be busy with? 

It’s a dull day and the weather itself seems to agree.

The most noteworthy thing is Blarney leaning too far back on his chair. So of course she has to regale the classroom with the tale of a student from years before who tipped just too much back and cracked their head wide open like an egg. This seems to have the opposite of the intended effect, because the youngsters all unequivocally agree this is ‘Off The Hook’ kinds of fun. And then they’re all leaning backwards and Gail should have expected this. Really, she should have. 

Milda hits her head and is a little champion about it once she gets a bandage. The fact her head remains in one piece ruins the fun for everyone else, and they’re forced to settle and actually listen to the lesson. 

The rest of the day comes uneventful. 

She doesn’t know why she does it, but after the lesson, whilst setting away a stack of marked quizzes from the day, Gail eats an entire jar of jam from the dusty back corners of the cupboard. Pressing her fingers directly into the jar and scooping away a mouthful, and another, and another, until she’s wiped clean the sides, and the jar is empty.

She swallows, though there's nothing left in her mouth. Why does her skin feel so warm; a shirtcollar-tugging, itchy, clamminess? Why is she glancing behind her as she carries the empty jar back in the cupboard as though hiding a secret? Her hands are shaking.

Gail hadn’t thought about it all winter, but as her eyes dart away from the empty jar in hand, they land upon a folded, half-fitted shirt. Miss Gail’s sewing project. A free hand traces over the material – orange as autumn sunsets, and worn soft with the bodies of whoever’s hand-me-downs it was before her. Left pinned together where she’d taken it out, and then in, and in.

Folded away between the fabric is a card. As worn as the fabric itself, fuzzy with how the loose fibres of a well-handled piece of cardstock are nudged out of compressed alignment. There it stays, folded into the shirt. Fingertips trace its corners through the cotton. 

It felt longer ago. Hazy almost, not that she didn’t remember it. In the way that similar days faded together with the repetition. Which was silly, really. 

She hadn’t had that many birthdays, to the point where they’d start to blend into each other. Sure, she was grown, and once you were no longer one of the young’uns birthdays were only really worth any fuss when they marked a decade. The class sang to her at the lunch break. She’d drank with friends her own age behind the barn at night where they’d all agreed they were old enough for that sort of thing to lose its thrill and head home early, complaining of work in the morning. 

Two days late, she’d found a newspaper parcel on her desk seat in the morning, soft and crinkling, card pinned to the front. It had been the first birthday card she’d had addressed to a this name. At the bottom, it simply read:

From,
            Milldread.

And it hadn’t had anything else to say. It hadn’t needed to. 

Grip buckling, her hand closes around the jar as it cracks inwards under her grip, rough edges jutting out and into her calloused palms. No sooner than the first drips of red dot the floorboards come the footsteps behind her; a floorboard creaks. And a tiny voice that comes out of the dimming schoolhouse. 

“. . . .Miss Gail?” Oh, Gods. “. . . . .y’ alright there?”

Out of a class of sixteen, Miss Gail only has one student who likes to sneak back late to look at the floriculture books. Bloom. Who looks just so darn. Worried for her.

She breaks the silence. 

“Why, I never knew a scamp like you, lil’ Bloom. Every darn day with the scallion-rappin’. You’ll learn one day, nobody sneaks up on ol’ me.” It’s dark. Bloom is too busy batting at her hands to notice flushed faces and misty eyes. Her heart won’t stop beating – so loud, Gail worries her student might hear– But he’s laughing. It’s all a joke. Just another prank.

“--now, I can’t give up all my secrets, can I? Ain’t sensible to let ‘em know your best tricks. Hush now– don’t frown. How’s about I let you in on just one? Long as you promise to stop poutin’.” Gail can keep her voice steady. Keep her face smiling. As long as it takes. One hand can ruffle his hair, pluck out loose petals, while the other holds the cracked, dripping jar just behind her back. 

“Now, any teacher worth their sauce’ll tell you this. We’ve got eyes, in the backs of our heads! Swear on my Mittering heart, we’ve all gottem. And that’s. Why you’ll never get the jump on me. But before you go, one last little thing. . . . . . .” A routine like clockwork. Bloom leans in, as they always do. Being in on the joke doesn’t mean they’ll skip the punchline, after all. And Gail–

“BOO!” 

And just as they should, they scurry on out of the cupboard, out of the schoolhouse. Everything, is just how it should be. 

Gail is alone again.

The facade comes apart just as the jar does, under her fingers. 

Pieces clattering to the ground – few larger fragments held together by nothing but the label. Sticky shards, smears of red. The largest of them is a jagged piece, diagonal and palm-shaped, one which she flips over in her hand, almost idly.

It wasn’t just her that had these thoughts.

Everyone in Milldread wondered, at some point. When things went bad. Nobody said a damned thing, but they wondered. Gail had long ago gone a hell of a long way past just wondering. Thoughts became ideas and though they hadn’t turned to proper plans yet, she didn’t need to put that much thought into it, did she? It was simple enough. 

One of them had to do something, and she had half a mind of where to start. No sense in putting it off any longer now, was there?

In the near-dark of late sunset a teacher leaves her schoolhouse. The door hangs open behind her. It had stopped darkening early in the day, but it’s dark as midnight already. How long had she spent in there? It doesn’t matter. No more wasting time. 

It’s a bit of a dreary spring night. Misty, not even nicely foggy, cloudy, not quite raining.

Walking down the road, it feels something else alive is inside of her. Nestled in her belly; pushing out, out through her skin, reaching up and squeezing her heart in a rhythmic pulse that presses blood up into her ears, her head, her whole torso thumping in time with her footsteps. Past her door. Past the bakery and brewery and barns.

To the field that used to be grammy and grandpap’s.

Finding the centre of the field – it felt like it should be the centre, shouldn’t it? – is tricky, and she doesn’t quite get it right. The field isn’t square, more of a squished trapezoid. 

Perhaps she should have brought candles. It felt like the sort of thing that should have candles. And tall rows of corn, to cast long shadows. The stalks are barely waist height. 

At least an altar; even a solid rock of some kind. All she has now is a patch of mud, off-centre in a field. The dampness seeps in through her trouserlegs as she kneels there. It wasn’t even a good night for this sort of thing – the weather was off, too in-between. The date was entirely nothing, no anniversary, no equinox. 

But it would have to do. Gail couldn’t go back, not for candles, not for an altar, not to wait for the perfect night, for anything that means she would put it off, lose her nerve. She shouldn’t – Milldread shouldn’t wait any longer. 

Dirt, grit, finds itself trapped between the loose ribbons of skin on her palm. That shard of jar glass, thick, curved, and jagged at all its edges. Slick with sweat and blood, turning the skin of her palm to lacework on the walk from there to here, dripping down along her arms through the cuffs of her shirt. 

Fabric wicks away at the blood and adheres to the cuts in a dreadfully sticky way. Clinging to the open flesh, peeling away, only to stick again, tug the loose skin raw. Unbuttoning the cuffs of her sleeves, the front of her shirt, comes agonisingly slowly. As does undoing the tie about her neck. The sudden cool of night air brings a breathy shudder. 

Her little red tie lies spotted darker with claggy clumps, smeared in red and grit – seeds, the sticky insides of the jam jar clung to her torn palms, stinging. Abandoned aside, funny, how neatly she’d tied it in the morning. Every rustle in the winds, every beat of her own heart has Gail’s head darting. As though anyone else would find a reason to be out in the fields at this hour.

Nobody is there to find her. She isn’t going to be caught. There isn’t one reason left she can find to delay any longer.

So she doesn’t.

She hums a melody she won’t remember the name of all the while. 

And it turns out, she had been right.

It should have had candles. Gail could hardly see what she was doing.. 

It was awkward, and clumsy. Every half-second had her arm shuddering with the effort. It left her panting and hacking, hunched over with two trembling arms of support.

It was warm. Clammy, unbearably so, each gusts of spring night air did nothing against the sweltering dampness of her bare chest.

The sky above was dark. Too dark for a single star. No moon to watch her. 

If her head were not bowed down, the ends of her hair dragging into and clumping with the mess of mud with each ragged pant, she might have wondered if a storm was blowing.  Wondered as Gail slid down into the mud, what little warmth left trickling out into the soil. Nothing was noticed. Nothing was left to notice. 

Milldread’s fields had been watered, and nothing noteworthy came of it.

Just a clearing in a cornfield, and a teacher who closed her eyes. 

There was no punchline. 

Chapter Text

Folks faded early in Milldread, especially so for the Grove. Making it halfway to ninety was fair going. You’d fall ill – just plain fall, even. Break something that never healed properly or never quite get better from that nasty bug in the winter. It was the little things. The aches and pains, odd spells that only bothered you when the weather turned. They’d all pile up and push you down the stairs one night, and you’d never get up again.

Grandpap had passed when she was three. Gail couldn’t remember him as anything but, well. Frail. A bad chest, a bad hip, a bad knee, a bad almost-everything. A whole uncooperative skeleton and a misbehaving set of lungs to boot. 

One later year her mother had had too much to drink at Clickmass, and said she’d only ever known him “On the way out.” And it was callous, it was uncouth, but it wasn’t a lie. She knew him for just a moment at the end of a lifetime of troubles, all stacked up until they toppled him over. In the end, a bad fall when autumn rains turned the road to mud. Gone before Gail’s fourth birthday. Leaving behind his shiny belt buckle in a will, a single surviving son, one grandchild, and Grammy. 

He was far from the first and far from the last to go out like that. The hang-ons of a dwindling generation. 

“I foun’ – I think I found–”

“What, what, through here? I don’t– oh.”

              “Oh, oh Gods, no, don’ look now.”

“I foun’. I found. I found her.”

Is it strange that she remembers her parents less than Grandpap. They were gone after he was, after all. Mourning does funny things to a mind though and, well, her memory has never been among her best qualities. How old had Gail been – surely no more than ten. Eight? Six?

A father, and a mother. What else was there to say about them?

Folks of the same generation. Milldread born, and Milldread raised. Bearing the same weight that left as every generation had before them – their heirloom of burdens.A father, and a mother. Milldread-born, simple and good. A father who didn’t speak much, quiet, contemplative in that way. A mother who spoke an awful lot to fill in the silence. Two sides of a scale that didn’t balance quite right, like an off-centred pivot. A father who’d leave every hard question, difficult conversation, hanging unsaid on the coathooks.  A mother who’d drank an awful lot more than she should have, and said an awful lot more to boot. 

There are a lot of ways two people can be here one day, gone the next. Dozen more ways in Milldread than anywhere else. Nobody to be blamed, nothing to be done. Accidents happened. Nothing worth mentioning left behind to inherit. 

Nothing to be gained from dwelling on it.

“I don’ – I don’t know what happened, she didn’t – she just seemed so–. I didn’t think, I didn’t think she’d be like. Like this, I–” 

“Stop, just– stop yammering Baghley, be of some use n’ hold t’ bandage there.” 

“I didn’t– I didn’ know Bulb, I swear.”

 “STOP. Please, let m’ jus’-- Gods, I ain’ know what’m doing.”

Gail couldn’t’ve been more than twelve when her grandmother started slipping.

It all started with her memory. Felt like it always started with that, didn’t it?

Well. It was to be expected at that age.

Towards the end of her sixteenth year, much closer to the age Gail was now than she’d often admit, there had been a Bad Year. Singular; they’d made do with what they had stocked up from the year before and against odds made up the loss. A tension in the air that was both parts familiar and cloying. Not enough to linger on, but enough to notice. Enough to want to be rid of all of it if only for a moment. 

The Cove wasn’t busy like Hobbyhoo, wasn’t as impossibly far-seeming as Buzzhuzz, and most importantly it wasn’t Milldread. A half-hour walk, two hours on a bus, and there wasn’t a bonnet in sight. Gail brought sandwiches with her. 

There were so many more people her own age there. Children of fishers, of dockhands, of fairground workers, of the scant handful of tourists. Loitering and lollygaggaging; ditching family holidays or weekend jobs. Filling the arcades, the ones still open in the autumn off-season, and hanging about at the docks to bum smokes from sailors. 

Gail does a lot that day. 

Skips stones at the ocean with the son of a fisher who’s stuck watching their siblings for the day. Gail hadn’t minded. People have started describing her as ‘great with the young’uns’ already. 

Throws a sandwich at the back of the head of a tourist with a rude mouth. The whole Grove wasn’t Hobbyhoo, so what if she didn’t dress modern? 

Clutches the hand of a fairground ride worker’s child when she’s convinced to join them sneaking onto the ferris wheel. It jolts something awful at the top. Gail is terrified out of her mind, and laughing louder than she has all year.

Learns just how to cheat the games at the penny-arcade, which does her well, as she hasn’t any spare change for the machines. A handful is pushed into her hands before she can argue though, and the topic moves on so quickly that she doesn’t find time to object.

Comes past a tumbledown church. They walk past it at about the same pace as they had the newsagent’s at the corner. It dawns upon her in equal, stomach-dropping, sickening parts, this realisation. Both that a God lives there; that God lives there. And that the gaggle of people her age she’d mingled into so easily are all calling her Old Lady M. 

When Gail comes home far too late into the night, hair frazzled, missing a button, it isn’t any of that which Grammy gives the lecture about. It’s a bottle of unopened, now lukewarm, soda pop she’d been given. Without a second thought – handful of drinks, dripping condensation from the cooler fridge, passed about friends, and one in her hands without having to even think about asking. 

Grammy doesn’t like that. It’s a trait of her generation; Gail can rationalise it.Taking handouts from tourists. But Gail is also a young lady at the age of sixteen. The bottle ends up broken against the table. She isn’t quite sure if it was an accident or not. Shattered glass and sickly fizzing syrup, pooling down the table leg. Awful waste of a bottle, Grammy says. 

Gail cries then. Grammy holds her. Exactly as it’d been when she was three, not yet four, or six or eight or at least not ten. 

They share dinner. Bean stew that could have really done with some onions, some tomatoes maybe, and bread stale enough to be no good for toast but sopped with stew got soft enough to eat. Grammy hadn’t been hungry, she’d said. Couldn’t stomach eating.

Grammy forgot, sometimes. That Gail was old enough to tell when she was lying. 

Lucidity is a slippery thing to hold onto. Like bailing water in a sieve. It gets worse so quickly. She doesn’t leave Milldread anymore. Nobody left to bring her to Hobbyhoo on business. Nobody left to look after Grammy whilst she galavants about the Coast. 

A life lived in Milldread takes its toll. Grammy holds on until the next Harvest, but is gone before the Bonfire. 

The week before she goes, she calls Gail the name of an uncle, that Gail hadn’t known she’d had.

“Some– some’un go fetch Father E–”

“What in the Gods’ names is he gonna do, Wheav?”

“He’s – he’s the Priest, Poll, he should know–”

 “That won’ help her–” 

“. . . . . .she needs a hospital.”

They’d needed a teacher’s hand, and she’d started at seventeen. 

The family’s fields had been there for her, and they still would be if she’d wanted. But she was better at helping rear children than seedlings, they’d always said. Her memory was picky. Find something that interested her and she’d have all there was to know about it memorised in the afternoon, but even something like where the hoes were kept would elude her for weeks. And, well. She was just plain gangly. Better suited as a scarecrow than a farmer. The school needed a teacher’s hand more than the fields needed someone yo get underfoot. 

Gail should expect it at this point. This is Milldread. All too sudden, and it’s her schoolhouse. Just hers. 

Between an old friend of Father Ezra’s, who knows who to know at the Buzzhuzz University, a handful of red-tape strings pulled, and the shockingly quickly-organised seat in that year’s examinations at the Hobbyhoo College. Milldread finds itself with a licensed teacher in time for the next school year’s start.

Gail is nineteen.

“Put – put her down Poll’--”

“Carefull, Ruth, careful, don’t – I said don’t–”

                                                       “What in th’ Drain are you making that noise out at Mitter’s hour– is that m’ cart? Is that m’ horse? Is– that. What– what did. She do.”

      “. . . . . . . .”

It isn’t the first time she stands before a classroom that she realises, nor the second. Nor any particular day at all – it isn’t a sudden realisation. No eureka, no moment it all clicks. It was something she, something everyone knew already. 

Every child in her classroom is going to grow up the same way she has. The same way anyone in Milldread has. 

And Gail doesn’t want that to happen.

“N– No, m’ not gonna move aside, I– I don’ give a DRAIN what you think–”

“No no no don’ start–”

“ – II don’ care what you think Father, or what any Gods woul’ think–”

“We don’ have time t’ argue–”

“–  what any darn. Snobs up in Buzzhuzz or floozies outta Hobbyhoo or even every damned tourist that comes outta the Cove thinks–”

“Hshhh. Gonna wake up t’ dang town.” 

“– someone’s gotta do somethin’. And we’re goin’ to!”

“. . . . .Bulb, girl. Mean’ move aside on the seat. M’ coming with.”

+   Mitter's Arms Medical Centre  +

In-Patient Admission Form

Date:   05/22/☐☐.    

In Patient Doctor:           Doc Baghley  

Out Patient Doctor:                             

Patient Information

Name: . ..                  Miss Gail.                                      Address:  . Milldread .. East Grove   

Age:        . .      22                                                          Height:            6ft 2.                      

Date Of Birth:    08/31/☐☐                                            Weight:            148.                        

Gender:       ..  .      Woman       

Reason for Admittance: .  accident.  ..found  . . ...                 ... .  
                                                                                                     
Self harm, Suspected Attempted Suicide.                                     
      Severe Malnutrition.                                                                

Next Of Kin:    . .    Father Ezra. Johnson.           Ms. Bulb.             
WheaverBaghley      Miss Ruth                   Polluck Jackery              

                                                 
Relationship To Patient:                     Family Friends