About the Author
296
For George
O little town of Bethlehem
How still we see thee lie
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep
The silent stars go by
Yet in thy dark streets shineth
The everlasting Light
The hopes and fears of all the years Are met in thee tonight
~ 'O Little Town of Bethlehem',
a song of Earth before
Vesta got up early that morning, before Guide's Bell rang to mark the start of labour, before the sun had come up and brought heat and full light. She got dressed in the dark, in woollens, and skirts both under and over, and a cap, and two shawls. She had gloves that Bel had sewn for her. It was very cold. She could feel the red in her cheeks and nose, and the water in her eyes, and she could see the white smoke of her breath in the gloom.
It was a biting cold, a bad cold. It was a cold that had a threat to it, not a promise, no matter what Bill Groan and the others said. Winter was supposed to go away, not come worse. Eighteen years Vesta had been alive, and she had never seen a white winter until the last three, each one whiter than the one before.
When she took her coat off the peg, her hands were numb despite her gloves. The twilight of dawn, a grey light made brighter by the snow, was creeping into the back hallway. By it, she found her boots, and the little pot and tie of heathouse flowers she had laid out the night before. She found the pole too, a pruning hook, strong and almost two metres long. It wasn't the season for pruning, but she'd left it ready too because Bel had said it was good to know how deep snow was before you walked on it. Snow changed the landscape, and filled holes up. You could fall, or vanish, or turn an ankle and lie out of help's way so long you'd freeze.
They had all been told not to go out alone, especially early or late, but that was just worry. There had always been stories of things lurking up in the woods. They were stories made up to frighten children.
Vesta had things to do. Some old dog bothering the herds wouldn't bother her.
She saw her name on the label above her peg.
Harvesta Flurrish. Next to it, Bel's name. Next to that, an empty peg. Bel was not one for sentiment: she was older and she was clever. However, Vesta Flurrish could not let the day go unmarked.
Chaunce Plowrite had make them all metal cleats for their boots. Bill Groan, the Elect, gave Chaunce permission to make them out of leftover shipskin, and there wasn't much of that remaining. Vesta had hoped, when she woke, she wouldn't need to use them.
But she did.
Snow had come again in the night, overlaying the snow from the days before. Everything had a soft curved edge to it.
In the yard, the sky was night blue, the colour of Bel's eyes. First light, and clear all the way to the stars.
The rooftops and chimneys of Beside, bearded with snow, were black against the blue, and so were the bare trees beyond, and the great rising plateaus of the Firmers. The plumes of steam coming from the vents on the tops of the Firmers were luminous white against the cobalt blue. They were catching the earliest rays of sunlight because they were so much higher up than anything else.
Vesta turned on her solamp, and hung it from her pole. Then she started to walk, her metal cleats crunching, her pruning pole probing the snow cover, one hand holding up the hem of her over skirts. A dog barked in the yard. In the byre behind the Flurrish house, the cattle were lowing.
She followed the North Lane out of Beside, past the well and up towards Would Be, which lay in the shadow of Firmer Number Two.
It was slow going. It was hard work striding over ground that sank under you. Vesta's legs began to ache.
She stopped to rest for a minute and looked down at the streams that fed the autumn mills. They were frozen like glass in that stilled place between night and morning.
By the time she reached Would Be, she knew she would not manage to get back to Beside before Guide's Bell rang and called them to work. She resolved to work on after nightchime to make up. Vesta also knew that the people of the plantnation community would excuse her. They would allow her an hour or so, once a year.
Would Be was quiet. The trees were like silent figures with snowy caps. Autumn had taken their leaves, but winter was bowing their black branches and trunks. Vesta's solamp was beginning to flutter, its charge worn out, but it was getting lighter by the minute. The blue sky and the white snow were both tinged with pink from the sun-to-be.
As she walked along, in the quiet, she felt for one moment that someone was following her. But it was just the stillness, and her imagination.
The memory yard was in the centre of Would Be, a place chosen years ago as a quiet bit of earth. Patience was said to be the greatest virtue of all Morphans, and those who lay here were the most patient of all. Simple stones marked each burial spot, each one marked with a name, as clear as the labels above the pegs in the back hall of the Flurrish house.
There were Flurrishes here. Years of them, laid out and remembered, mixed up with all the other Morphan families. Vesta's mum had gone away long ago, before Vesta was really old enough to know her. She lay here, and Vesta always said a friendly hello to her stone.
But Vesta had come for her dad, Tyler Flurrish, gone four years, taken by a fever. He'd seen the colder seasons coming, and fretted about it with his kin, but he hadn't lived to see the actual snow and ice. Vesta wondered if he felt it there in the ground, across his grave like a numbing blanket. He would have worried too much, about his daughters Vesta and Bel, and about the future that awaited them.
Vesta crouched by the grave and brushed the snow off the stone so she could read the name there. She took out the flowers she had brought, and set them in the jar on his plot. It would have been his birthday, so she wished him a happy one, and then talked to him a little about the work and how things were.
Far away, down in Beside, Guide's Bell chimed.
Vesta bowed her head and said a few words to Guide, and asked Guide to look after her dad. Then she got up to make her way back.
The stars were still out. Over in the west, behind the bare silhouettes of the trees, one seemed to be moving.
Vesta stopped to watch. There had been talk of stars moving. Even Bel said she had seen one do it. Many said it was a bad omen, signifying the coming danger of the cold, but it was a mystery too. Stars weren't supposed to slide silently past in the darkness of a winter dawn.
Moving slowly, making no sound, it disappeared behind a stand of trees. Vesta hurried along to see if she could catch another glimpse of it.
That's when she saw the tracks.
She almost walked across them. They were so deep in the snow, they held shadow and looked as black as pitch. They cut straight through the heart of Would Be from the north, running away towards Firmer Number Three.
They were the biggest footprints she'd ever seen, bigger than even Jack Duggat would make, with his work boots and his metal cleats on and everything.
And it wasn't just the size of the prints - the stride length was also huge.
Vesta stared for a moment. She thought hard, trying to explain what she could see. She wondered if they were footprints that had begun to melt, thus exaggerating their size.
But they were fresh. The snow was only a few hours old, and there had not yet been enough day to start to thaw it. No one was out except her, not this far north of the town. The tracks were clean cut. She could see where the heel and the toe pads had cut.
A giant had walked through the silent woods, and not long ago. If she had left her dad's grave just a few minutes earlier, she would have met it. It would have come right across her path.
Vesta Flurrish was really scared. Her hands were trembling, and it wasn't from the cold. Beside seemed a long way away: too far to reach quickly, too far to run to, too far to call to. She didn't even want to cross the tracks to run for home. That felt like the wrong thing to do, as if the giant might feel her path crossing his, and turn back for her.
She turned and began to run back towards the memory yard. At that moment, with the sun still not even risen, by her father's side seemed the safest place to be.
But there was something waiting for her in the trees, something with a deep, gurgling growl like a dog being throttled, something with red eyes that caught the gleam of the early light.
Something bred to kill.