minute or two he turned away. Setting the jug back near the foot of the table, he stooped to retrieve his staff and walked bemusedly toward the fields to join the other men. The night was indeed turning out to be a blessed one; his mother's private sorrows were already forgotten. At long last she had mentioned Deborah by name – surely that meant something! – and the crops, she'd said, would do just fine.
He felt like singing.
Behind him, past the fire, the younger women had replenished the sacks they'd carried at their sides, leaving the huge burlap seed bag only a quarter full. Huddled nearby, their features drawn and fatigued, the children sat watching intently for every kernel spilled-but no more intently than the four remaining cats, who crouched unseen in the shadows beyond the ring of stones, eyes aglow like coals.
As the women shouldered their now-heavy sacks and trudged slowly back to the fields, the smallest of the children dipped his hand into the bag and brought up a streaming fistful of seeds. Wagging a finger in solemn imitation of his elders, he admonished the corn in a grave whisper:
'Mark thee, mind thee,
Gillycorn Hill… '
Stooping amid the plowed furrows, the women took up the chant and repeated the same traditional warning:
If Crow don't find thee,
Mouse he will.'
As they straightened up, one of them groaned and rubbed her stomach. The woman beside her smiled. 'What ails you, sister? Too much cottonbread?'
The other nodded. 'That star was big as a barn door, and I think I ate half of it! Don't know why they call it cottonbread – it's heavy as a stone.'
Deborah paused to push back a lock of hair. 'My husband knows all about that sort of thing,' she said, 'but he seems to want to keep it to himself.'
The moon was settling into the treetops. They peered ahead into the gloom, where the seven men were a row of moving shadows. 'That was stone-ground white flint cornmeal' Poroth was saying. 'I had to send all the way to Tipton for it. The man who sold it to me – a blackhat from the Barrens – said it'd been milled by waterpower.'
One of the others shook his head. 'Probably charged you double for it!'
A few of them laughed, but the younger man pretended not to hear. 'It was made of the same seeds we're planting tonight,' he went on, 'the same white flint corn that the Indians grew. Just the thing for a start as late as this. They say it has the shortest season.'
'Let's hope it's not too short,' came a stern voice from the down the row. 'Short the life of man, and soon the harvest.'
'Now let's be fair, Joram,' said another. 'You said yourself it made a real nice cottonbread.'
His wife, walking several paces behind them, had been waiting for this moment. 'Amos,' she called, 'will you ask Brother Sarr something for me?'
The chanting died. In the sudden silence her words rang across the field.
'Ask him why they call it cottonbread?'
The young man didn't wait for the question to be repeated. 'I thought everybody knew that,' he said quickly, without looking back over his shoulder. 'It's because they used to cook it over the cottonwood fire. Tasted real good, I'll bet!' As if to put an end to the subject, he slammed his staff with special vehemence into the earth. The crown of corn leaves rustled fiercely.
The question had come as a surprise; he hoped he'd sounded convincing. Obviously Deborah had been talking again. Would she never learn? Back there by the fire Brother Joram had practically told him to take a stick to her, and he, for all his college education, had found himself agreeing. She was getting to him, that woman, in more ways than one…
He paused a moment and turned to watch her slip three seeds into the hole he'd just made. Her hair swept loosely past her face, the way it did as she climbed into bed beside him each night. Standing, she covered the hole with a careless scrape of her bare foot, and as she looked up their eyes met. She smiled. It was a loving smile, and a knowing one.
He looked down, biting his lip. He was hungry for her, and she knew it. All week he had avoided her embrace, hoarding his pent-up energies for the planting; it would help ensure a bountiful crop. But now the sight of her moving another pace closer and bending toward the earth, deliberately thrusting out her hips, so aroused him that he had to turn his face away or he'd have cried out. Savagely he plunged his staff into the furrowed ground and gave it a violent twist; several leaves were shaken off and lost in the darkness. If only he hadn't made that vow… He thought of her round body, the softness of her skin beneath the rough dress, and wondered, as he rejoined the ranks of the men, if he dared hoist that dress and enter her tonight, with all the corn seed not yet sown.
Nudging the woman beside her, Deborah nodded toward her husband. 'Did you see the way Sarr was looking at me?' she said in a low, husky voice. 'As soon as you folks leave, I swear he's going to take me right here in this field!'
The image was a scandalous one, but credible nonetheless. They burst into delighted laughter.
Poroth heard the laughter, but not what had provoked it. 'Like a pack of spoony schoolgirls,' Rupert Lindt had said, and he'd been right. How deliriously innocent they were, Deborah no less than the rest. And how shocked they'd be if he told them the truth about what they'd done tonight.
'Hide thee, haste thee,
Gillycorn Hill… '
He had stumbled upon it, quite by accident, in German class; a book in the college library, confirming his suspicions, had hinted at still darker things, older than the pyramids, older than recorded history. He'd read of pre- Christian nature worship and how, each spring, tribesmen had once sacrificed their gods in human form. The rest he'd figured out for himself. Beneath his neighbors' sober-sided piety he had glimpsed the painted face of the savage; behind this evening's quaint observance he had seen a blood-stained altar and a figure stretched naked upon it like a five-pointed star. He had witnessed the ritual slashing of the throat, the rending of the limbs; while his friends enjoyed their moonlit meal, he'd had a vision of frenzied hands tearing at a thing without a head, while, just beyond the firelight, children fought greedily over what looked like a face. Though their flood now bore a deceptive modern name, it had formerly been known as Gottin bread, symbol of what they'd once devoured – the flesh of the Goddess incarnate, her hair the garland that now crowned his staff.
'If Mole don't taste thee,
Worm he will.'
All such goings-on, of course, were safely in the past; there was no harm in them today. Perhaps he'd read more history than the rest of the Brethren, and perhaps he'd seen more deeply tonight, but his faith remained as strong as it had always been. The origin of everything was dark, no doubt, but blood spilled long ago had long since dried. Time, he knew, made all deeds respectable; some people even ate their god each Sunday. For him all gods and goddesses were one, aspects of an all-encompassing Divine; and after tonight's sacrament, followed by his mother's benediction, he walked with the confidence of one who'd been truly blessed.
Behind him, appropriately, the women had reached the final, optimistic verse of their chant:
'Fly thee, fleet thee,
Gillycorn Hill… '
Forcing his thoughts from the altar, the naked victim, the memory of his wife, he raised his voice with theirs in an exuberant shout:
' If Worm don't eat thee,
I will!'
There was a sudden splintering of wood. The point of his staff struck something hard and wriggling. From the earth before him rose an angry sound like fat sizzling on a fire, and something thrashed convulsively, almost wresting his staff from his grasp. An ear of brittle corn snapped off and fell silently at his feet. In the distance one of the cats leaped up and went streaking across the lawn.
Lifting the staff, he squinted closely at its tip, but the moon was almost gone and he could see nothing. The wood felt cracked and pitted near the end; it was sticky to the touch, and oddly cold.
His stomach now unsettled, he pressed the staff once more into the ground, turning it against the clean soil.
