With no other option, he began walking along the track in the direction of what he assumed to be the village of Swinley.
He soon became aware that faces were watching him from the woods on either side. Just the flash of an eye or the gleam of a tusk, gone when he turned to look without even the rustling of a leaf. Moccus had told him to expect that his children might be wary or even violent, but drawn to the presence of the first flesh within him all the same. It must have been that which he had felt tugging on him as he’d driven past – their flesh calling to him, and his to them, bound and linked by the blood that they shared. They might have been born with it, whereas he had ingested it, but it still made them one in Moccus. Instead of feeling afraid of them as he walked, he felt instead a sort of kinship, as if meeting long-lost family for the first time.
‘I’m not afraid of you,’ he called out. ‘So you might as well show yourselves. I’ve come with our father.’
Into the road ahead of him stepped a woman. She was barefoot and wearing only a floral summer dress against the night, but her elongated jawline and the tawny fur on her arms and legs told him she was not entirely human. She looked like she might have been Gar’s younger sister.
‘I am Sus,’ she said. ‘You smell like Farrow, but they’re all dead now. Who are you?’
‘Matt,’ he replied, looking her up and down. ‘Wow.’
‘Save your mockery,’ she sneered. ‘Who is Matt and what does he mean by saying that he has come with our father? Answer before we gut you.’
‘I wasn’t mocking, honest! I’m just… I actually think you’re pretty.’ It was hard to tell who was more surprised at this statement – Sus or himself. She came forward, her bent-backward legs giving her a swaying, balletic movement.
‘And will you still think I’m pretty when I’m eating your entrails before your eyes?’ she asked.
Probably, he thought. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’ve fucked this up. Let me try again. I’ve come with our father, Moccus. He’s in the car, just down the road.’
Other figures crept out of the undergrowth to stand on the road around her. No two were alike – some were squat and muscular while others were slender, some went on all fours while others walked on two – but all of them shared the same porcine qualities that made them children of Moccus: tusks jutting from elongated faces, split hooves where fingers should have been, and bristling fur.
‘Take us,’ said Sus.
He led them in an eager, loping mob to the car, but when Moccus stepped out they fell back, dumbfounded at the sight of him. Instead of the giant figure they had expected, here was something that looked like a tattered coat on a stick.
Sus’s hand went to her mouth, and she shook her head in swift denial. ‘No,’ she whispered.
Moccus laid his hand on her cheek. It only had three fingers and she flinched from its touch. ‘Daughter,’ he said softly.
‘What…?’ Tears were spilling down her cheeks. ‘… How has this… you’re…’
‘I am home,’ he said. ‘Will you take me in and heal me?’
She bowed before him, and the other Recklings followed her lead.
They dismantled the barricade and carried him into the village. Matt couldn’t make out too many of the details but he got the impression that the village was deserted and partially ruined. Moccus was taken to a large barn-like building and laid upon a bed of rags and straw, and the Recklings crowded around him, telling him of themselves and what had been happening in Swinley in his absence. Sus took Matt to one side while this was happening. ‘There are still a few cottages left standing that you might be able to use for yourself,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry about the owners. They’ve all… gone. I would get comfortable if I were you.’ She nodded at the adulatory mob. ‘This could take a while.’
* * *
The following day Sus showed him around the remains of Swinley.
The hedgerows were overgrown and the fields were untended – some dotted with the long-rotted and partially eaten corpses of livestock, others with their crops lost to weeds. A herd of small muntjac deer bolted from them, dashing through a broken fence and back into the woods. There seemed to be few cottages or farmhouses, but those he saw were either broken open to the elements or fire gutted shells. He had found one that still had some food in the larder – stale bread and cheese, but as breakfasts went it was better than nothing.
‘It didn’t happen all at once,’ said Sus as they walked. They were accompanied by a male Reckling who introduced himself as Griskin. He wore the rags of a once-expensive suit, but with his head hunched so far forward that it was below the level of his shoulders, and though his arms were disproportionately short, they ended in claws that were long, black and wickedly curved. ‘When Mother Ardwyn and the butcher stole the carnyx it was like a beehive that someone had stamped on. Fury. Disbelief. We watched because there was nothing we could do. Some of the Farrow came and said “find them for us”, and a few tried, but we never heard from them again. Then the equinox came and we felt that He Who Eats the Moon was summoned, but not for
