The Gharm cook, who had stolen the food for escapees and who had been shaking in her sandals, stopped shaking and gave thanks to her Tchenka.
And there was a gang of bullies who caught a child Gharm in an alley and decided to see how many stripes a Gharm could take before it died. However, they fell to arguing about the possible number, the argument led to ennui. They decided they were hungry and went home to eat, leaving the Gharm considerably frightened but quite alive and uninjured, to tell the other Gharm of his narrow escape.
Shallow under the soil the net had pushed its way down from the hill and under the town, moving with almost visible speed, stretching and turning, making a new track along rock, through soil, netting through gravel, burrowing through root and wall, wider and wider until it had underlain all of Sarby. Upon the hill near the farm, where the little temple had been built, the net was thick and wooly around the hard, wonderful thing it had been growing.
Though all the prophets were gone, the priests had stayed. There was no reason for the priests not to stay. In fact, there was good reason for them to continue in Sarby, for people began coming into the churches, rather vaguely, as though looking for something they had thought might be there. A ninth day went by, a tenth, an eleventh. Two full weeks, with no blood upon the stones, no blood in the soil, no voorstods, no whip-deaths.
• At this same time, in Selmouth, certain persons living in an area of town surrounding an old church and graveyard got it into their heads to build a small circular temple in the churchyard. The priest in charge of the church had no objection. Even when the stones from the cemetery were taken up and used in the building, he did not complain. Even when one wall of the church was taken down, and its stones used over, he did not think it in the least odd. As it was, the temple was done just in time, for inside a crypt in the churchyard, a crypt which had not been disturbed by the building, the people found an object which they raised and placed at the center of the new temple with a good deal of unquestioning pleasure.
Among those helping raise the object was a busy Gharm with a sharp knife and a number of film bags. No one knew who he was, but everyone agreed he was extremely helpful.
“What is this?” they had asked him, thinking he might know for they did not.
“A Tchenka,” he had told them. “This is the Forest-bird Tchenka. It will take care of you. Soon, perhaps, it will walk among us.” The Gharm had assigned the Selmouth God this appellative. From what She-Goes-On-Creating had told them, they felt the God would not care.
The Forest-bird Tchenka soon came to an understanding with some Voorstodian cats, and a standing order was placed for the delivery of small scaled varmints. Though there were no ferfs on Ahabar, there were other things which secreted the same substances and could be used for the same purpose.
Shortly thereafter, the Gharm accomplished three more burials at Cloud, in addition to the one that had taken place there some time before. Cloud always had corpses. Of the total of four burials in Cloud, two had been Gharm and two human, one a child. The following night there were three burials at Scaery in addition to Scaery’s previous one. In addition to these six rituals, ten Gharm carrying film bags of whitish fiber were sent off into the countryside toward other Voorstod towns and hamlets. Not quite one hundred days had passed since Saturday Wilm had come to Sarby.
• Commander Karth had offered hospitality to Jep and Saturday when they returned from Voorstod, an offer which they had promptly accepted.
“I thought you might have to get back to Hobbs Land,” the Commander had said.
Saturday had shaken her head. “No, sir. We must stay here and try to keep anyone from invading or doing anything else violent. It would be better if everything was very quiet for a time. If Jep and I are right, you will see changes start, in there.”
The Commander passed this on to Crown Prince Ismer, who passed it on to his mother, the Queen, who was still in deep mourning for Stenta Thilion and still greatly desirous of exacting bloody punishment on Voorstod.
“What changes are anticipated?” she wanted to know. “Let me talk to these children.”
The children were brought to Fenice and housed in the palace. They had breakfast with the Queen. She didn’t want them terrified by the Privy Counselors, though, for the most part, the Counselors were far from terrible. She did ask Ornice, Lord Multron, to come along. He was too grandfatherly, she thought, to frighten anyone.
After what Jep and Saturday had been through with the prophets of Voorstod, the Queen and her counselor caused no trepidation at all.
“You may call me Ma’am,” the Queen told the children. “Having children call me Pacific Sublimity always makes me want to laugh.”
“Yes, Ma’am,” said Saturday. “These are very good eggs.”
“They are, aren’t they. They are lorsfowl eggs. Do you have lorsfowl on Hobbs Land?”
“We have chickens from Manhome,” said Jep, “though I think they’ve been elaborated somewhat to fit the environment, just as we
