‘But those two things can lie too close together. The line between them fades. So when the people heard the sounds from the iliz at night they said nothing because that was the way of things. When the dogs went missing, they said, “That is the way of things.” Death in life, life in death. But I did not accept that.’ She paused. ‘One morning the boy who slept with the animals, Pemoc’h, did not come to the door for his cup of milk and his crust of bread. I went to look for him. He was not in the stable. There was blood in the straw. All day I hunted for him. He had no one to care what happened to him, except me. I looked in ditches in case he had been knocked there by a passing car, and in the hen-house in case he had fallen asleep among the warm bodies – and, oh, many other places. I did not find him.
‘My father found me in the grain store in the afternoon and cuffed me round the ears. “There is the cooking and the laundry. You should not be idle.”
‘“I am looking for the boy Pemoc’h,” I said. “I am afraid that something has happened to him.”
‘“Go to the kitchen,” my father said. “You are neglecting your duty. I am ashamed.” My father looked at me. I saw that behind each of his eyes there burned a tiny candle.
‘When he went out that night, I followed him across the field, into the village, into the graveyard, to the place under the church. And there I saw his true nature.
‘What did you see in the church?’ I whispered. ‘Mommy, what?’
‘I saw them in the cages.’ She did not look at me. ‘Father’s pets. I saw what had become of Pemoc’h.
‘On Sunday, I denounced him in the church. I stood up before the congregation and I told them all what he had done. I told them to go and look, if they did not believe me. They did not go to look. So I saw that they already knew.’ She paused. ‘They preferred to close their eyes, to lose a stray dog, even a stray child, every so often. It had always been so. It was the way of things. People who have lived together for many generations share a special kind of madness. But when I spoke the truth aloud, they were forced to act at last.
‘I woke that night to fire. There were five of them, with kerchiefs over their faces and torches in their hands. They took me from my bed, dragged me outside. My father, they bound to his bed. Then they set the house alight. The ankou wore my father’s face that night.
‘I dropped to my knees and I thanked them. But then the world went black. I think they hit me on the head. The next thing I knew was that we were rattling along the road in my father’s van. It still smelled of his tobacco. They drove me through the night. By morning we had reached a town. “You are insane,” they said. “Tell your tales to the cobbles and the mud. We good men have no time for them.” And then they left me there, on the streets of that strange town. No money, no friends. I did not even speak the language, only the old tongue.’
‘Why did they do that?’ I wanted to hurt them. ‘That wasn’t fair!’
‘Fair!’ she smiled. ‘I had broken the silence of Locronan. I understood their actions.’
‘What happened to you?’ I asked. ‘What did you eat and where did you sleep?’
‘I used what I had,’ she said. ‘My face, my health, my mind, my will. I had some talent with helping the sick, and a neat stitch. So I did not fare as badly as I might have done. But anyone may kick a stray dog in the street, and that is what I was, until your father came through the town. I would be in that place still, but for him. He brought me here.
‘I felt the ankou follow me across the ocean, across the land, to this far coast. Once he has seen you he will not let you go. We know these things in Locronan. This so-called new world has forgotten them. On the day he comes to me with open arms, wearing my face, I will be ready.’
I wasn’t upset by what she was saying, because it was clear to me that Mommy could never die. My fears were for myself. I looked at the disturbed earth, under which there lay the little god that had once been Snowball. ‘What is going to happen to me?’ I whispered.
‘One day, maybe soon, or maybe when you are a big man, you will want to do that again. You may resist but in the end you will give in to the wanting, over and over. And in time you will hunger for sport bigger than a mouse. Perhaps it will be dogs, and then cattle, and then people. That is how it goes – I have seen it. However it progresses, it will become all that you are, and you will grow careless. That will be your undoing. One day, after you have gone far, far beyond the reach of reason, they will get you. The police, the courts, the prisons. You are not clever enough to avoid them. They will find out your nature, and they will hurt you and lock you up. I know that you could not survive it. Therefore, you must take care. You must never, ever let them see who you really are.’
It was a relief, in a way, to hear her say these things. I had always felt that there was something wrong with me. I was like one of the tracings I did on her baking paper, a bad one, where the comic book underneath slipped; the lines slewed across the page, and
