held the tail up to Rupert as we left.
“If you want this back, you won’t move from there.”
The old oak door creaked shut behind us in the cramped in vestry and we were alone. The air was stale and musty. It smelled of decaying hymnals and psalters and unwashed cassocks. Prattle wouldn’t meet my eye.
“How long have you known about all this, Leopold?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Fine. Then explain to me why you’re not the least bit shocked to hear the news that the demon has brought with him?”
“Because it’s always been an uphill battle—one I was likely to lose.”
“We still have a chance, you know. Giving in like this isn’t the way to finish up. Even if I’m wrong, wouldn’t you rather go out fighting? Knowing you did everything you could?”
Prattle heaved a huge sigh.
“The demon is telling the truth. Hell is all around us. The Great Father can’t hear our prayers any more. We’re cut off.”
“So, despite what Rupert says, you still think the Great Father is out there?”
“Yes, but we’ll never feel his presence again. Not here and not in the afterlife.”
“Where’s your faith? Isn’t that what your religion is all about?”
“It doesn’t stop me believing in Him.”
“But what’s the point in believing if you’re damned?”
Prattle shrugged. He’d been too resigned to our fate for too long. He’d already given up. To him, his very priesthood was an ironic joke
“Exactly,” he said.
“Will you give me a chance? Will you risk not having every physical pleasure you ever dreamed of in return for a sign that the Great Father really is out there?”
Prattle steepled his fingers in front of his mouth and pursed his lips. Something occurred to him and I didn’t like the way it made him smile.
“All right, I’ll give you that chance. But only if you promise to come to church on the holy day for the rest of your life. That is, if your plan works.”
Well, I thought to myself, at last a little interest in his job. He was still looking for converts. Or was it just that he knew if I went to church that the power base in the village would shift from me to him? For the first time since he’d come to the village, it didn’t matter to me who was held in higher esteem. We had everything to lose and everything to gain.
“Gladly. Every holy day for the rest of my life.”
I don’t think he could believe it. He looked pale. The world he’d come to know so well; the safe, damned world in which I was his arch enemy, was turning on its head. I put my hand out.
“Deal?”
I’m sure he thought I would take my hand away at the last minute and ridicule him for ever thinking I would change my ways. So when he made contact with my unmoved palm he flinched and blinked and then it was sealed.
“Come on.” Said I.
Whence it came
In the church I stood in front of Rupert who was smiling to himself like a fox who’d been willed a chicken farm.
“Have you made your list of requests?”
“We have. It’s very short.”
“It’s not my problem if you humans lack imagination.”
“Quite so. It’s very simple. We want you to fly up to heaven and inform the Great Father what happened here.”
The demon snorted angry incredulous laughter. Smoke poured from his nostrils.
“You want me to do what?”
“I think you heard me, Rupert, unless having your head and tail removed has affected your hearing. It’s not compulsory of course. I’m merely offering you our terms. If you don’t want to take them, you can spend the rest of history here in Long Lofting. We’ll keep your tail very safe and I’m sure we can find some odd jobs for you to do in the meantime.”
Rupert stood up, his head nearly reaching the ceiling of the church. His eyes flared yellow as though sparks whirled in a twister behind them. His red face became even redder and we felt the heat roll off him in dry waves. Every muscle in his sinewy body tightened. We heard his tendons creak like stretched leather. He blew a jet of fire from his mouth that melted several church candles, ignited a few prayer books and blackened one of the pews. Prattle beat the flames with his robes and then ran for the sand buckets.
“There’s really no time for histrionics, Rupert. I’m going to count to five and if you’re not in the air by then, I’ll assume the deal’s off and that you’ve decided to stay.” I counted very quickly. “One, two, three, fou—”
Rupert sprinted along the central aisle of the church towards the open doors. A great waft of air followed him out. Mysteriously, the fires he’d caused went out. I ran after him as he launched himself forward in a dive through the entrance. Outside, the men ducked as Rupert spread his wings wide. There was enough space between the top step and the dirt of the square for him to take to the air and once he was three or four strides above the earth, he began to flap his wings. They whined against the air. He was huge and deep red in the pale dawn light. It was bright in the east and that was the way he flew. It would all have been very dramatic if he hadn’t had his hands clapped tightly over the stump of his tail as he flew. We all watched him for a long time and he didn’t seem to get any smaller. Then, at some tremendous height, he turned pure white and stopped moving. The sun came over the horizon and caught the shape he’d left. It was a cloud of brilliant sharpness, perfect in every detail. It depicted, in vapour, a white-winged creature, most definitely not of this earth.
“Has he gone for the girls and the powders, then?” asked Blini Rickett.
“I fancy that horn of plenty myself,” said Puff Wiggery.
I didn’t have the heart to tell them right at that moment that it might be much, much better than that. Prattle came down the steps from the church and stood next to me, stinking faintly in the coral dawn light.
“That was odd,” said he.
“What was odd?”
“I didn’t think he’d leave like that.”
“Ah, but we’ve got his tail.”
“But even if there is a heaven and the Great Father’s still in it, he’ll never make it through Hell to get there. The lord of darkness will stop him.”
“Well, we’ll see, won’t we?” I looked over at Prattle and noticed he had some feathers stuck to his robes. “You been plucking a chicken, Leopold?”
He looked down at himself and tried to brush the feathers away.
“No. I expect a couple of geese had a set to in the church. There’s feathers everywhere in there.”
A strange thing happened then—I say strange; what it was was unusual—we all felt a breeze moving the air. It was the first breath of wind the village had felt in months. Years perhaps. From above us more stray feathers floated down to earth, wafted on invisible currents. I turned back to Prattle and began to speak.
“Leopold, you don’t suppose that Rupert might have been an—”
But I never finished my sentence. Something was happening to the cloud. It was growing. Like a tide sweeping across a flood plain it spread out over the sky, keeping all the time its winged shape. In this way it appeared to be coming towards us at great speed. Rickett and Wiggery flinched at the illusion. Watching calmly I saw that cloud take up the whole sky from horizon to horizon. It blocked out the momentarily risen sun was then darkened from white to grey to dark slate and then to shades of charcoal. The vapours lost their shape and began to turn and roil like a dark ocean suspended above our heads. There was a distant rumble of thunder that reminded
