ways, too.” She stopped to regard us, and quieted her tone. “None of which means anything to you, does it?”
“Not a word,” I solemnly agreed.
“I’m sorry. I’ll try to think of a better way to explain.”
Adelaïda, still from behind, whispered, “Does she speak English?”
“I think so, though I cannot follow all her meaning.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Will you stop me, when I’m not clear? I want to be clear.”
“There’s no need to be sorry. You are welcome here, even if we don’t understand you.” I fervently hoped that the emotion thus expressed would follow its expression. “The village is on holiday today, in celebration of one of my inventions. Will you come with us for sustenance and barley ale?”
I think her mood picked up at the mention of the ale, for she thrust her chest forward and resettled the gruesome tumor on her back. “Sounds great, thanks.”
Our idyll trounced, my wife and I joined hands and led the stranger back to the clearing in the grove, wherein our neighbors made merry. Perhaps, I reasoned, her oddity was purely one of form, and once we grew used to it we would like her. I hoped this would be so, for I did not like the discomfort she then elicited. I also hoped that discovering her on the day of my festival might be an auspicious sign, despite the cold tremor which tickled my spine when I thought of her tall, strong body clomping through the field behind me.
“How many are you, in the village?” she asked.
“But a few score, counting beasts and babes.”
“All born and raised here?”
“All, aye.”
She walked silent a few paces, then added, “But you say your brother’s been all over the world?”
“To the Orient.”
Children were still dancing at the Maypole, but the elder boys, Ydlbert’s among them, had wrested the straps from the tots, and were now jumping and spinning like heathens. Prugne, her freckled bosom half bared to the breezes, spun about like a top, calling joyfully to the skies. To appease the small ones, Mandrik had hitched a cart to Hammadi, who was festooned in garlands of white flowers and anointed with oils, and drove the children about like so many bushels of potatoes. Their small heads, russet- and flaxen-haired, peeked above the high walls of the cart, blissfully accepting the warmth of the April sunshine and the coolness of the breeze.
“They’re having a Renaissance fair, only they’re not,” Ruth whispered, unintelligibly, behind me.
For a moment I hoped that our arrival would go as unnoticed in the general tumult as our departure surely had but a while before, but a dark, brooding hush soon spread about me like falling snow. The cart ground creaking to a halt, bumping up against Hammadi before it stopped, and my horse stood facing me, her brown head high, her star shining watchfully forward. Soon the whole square was silent but for the wailing of Tansy Gansevöort’s new bairn and the humming of one lone locust, come up too soon from the thawing earth and destined to die.
Miller Freund, his hat perched all the way back on his head, muttered, “Leave it to Gundron to bring such a strange thing home.”
“Friends,” I addressed the assembly, “for the first time in two generations, we have a visitor in our midst. She calls herself Ruth Blum, and speaks English. Do not be frightened. She did wander days and nights in the wilderness before she appeared to me and my wife but a stone’s throw from this grove.”
“What were you doing over there, hm?” Dirk questioned, then stuck the tip of his tongue salaciously through his teeth.
Anya slapped him, and his brother Bartholomew cheered.
Father Stanislaus rubbed the back of his long neck nervously with one hand. “Looks like a sea-thing.”
Wido Jungfrau, who had been known to see the doings of evil spirits in a measure of spoiled milk, took his pipe out of his mouth long enough to say, “Looks like the Devil’s work to me.”
Yorik said, “Nay, in the pictures devils have tails and claws.”
“You never know what’s beneath the clothes.”
“On the contrary, I think I can see it right clear.”
Bartholomew whistled and his younger brothers whooped their praise.
“She may, gentlemen, be no emissary of darkness, but an angel come to reside among us; or, as I think most likely, an ordinary person, come from far off. Who can say? Whatever her purpose, she is as solid of form as you and I.” To demonstrate I leaned my hand against her arm, and she swayed slightly under the weight of her tumor.
Dirk, between two bites of bread sopped in ale, said, “Gundron, I can see everything about her legs.” The boys erupted all around in laughter. One added, “They’re prettier than my mum’s.”
“Silence,” commanded my brother as he approached. The new white robe my wife had stitched him for the occasion shone with its own heat. By now our stranger had begun to hump her back into the terrible growth, weary with its weight or with shame. “I am Mandrik le Chouchou,” he said, inclining his head of clean, soft curls toward her. “Who are you?”
“Ruth Blum,” she said, her voice drawn in small. She was only a bit taller than he was, but had to turn her worried face modestly down to look him in the eye. If I looked strange to her, imagine what a sight was he—his hair as long as hers, his blue eyes glimmering with the light of divine knowledge, his white robe bright as the sun.
“And the city of your birth?”
“Boston, Massachusetts. Cambridge, actually, if you know Cambridge. Across the river. Your brother said you had traveled.”
In the murmuring that followed after her voice died down, my brother bowed three times, then stood with his hands in prayer, eyes closed. All the village waited for his words. “I have heard,” he whispered finally, “of your city. I am most pleased to meet you.”
Had night fallen in a rush right then, mid-afternoon, no greater silence could have damped the festive air. The darkness spread her fingers into our throats and hearts.
Even the stranger shivered at his pronouncement. “I’m glad to meet you, too. And, well. I’m so glad to be in Mandragora.” She looked nervously around. “I had heard a rumor2 that your village might be here. I was hoping to find you, praying, actually, but I got lost. You’re not on the map.” She fidgeted back and forth on her feet like a young girl, though by the lines around her eyes I guessed her to be my own age.
“May I see your map?” my brother asked.
“I’m not sure that’s—”
“Beware her trickeries,” said Stanislaus, clearing his throat. “They may be vile.”
“Stanislaus,” Mandrik interjected, “she hasn’t done one frightening thing. Why not trust her?”
“Come up out of who knows where, and so strangely clad? I do not know if she means well or ill—only
