Be a Helper (part nine)

Be A Helper

(part nine)

Of uncompensated labors, of “getting of their own back”. He slipped from the covers. The tower was the place to sit and gaze, in moonlit gloom at his hills. He climbed the stairs, tiptoed through Bunting and Finch’s province, paused to frown at the elfin accommodations, finally scaled the ladder.

Doing all these things, he thought of failure. Because I will not obey, because I won’t be judge and jury and jailor, because I pity too much the poor souls who have not, after all, gone to the Fell for its charms and delights.

And when I fail, I’ll have soldiers quartered on me. That will be the trial before they seize my land. My house. At the first magic accident, the sprites will be exiled.

Making more Fellyans, no better placed to return as model subjects.

Langham will not be more my friend, for a common loathing of tiny grasping fingers. Melchior will tramp to the coast…he has said so, that he would rather make his living rescuing the shipwrecked…

Than have the army setting him to tasks.

All this brought Bede to the one he wanted least to think of. Jorinda had chosen his house; they had fallen into a rhythm, side by side. When you were well in accord with a sympathetic heart, you didn’t have those talks. It didn’t seem to ask spelling out—

If my line, where I draw it, might lie snug against yours. If all I refuse, is all you refuse; if all I would die for, is all you…

But of himself he could not fill this blank. What does anyone die for? The hour not having come for that test, Bede concluded, he had no means of knowing. Did Jorinda, wiser, know what she would die for?

She would not, far short of the cliff’s edge, keep house for the army. She would leave Bede to his fate. His fate would be dismal, a tinpot officer’s fetch-and-carry servant, without a friend in the world.

Silent now, the inside of his head drained of clamor, Bede studied the pale land, named his six hills, his eyes traversing fences and cultivated patches. These he also greeted and named.

Jorinda’s ruin sat atop its own hill.

But no ruin, only the roof and windows out…still a house. A beckoning little house, repairable. It occurred to Bede he was seeing movement. A light masked to stop a beam shining, but casting a glowworm’s dot on the earth, bounced just exiting the cellar steps.

The steps, and the figure carrying the lantern, were not visible, but an up, up, up, was. And now a swing, stop, swing, stop, that echoed a cautious tread. The figure emerged into outline. His dark form was joined by another.

Bede, having just lapsed to a cathartic pragmatism: None of that will happen. It is a tempest in a teapot; it will pass.

Stood.

Conscious in telling himself not to tell himself things, he descended to the ground floor, put on his boots, his jacket and cap. He unhooked a walking stick.

It was fair to make use of one…so not altogether a weapon.

He snapped his fingers at his good dog Gert, quietened the other with a stern gesture at the kitchen floor. The creature whimpered, but with apology, lay down to her duty.

And Bede, allowing at last that he was up against it, set off in the moonlight to learn of new things.

10

 a Helper

Be a Helper (part one)

(2021, Stephanie Foster)