And so the world continues to spin on its axis…

Part I Part II

Little yellow millet seeds slipped through clutched fingers, and the hens cackled and clucked around Aida’s bare feet, leaving little red lines where their talons scratched her. A long sigh wheezed down, and she let all the grain fall at once. A flurry of wings erupted, and she reached into the bag for more millet. It trickled down to the chickens.

“My goodness,” said Aida suddenly, “I don’t even know who he is. He must be a west sider.” She dumped the whole bag on the crowd at her feet and stomped out of the coop, leaving the indignant chickens to shake the millet out of their feathers. She muttered to herself as she stalked to the weaving shed. “What do I do. What do I do? This disastrous oaf is going to ruin everything. How in the world do I get rid of him?” She put her hand on the handle of the door and bit the insides of her cheeks. “Creep,” she said, and went in.

She made an inordinate amount of mistakes that afternoon. Usually she was the one sorting out Helena’s endless snarls, but today Lysias had to come and help her undo an awful knot. Her father snapped at her and Helena looked smug. Aida looked at her. “If you were a dragon,” said Lysias, “fire would come out your eyes.”

“They don’t have fire out their eyes,” said Aida.

“What’s a dragon?” said Helena.

“Never mind,” said mother, “you’re about to get a snarl.” Mother didn’t even ask Aida to fix the snarl when it inevitably came.

At the end of the day, Aida had a pile of extras much larger than anyone else. She played games with the others, a game involving pebbles and a game involving sticks, but she kept losing, so she took her stick and left. She went to her enemies, the chickens, and poked them into a riot with her stick. “What would you do,” she said to them, “If you had been discovered?” No oracle came forth. “Even if I change my habits, he’s sure to find me. I don’t know whether he’s intelligent or not. But he’s assuredly curious. And curiosity killed the cat. Funny how they never say whose curiosity. And you assume it’s the cat’s. But they never said so. His curiosity is going to kill me.” She poked at the chickens again and took a deep breath of the foul air.

“Aida!” came the dreadful high pitched voice. “We’re going to the priest’s now!”

Aida ignored Helena. It was a mere formality. Helena yelled again. Then, “It’s because she’s embarrassed about her big pile.” Feet pattered off.

“No I’m not.” Aida kicked at the chickens, erupting a satisfying white flurry.

Presently, she went inside. She went to the corner of the kitchen, where there was a table full of kitchen implements. She watched her slim fingers fumble with the clasp of a dark mahogany box. It opened, and she saw her eyes reflected suddenly in the polished blade of a long square meat cleaver. She took it by the black handle and pulled it out. She looked up and down the blade and felt the edge with her thumb. She caught her eyes again and shuddered. She put the knife back, shut the box, and did the clasp rapidly. She rubbed her nose violently with her shoulder and ran out to the weaving shed.

She put her hand on the handle and paused. Her lips moved apart and together as she debated within herself. She felt grotesquely aware of her tongue hitting her teeth and running up her gums as she thought. She pushed the handle down and felt the door yield softly. She found her pile of threads and scooped it up. Little bits drifted to the floor, colorless in the dim light.

“Well,” she said, “so now what.” She closed her eyes and dropped the pile onto the floor again. Fumbling, she found the knot in her belt and tightened it. Then she bent down and grabbed manically at the threads, picking them up, stuffing them down her shirt, feeling around for any she might have dropped, all the while seeing nothing but the backs of her eyelids.

“Blast,” she said suddenly, standing up and opening her eyes. “Either hide them or take them to the priest already. You don’t have time to moon about.”

She banged out the door and began striding toward the priest’s house. She walked past several houses, making sure to stay in the shade of the trees, then turned to the left, away from the priest’s house. Past three more houses, then right, toward the woods. She nipped behind a tree, breathing hard. People were returning to their houses.  Once they were all safely tucked indoors, she continued. After a bit, the shudder she had been putting off overtook her, and she turned right again. She was almost there, wherever there was. She was only a few houses away from the clearing, and then either the priest’s house or the forest. She felt her artificial paunch and waited. Then she opened her mouth and ran her tongue over her teeth and undid the belt. She watched the threads being born, then tied her belt back on. She bent to pick up the threads, filled with the crawling feeling that she was being watched. She stood there, fingering the threads and imagining them in nice rows in the Boy’s garden. “What a creep,” she muttered, and looked around wildly. There was a large thorn-bush behind the next tree, the kind that was thick and formidable. She marched forward and put her hand gently on it. If she could get to the middle of it, no one else would think to look there. She began gingerly spreading its branches apart, precariously avoiding thorns. A moment passed with her hand in the bush and the threads under her other arm.  Her heavy lids went up and down. Then she took a step back and the branches sprang back, scratching her dry hand. Better to just go to the priest.

“You can’t stop now,” said a voice in her head. Disturbed, for she wasn’t prone to hearing voices in her head, she parted the branches again quickly and shoved the threads in. She withdrew her hand and began pulling thorns out of it. Of course she couldn’t. Not now. She marched to the priest’s house and delivered her customary lie, holding her slightly bloody hand slightly behind her back. The priest’s face looked more saggy than ever, which somehow paradoxically contributed to the birdlike look of his eyes staring out. Aida wondered suddenly if he were really there.

Once outside his house she shook herself out, shaking away thoughts of the priest and what he must think of her, and put her hands on her hips. “All right, Boy, now what?” She was met only with eerie silence, and then a cricket started up. “Well?” she said again, softly. She felt the nasty feeling of eyes once more and wheeled around. Nothing was there, and the priest’s door was firmly shut. She licked her lips and looked about. She hated the dark.

Slowly, forcing her steps to be calm and measured, she walked home. When she reached home her resolve crumbled, and she ran up the steps of her house, burst into the front room, and scampered off to her bedroom, ignoring the looks of her family.

Helena was in the bedroom, drawing something on the floor with a piece of chalk, and she looked up with an annoying triumphant little sister look when Aida burst in. Aida gave her an unprecedentedly successful withering glare and flopped onto her wavy bed, feeling her nerves being played like a hardanger. So she had put off the disaster, whatever it was, for one night. Joy.

The same thing happened every night. Horrible inward debates, the awful feeling of being watched, forced calm with panic inside, all accompanied by growing irritability. Every night she went with stomach aching trepidation, and every night nothing happened. It was far worse than something happening.

Her mounting insanity made her careless. One night she made her way to the priest unhindered, as usual. Instead of destroying the threads before her visit, she waited. Once safely done lying, and back outside, she waited to see if the boy would materialize. He did not. This made her nervous, as usual, far more nervous than his coming would have. She waited and waited. When the nerves got too much for her, she cautiously left. She kept looking behind her, but he was never there. Finally, she hastily undid her belt and let the threads out. She knelt down and scrabbled a shallow hole with her fingers in the ground, and buried them. It was a crude, obvious job, but she was in a hurry. Her nerves were getting too much for her.

She straightened up, dusted her hands off, and tried to pat down the earth to normal position with her foot. She had dirt under her fingernails.

She cast a hurried glance, and ran off.

Hardly had she run ten paces, though, when the boy popped out from behind a house into her path.

She screamed.

“You buried them,” he said in a gently accusing tone. “You buried the pretties in the ground.”

Her terror overcome by a flood of relief from madness, Aida rushed at him and grabbed his wrists. “Not a word about ‘the pretties’, you hear? And leave me alone.”

He smiled and extricated himself. “So distraught,” he said. “Calm down.

His eyes grew serious and Aida froze. He took her hand. “I’m sure you think you know what you’re doing,” he said softly.

Aida tried to pull away, but he held fast.

“It’s not a game,” he said.

Aida felt a chill go up and down her spine. This seriousness was the most unnerving thing about him. At these moments, she felt sure he was fully in possession of his senses. But what motives could a person in his right mind have to act as he did? Someone sane would not act like that without serious motives. Suddenly, Aida realized she should take her chance while he was sane. “You’ll help me?” she said.

He tipped his head on one side. “If you play it like a game,” he answered, “you’ll lose.”

Aida felt hot and cold all at once. “Who are you?” she asked.

His head was still tipped, and a smile began to spread.

“No, no!” yelled Aida, and grabbed his arm. “Snap out of it! Come back!”

But it was too late. “I’m Boy,” he said proudly. “That’s what they call me. Boy.”

Aida looked into his eyes, but they were vacuous. She sighed. He was a maniac with moments of sanity. That was it. The most dangerous combination of all.

Suddenly, he turned and fled. Aida gaped after him until he disappeared from sight. Then she walked slowly home.

When she arrived home, the lights were on. Lysias met her on the porch. “Oh there you are,” he said, “Helena is sick.”