short story: the forester

Far too much talking in the middle; they got away from me. When I learn how to edit perhaps I'll revisit this one.

I don't normally do content warnings, but: fire and fire injury.

Once upon a time, in a village that the forest was all around, and was before, and is now after, there was a priest. He was neither young nor old, neither fat nor thin, neither particularly shabby nor particularly neat. He was a third son of a family no older and no newer than any other family. He was quite tall, if that helps you.

He had been the priest of that village in the woods, which we may as well name soon, for several years. Some of the people who welcomed him to the village had died and been buried by him since his arrival, and some of the people who walked into the church each week at the time of our story had been born since and been named by him.

People lived more quickly in those days, and the forest village of Conyngham was not much slower than anywhere else.

A name for the priest? Oh, he never used it. I don't remember it. ‘The Priest’ will do.

Fine, that can be his name. But he never used it.

On a fine dry morning, the priest was going about his visits, returning a book here, mentioning a broken fence there, asking an old lady how her leg was feeling in her house. He had nodded without saying anything to the tavernkeeper, because they disapproved of each other, and been looking for something in his pockets as he passed the apothecary’s shop so that he didn’t even have to nod.

It’s like a pharmacist. But medicine was more a matter of opinion in those days, so they didn’t really get on well either.

Because they didn’t know how illness worked.

Well, no, I don’t, but other people do. People work very hard to find out how illness works, and how medicine works, and how much you should take, and when you shouldn’t, and all that sort of thing. I just haven’t worked at that specifically.

You might, yes. If you do your maths homework more readily.

Yes, lots of maths.

No, the apothecary didn’t really like maths either, that’s one of the reasons that what he was selling wasn’t really medicine. But that wasn’t why the priest didn’t like him. Anyway, the priest was going about the village and feeling quite useful and glad it wasn’t raining, and he met the mayor, who was also going about doing his visiting and feeling quite useful.

It’s like a prefect.

No, everyone in the story was a grown-up. I just mean this mayor organised people and kept an eye on them to make sure they were behaving, and reminded them of what would happen if they didn’t behave well. The villagers had selected him, with voting.

Anyway, the mayor was leaning on a fence, watching people walk about and be busy, and greeted the priest. “Hullo there! How are our souls?”

“I can lend you a book on it, if you’d like,” said the priest, and smiled.

“Oh, I think I’ve read it. Would you like to borrow another of my books? They’re much newer. Much more useful in life.”

“I think it’s very cheering,” the priest said, slowly, choosing his words, “that the church can make reading and writing so normal that we have shelves and shelves of books about not needing a church.”

The mayor stood up from his leaning, a bit ruffled. “People have known we don’t need a church for a lot longer than you’ve had a church! Well, you’ve all prepared your own end, and I suppose that’s admirable humility. The time of realism has come! The time of your silly pretences is nearly up!”

The priest nodded, and said, “Yes, that’s in my book.” He smiled again, not wishing to upset the mayor, and added, “I must get on.”

Just at that moment a group of foresters rushed in to the centre of the village on one of the paths, carrying another man on a trestle.

Like a stretcher.

Yes, he’d been hurt extremely badly, because being a forester is dangerous even if you are very good at it. They had been cutting down very large trees, and one of the pieces of wood had fallen the wrong way and crushed his middle. He couldn’t move his legs, and he was in a lot of pain, and his middle was all wrong.

The priest and the mayor rushed over, and a lot of other villagers rushed out of their houses and shops and stables to gather around the man on the trestle. They all knew him, because everyone knew everyone else. He was much liked, too, for being calm and friendly and helpful to his neighbours and family. So some of the villagers were already crying and wailing.

The mayor said, “Hush your noise! That’s not helping!” because he was worried and afraid. The apothecary said, “I’ll just fetch a… I’m sure I have…” and ran back to his shop, where you could see him through the open door taking down a big brown book from a shelf.

The injured man’s sisters were right next to the trestle, and had their hands on his shoulders because those didn’t seem to be hurt, and were crying. The priest moved inwards, closer to the man, and crouched next to one of his sisters, and put his hands on the man’s arm and thought very hard.

And the injured forester coughed some red blood, and said a short word that startled everyone, and moved his legs.

The other foresters stared at him and at each other.

“He was wrecked,” said one of the older foresters.

The injured man pulled his knees up and bent in the middle, like you do when you’re trying to protect a tummyache. He felt down towards his legs with his hands. “Oh, they’re still there!” he said. “I thought they were gone.”

Everyone had turned very quiet and pale. The forester coughed some more red blood, and turned over on his side to spit off the edge of the trestle into the ground. His sisters’ hands and the priest’s hands slid off his arms as he moved.

The women looked at the priest, and he looked back. “I don’t know,” he said, before they asked anything. “I don’t know. I hope so.”

“He was a goner,” said the same older forester who had spoken before. “I saw how it hit him. We brought him back to say goodbye, he couldn’t have lived. All his guts were smashed.”

“Thanks, Edward,” said the mayor, in a tone you’d recognise. “It’s good that you did.”

The priest stood up, and everyone moved back away from him. He looked around. “Nonsense,” he said. “Edward must have been wrong.”

“I mustn’t,” said the older forester. “And I’m not.”

The man on the trestle swung his legs around to sit on the edge, and said, “Oof,” and then stood up. His sisters gathered around him again and supported him under the arms. “I think I should go home,” he said. “That alright, lads?”

There was a chorus of “Course!” and “Yes, rest up,” and “Good to see you up,” and suchlike. And he walked off, slowly, along the path, to his cottage.

Well, for the next few days, the rest of the villagers talked and thought about nothing else. They decided what they thought, and then talked some more, and then decided they thought something else, and then talked to different people and went back to their original opinion. And they went very quiet whenever the priest went past on his visits, and they were very quiet if he tried to talk to them, and a bit starey.

He didn’t like it at all. And he visited the mayor in his cottage, which had a green-painted front door and yellow flowers in half barrels around the front. I just thought you’d like to know. He didn’t normally visit the mayor very much, but he thought he wasn’t likely to be quiet and stare.

The mayor welcomed him in, poured him a drink, and said, “What do you think happened?”

The priest said, “I know what happened. I was one of several people touching him, and everyone surrounding him, even if they weren’t touching him, was sad that he was hurt and hoping he’d stop being hurt, and then he wasn’t. Or stopped. They might just as well be doing all this staring nonsense to him or his sisters.”

The mayor nodded several times. “I’m very glad to hear you say that.”

“What does everyone else think happened?”

“Well, they have divided into a few separate philosophies,” said the mayor, leaning back in his chair and crossing his ankles. “A good proportion, as you’ve guessed, think that God healed him through you, and that you could do it again, but nobody wants to be the first to mention their own ailments. They’re mostly trying to establish who is most in need, and everyone thinks that someone else is worse off than they are.”

“That speaks well of them, really.”

“If it weren’t for the belief in silly magic tricks, yes.” The mayor sighed, looked in his cup, and poured himself another drink. “Another group think that he was healed by God because he is deserving of healing and you were just handy, which I quite like.”

“Why is that any better?”

“Well, he is a nice boy. Top up?”

“But then why drop the tree on him in the first place?”

The mayor stared at the priest, holding his bottle out over the table. “This from you!”

The priest drank his first drink and held out the empty cup, forgetting for a moment to be dignified. “They don’t just teach us to recite, you know.”

“We’ll come back to that, I’m sure,” said the mayor, pouring. “And there’s another group, which I would have thought I would be in but I don’t seem to be able to, who say he was never really that badly hurt and you knew that and you prayed over him to pretend power.”

“Is that all?” asked the priest, rubbing his forehead.

“No, at least three of the old folks are muttering that you did heal him but it was through a deal with something else, and they’re just arguing amongst themselves which of their pet goblins you are now beholden to.”

“That’s awful!” The priest had sat bolt upright, nearly but not quite spilling his drink.

“They’re all awful. Either you are playing a trick on the whole village or something else is playing a trick on the whole village.”

The priest stayed sitting up very straight. “We mustn’t call a miracle a trick.”

“You said it yourself. If something could undo the damage we saw, something could have stopped the tree falling on him in the first place. It decided we needed an upsetting performance, and I don’t approve.”

“I must ask for guidance,” the priest murmured. “I’m terribly tempted to say that I knew he wasn’t that badly hurt and saw an opportunity.”

“And now you’ve thought better of it?”

“Exactly.”

“But what if it’s true that the boy was healed because he deserved it? Doesn’t saying he wasn’t hurt and therefore wasn’t healed also claim that he wasn’t deserving?”

The priest scrunched his face up unhappily and said, “I don’t think it’s very nice of you to engage in this kind of what-if when you don’t believe it and you know I do.”

“Oh, don’t be prim. You just don’t want to answer the questions that will come next week, when they begin to wonder why you didn’t heal any of the other people who’ve been injured or ill. You don’t want to assure them that it’s not that you don’t like them, it’s God.”

The priest stood up. “No, I definitely don’t want to answer that. One would have to be insane. I must ask for guidance.”

“I thought you would have already.” The mayor was sitting back in his chair.

“I mean writing a letter. I must invite someone else to come and ask people what they think happened, not in front of me, and then tell them what the Church’s view is.”

So he went away, not feeling very much better apart from the two drinks. The mayor watched him leave, feeling a bit sorry for him and a bit wishing he’d been more difficult.

A few days after that, the day after a jolly awkward church service in which the priest chose a text that was all about ancient kingdoms and not at all about healing or goodness or anything inconvenient, a fairly plain carriage entered the village and went straight to the church.

Villagers who happened to be out found that their business took them in that general direction, dropping in on their friends and letting them know on the way. So there were plenty of people who saw the four neatly-robed clerics, including the one holding the reins, step down from various points of the carriage, stretch their backs and stare coolly around the churchyard and the lane while the priest rushed out of his little house towards them.

“Good morning,” said the shortest of the men from the carriage. “You wrote to my colleague Doctor Clement, I believe.”

“Yes! How splendid, how delightful that you could visit so quickly, I haven’t even received a reply yet.” The priest tapped his fingers together happily, as though he was stopping himself from clapping. “Do, please, come to my study.”

The shortest man pulled a sealed letter out of his bag and held it out towards the village priest, not taking a step towards him to make it easy. The priest blinked a little, but approached close enough to take the letter, turn it over, crack the seal and unfold it.

Clerics wore their hair cropped very short, so you could usually only tell if they were dark or fair or whitehaired, but one of the clerics was gingery enough that you could tell even with the very short hair. This one took a little pouch out of his own satchel and started filling a smoking-pipe. He looked approvingly around at the church and churchyard and the fresh air.

As the priest read the letter, all the villagers casually occupying themselves picking lichen off the churchyard wall or respectfully rereading the grave inscriptions happened to notice that he looked a little upset. They exchanged glances with each other, surreptitiously.

It means the visitors weren’t meant to see it.

Oh, good, it’s just that you looked confused for a moment.

I know, you’re very good at knowing words. I would be telling you a story about a nice little duck or something if you weren’t. Where was I? The priest was reading the letter. And looking upset. The villagers were being surreptitious and deciding they didn’t like the new people. Yes. “Well, nonetheless,” said the priest, putting his shoulders back deliberately and smiling, “you are welcome to take tea in my study after your journey. Whatever the outcome is.”

And the new people from the carriage followed the priest into his little house, except for the youngest one who stayed with the horses and looked around at the villagers.

After a pause, the villager called George who worked with horses decided that it was more important to make the horses comfortable than to keep the newcomers uncomfortable, and walked over to the carriage. “Hello,” he said, “how far have they come today?”

“We only left a little after Lauds,” said the young man. “They’ve drunk water, and so forth.”

“Want to bring them somewhere for a feed and a check over? Before you leave again.”

The young man looked startled. “I don’t know if we’ll be staying. It depends on - well, of course they should have a feed, that’s very kind of you. I have some silver.”

George waved that off and helped the young man unhitch the horses from the carriage. He took the opportunity to run his hands over them and assess them. He decided they were well-treated. They walked both horses towards the mews. A couple of the villagers detached from the churchyard and drifted with them.

“I take it your friends are here to talk about the miracle?” George said while walking, and the younger man stumbled on his own boots.

“To establish the events, rather.”

William, who was walking with them, sucked his teeth a little at that.

It means doing this: sfffft! William wasn’t pleased.

No, inwards, and a little less spit. Try again, sfffft!

Better. William said, “A man was healed. I saw him, he would have been dead within the day. Have you ever felled a tree, lad?”

“I regret I have not had that responsibility, sir.” The young man looked back at William apologetically. “I have heard one felled, though, it is very impressive!”

“Hmmph,” said William, and George reached out and knocked his arm with the hand that wasn’t holding the horse. They reached the mews at this point, and there was wordless business with feedbags and water and checking the horses more carefully. The young man did his best, encumbered a little by the length of his robe and the presence of lightly steaming straw on the ground.

“I reckon,” said George, “it was the little folk, actually.”

Everyone stared at him. The side of his mouth that was away from the visiting cleric twitched a little. And Anne, who had walked from the churchyard and was polishing a polished nameplate on the side of the stable with a handkerchief, said, “Aye, I do too. I’d an egg curdle that morning.”

“And the wind changed twice,” offered Fair John, who was tidying up a rack of tidy reins. “It were north, then west, then north again. I reckon little folk. Mischief off the… river, maybe. Mebbe.” Fair John was normally very properly-spoken.

“I saw a frog jumping backwards last - t’other week.” Anne added.

“Aye,” George said conclusively. “Tricksy, them river folk. No knowing what they’ll do.”

The visiting cleric was looking from one to another, and kept opening his mouth and closing it again as though he wanted to say something that would get him in trouble. Anne nodded at him pleasantly, put her handkerchief back in her sleeve and sauntered off to talk to a couple of her girl friends, who were standing at a distance.

They separated, as did Fair John and William, and went about their separate ways to discuss matters with the other villagers. Around the hour in the afternoon that shopkeepers were beginning to tidy up the stock and sweep the floors towards the doorways, the priest and the visiting clerics who had been in his house all walked in to the centre of the village, the priest carrying a light table from his garden.

The cleric who acted in charge, the shortest one, went into the tavern, looked around, and requested four seats from the tavernkeeper, who nodded and helped carry two of them outside. The tavernkeeper arranged them closer to the tavern front than the cleric wanted, and then helpfully took the little table from the village priest, winking at him, and set it up near the seats.

The clerics and the priest sat down. The ginger one had chosen a seat leeward of the others, and took his pipe out again. He relit it and sat comfortably, as though on a nice day out. The youngest arrived from the stables, where he had been napping leaning against one of the horses. One of Anne’s girl friends brought him a seat. It’s possible that she winked at him too.

“To begin with,” said the shortest cleric, in a carrying voice, not looking around to confirm that the villagers were clustering about and watching, “it must be made clear that almost all of the investigations we conduct are found to have no supernatural cause whatsoever. If this… event turns out to have been a perfectly natural recovery, with no direct divine assistance, you mustn’t feel singled out. Almost all wonderful recoveries are of that type. Not dying is still wonderful.”

The mayor, who had been leaning against the tavern wall with his thumbs hooked in his belt, stood up straight and started to say something, but the priest caught his eye and mouthed ‘NO’ very seriously. The mayor closed his mouth again, but grinned.

William, however, from off to one side of the priest, said, “If god ain’t involved in most recoveries -” and everyone turned to look at him, and their excited expressions made him stop talking.

The clerics each smiled, and two of them nodded. The leanest visitor said, “It is complex, and believe me it has all been discussed at great length, over many lifetimes, at higher levels than us. Naturally, everything is according to the divine will! The term used was ‘direct divine assistance’.” And he tried to sit conclusively back in his chair, forgetting it was a stool without a back, and had to recover his balance quietly.

I thought you’d like that.

No, you needn’t demonstrate. I’ve seen plenty of - yes, it was just like that. Back up you get, now.

Edward, the oldest forester, who was standing with Fair John, said, “Well, there’s other assistance hereabouts. Because that weren’t a natural recovery.”

“What’s that about ‘other assistance’?” the shortest cleric said, a little wearily.

“Little folk,” Anne offered, from the other side of him, so that he’d have to twist to see her.

Once he had turned fully round to look at her expression, Fair John, back on his right, said, “You know. Forest folk, or mebbe off the river.” He turned back to see Fair John, and then one of Anne’s friends off at another angle said, “I do hope you aren’t offended by that, sir.”

The village priest closed his eyes. The gingery cleric patted his arm, and when he looked up again smiled at him. “It’s to be expected,” he murmured.

“Have you spoken to him?” Edward asked.

“To whom?”

“No, to Josiah. Who was hurt.”

“Ah. Useful information for these investigations often doesn’t come from the person who was in great pain, we find.” The shortest cleric smiled and smoothed out his writing pad. “It is natural to perceive things while in great pain that aren’t happening.”

“But surely,” said the mayor, still leaning on the tavern wall and watching everybody, “if it’s a question of finding out whether there was - what did you say? direct divine assistance, nobody’s perceiving is of any more likeliness than anyone else’s?”

The gingery cleric smiled widely at the mayor. “A very excellent point! And a full investigation will certainly ask everyone who was present their experiences. But there is a sequence, a process, that our seniors find exposes the most valuable information. We are only men, after all, and without a process our opinions might be affected by our sympathies.” He patted the village priest’s arm again and withdrew his hand to poke his pipebowl.

“Do you reckon that’s why there were more miracles found in the olden days?” Fair John asked, sounding genuinely interested. “Because of sympathies? Because they didn’t have your process yet?”

“It’s highly likely.” The shortest cleric smiled at him. “What an intelligent question.”

“But do you reckon it?” Fair John persisted. “Instead of thinking that there were more magic in the olden days? Do you reckon there’s always been the same amount but men saw it more when they wanted to?”

The shortest cleric stopped smiling. “I think that’s beyond the scope -”

“Be fair, Henry,” the gingery cleric murmured to him. “You and I have had years to phrase it better. It’s really very good that he’s come up with it himself.”

The leanest cleric said, “But we aren’t meeting to clarify that. At this point.”

Anne, who had been fidgeting with a ribbon on her sleeve, said, “There ain’t less magic in the world! There’s just more candles!” and looked jolly proud of herself.

“Anne!” said the village priest, in a tone of real shock. “We aren’t discussing magic!”

“Well, it’s only a terminology conflict.” The leanest cleric made a soothing gesture to the village priest, being seated too far away to pat him.

Are you falling asleep?

You looked as though you were falling asleep. I could tell you the rest another night.

It’s just the talking? Oh. Well, I suppose. Would you prefer I tell you what happened, instead?

There’s no need to sound like that. I could tell you that a witch came past and turned them all into ducks, and they all swam away down the river, and the village stands empty to this day. A deserted tavern on a village crossroads, with some mossy seats and a writing desk outside, two streets of deserted houses and stables, an empty church.

Yes, one of the ducks would be ginger. Is that how you’d like it to go?

The horses? You’re right, they’re tied up, we can’t leave them there. The witch can turn them into geese, so they can fly away.

No, there wasn’t a witch really.

Yes, there were already ducks and geese. Do you think it would bother the ducks who were already there to have a crowd of new ducks suddenly appear? Maybe. I don’t know an awful lot about ducks. I know more about people. Well, you look less sleepy now. I’ll go on with what happened. But less standing around talking, just for you.

You’re welcome. Well, the villagers continued mentioning the little folk, as they’d agreed, and diverting the conversation away from the church and their priest, and the shortest cleric got more and more exasperated, and the gingery one continued refilling his pipe and smoking it and enjoying a nice afternoon in the countryside, and the other two tried to support the position of the Church but the villagers argued at funny angles. There. And the shortest cleric finally slapped his pencil down on his notepad and said, “I think we have enough for the initial report, actually.”

The priest was extremely uncomfortable, but he was also very polite and escorted the visitors back to the church, leaving his little table to fetch later. George and the youngest of the visitors retrieved the horses from their afternoon’s lodging in what would have been an awkward silence if George didn’t thoroughly prefer silence at the best of times.

“Thank you ever so much,” said the younger man, when they were already halfway back to the carriage. “I wonder how you think that went?”

“Dunno what anyone wanted out of it, really.” George said. “Still, nice day out for this pair, eh?” and he patted the horse he was leading.

“I do really appreciate - oh, dear, Brother Hen really does look cross. Sorry. Perhaps the second visit will go better.” And the cleric completed the last dash to the church at what can best be described as a scurry. He put the horses back in harness carefully and hopped up into the driving bench without being greeted by his colleagues.

The gingery cleric had refilled his pipe again and was resting it on the side of the carriage. He still looked as though he was enjoying a pleasant day out, but the others had their shoulders hunched and their faces set irritably. The carriage started and took a broad curve in order to head out of the churchyard back to the lane, and as it passed the village’s priest the gingery cleric leaned out a little further and said, quietly enough that only the priest could hear, “You’ve some good teamwork here, brother.”

As they passed back through the village, only the pipe-smoking gingery cleric was smiling or looking around.

The village priest arrived in the centre, outside the tavern, just after the visitors had disappeared on the path into the forest. He was walking more slowly than usual. It was not yet quite dark.

“Come to fetch your table?” suggested the mayor, who was on a bench outside the tavern with a large mug.

“Partly,” agreed the priest, sitting down next to him. “What an absolutely ridiculous -can you smell that?”

“It isn’t that bad, really, it’s a plum porter, Geoffrey suggested it.”

“No, burning. And listen.” The village wasn’t quiet, because people were heading home from their chattering and meeting up with other people and heading in little groups to the tavern or the river, but it was quieter than most evenings in your house, and under the rattle of people it was possible to hear a low crackle, of burning pine needles and pine cones.

The mayor leapt up, finished his drink, leant inwards through the tavern doorway and called, “Firefighters!”

“Blast it,” someone said. “I’ve just this minute sat down.” But everyone bundled out of the doorway and the mayor pointed towards the priest, who was away down the path towards the forest, sniffing and listening. Well, all the paths were towards the forest, but a specific one.

You’re asleep, aren’t you?

Goodness, you really are. How odd. Well, that’s good. You were supposed to be asleep a while ago.

The fire was a stretch of undergrowth at the forest edge, on the left of the path, and it was spreading quickly through the fallen twigs and cones and ferns. The first of the firefighters to arrive flung his leather bucket of water along the edge of it, and then the others threw theirs a little further in to it before forming a line, as they’d been trained, and beginning to pass the empty buckets back. The whole village generally turned out to fight a fire, and there were enough people to make a line all the way between the edge of the fire and the river, but it was not quite quick enough.

The fire caught hold of lower tree branches and spread that way as well as along the ground. It made a lot of smoke, and a lot of cracking noise, and the birds and creatures that lived in the trees were also screeching and chattering and it was altogether overwhelming.

The fire spread, and the cottage that was first on that particular side of that particular path was the one where Josiah and two of his sisters lived, the ones who weren’t yet married. It caught the chicken coop, and one of the sisters ran out of her place in the bucket line and kicked the door off the coop and all the chickens fled out into the yard and onto the path, making the most awful noise. She shoved their water barrel so that it tipped over and soaked part of one of the wooden walls and made an enormous mud pool in the yard, and ran indoors yelling. The other people in the bucket line moved closer together, trying to close up the gap, but that just meant each person had to move further to carry a full bucket and to pass back an empty one.

The back wall of the cottage caught, and the people in the bucket queue could hear yelling from inside. Josiah’s sisters were trying to help him out of his bed.

When they were in the doorway, with one supporting him under each arm, the roof fell in.

The nearest dozen of the bucket line dropped the empty buckets in the path and ran to help them out from under the roof beams. It was awful. And then the firefighters further out ran back to see what the hold-up was, and they dashed into it too…

I should have told you a story about a duck. I should have saved this one until you were much older.

It’s good that you’re asleep.

Josiah had been in his bed or in a chair in the garden, worrying, all those days since he was first hurt. He hadn’t been down into the village, because the first few people to visit him had stared so and made him feel uncomfortable and unusual. He’d been worrying about whether he was meant to be more hurt, or still hurt, and what it meant that he wasn’t. He didn’t know about the clerics visiting, although he’d heard the carriage wheels go past twice, he’d been too caught up in his worries to wonder what it was. He wasn’t naturally cut out for worrying, Josiah, he’d been a big strong lad and then a big strong man and good at cutting trees and helping people move big heavy things.

Nobody could move the roof beam off him, and several people burnt their hands and arms very badly trying, and the smoke was dreadful.

Eventually, enough of the villagers remembered about the bucket line and ran back to it that the gaps got shorter and more water was carried from the river, and the cottage was doused enough to stop burning.

Night had fallen, by this time, and you could only see by the red glow in the heart of the largest beams and the moonlight above the smoke and steam cloud. The chickens were still complaining that everything was wrong, fluttering about and landing beside the sisters, who were sitting in the muddy yard holding onto each other and sobbing.

The priest crouched down beside them. He was crying too, of course. He didn’t say anything, but they leaned on him for a minute before going back to leaning on each other.

“Well,” said the mayor, from off to one side, and coughed, “now we know.”

The priest looked up angrily, but stopped being angry the moment he saw how badly the mayor was burned - one of his sleeves was gone, and he was all over soot and ash, and the parts you couldn’t normally see were shiny and ghastly already.

“Put your arm in the water, man!” the priest said, hoarsely. “You’ll carry on burning.”

“Oh, very likely,” said the mayor, and staggered, and sat down. “Very likely I’ll burn a long time. That’s your concern.”

The priest struggled to his feet and went to grab a bucket of water out of the line and brought it over to the mayor. He made him put his whole arm into the bucket, and the mayor screamed.

“Now we know. He wasn’t meant to be here, then,” the mayor muttered, slumping over the side of the bucket.

“You’re not yourself,” the priest said. “Hush. You’ll be embarrassed tomorrow.”

“They wouldn’t have come here. Tapping their pipes. Bringing fire. They wouldn’t have been here if you hadn’t brought him back.”

The priest sat next to the mayor and made him lean on his side. “I did no such thing and you know it. You’ll be so ashamed tomorrow. It was all chance, you knew it then and you’ll know it tomorrow. It’s all chance. It’s always been tricks and chance.”

The mayor looked up at him, not quite focusing. “Silly magic tricks.”

“That’s right. All the magic has been tricks. The gods are gone, you were right all along. The church’s time is nearly up, you were right. You saw them, bullying our villagers. Time for something else.” The priest said all this quieter and quieter, only to be heard by the mayor, both of them sitting on the ground in the middle of the bustle of other villagers trying to pull pieces of unburnt furniture and armfuls of clothing out of the fallen cottage. “Time for men to make something else. You were right. And you’ll be there.”

“Church’s time is nearly up,” said the mayor, slowly. “Something else.”

“Look at them. That’s your village. Recovering what matters. No need to talk about what was meant or not meant to happen. Realism, remember, the time for realism, you said. You’ve been saying it for years.”

“Hmm,” said the mayor, and fell asleep with his head on my arm.

Well, next time perhaps I’ll think of a nice story about a little duck.

Good night.