Going Back

Follow this back to: Where are They? Screaming Man

The original two stragglers were still with them. They lived on the edge of the camp, waiting to see what would happen. The following morning Illumina called them to her and had the third straggler explain to them that she and the others would be returning to the forest and the stragglers should go among the people and tell them to wait. Illumina promised they would return, bringing death with them and they would take the people to a better life.

It was the best Illumina could think of at the time. She was afraid that the stragglers would just be killed if they told the truth. She was also aware that when they returned they would need a plausible story to bring back to the mob. If they were to have any chance of success, they would have to be able to tell the people in the mob something that made sense and could hold their attention and divert them from the path they were taking. Illumina was not sure what that story would look like, whether they would tell it as it happened to them or whether they would have to make something else of it in order not to lose the people they needed to listen to them. It all seemed vague and poorly thought out.

They fed the stragglers and they seemed delighted to be trusted with delivering a message to the people. They ate voraciously and then left, walking among the people still to cross the bridge, calling out in a language Illumina did not understand.

Ivo and Duilio left, heading west, bypassing the crowd of people on the road by the river. The five remaining members of the group sat on their horses watching them go. Illumina offered a horse to the third straggler but he laughed and said he was happier on his own feet and quite happy to run if they wanted to trot. They walked and trotted through the morning, retracing the path they had taken the previous day.

They passed through the two devastated villages. Illumina found it hard to see them again and dreaded having to see them for a third time when they returned. The idea of having to travel the road again appalled her. She set herself to it, not allowing anything to distract her from what she needed to do. If the villages appalled her, the idea of what the people would do to the rest of the country appalled her even more, so she fixed in her mind what she had to do and allowed nothing to distract her.

They traveled quickly back up the road, coming to the edge of the forest as the afternoon wore into evening. It was a relief to stop for a while and not be constantly faced with the wreckage left by the mob. They camped some way off the path, going through the now familiar rhythm of establishing themselves for the night. Nina prepared food for them all; the horses had to be seen to; Cosimo and Felice went hunting and only came back with a couple of rabbits. They set a watch but felt safe enough with just one person watching.

In the morning, Nina woke early and started making breakfast before the sun was up. Illumina had the morning watch. She had been too distracted by the events on the road to pay much attention to the mood of the people around her. For Illumina, the emotional landscape was dominated by all the horrible things she had witnessed in the journey south with the mob. Now sitting off the path, with time to reflect on the people around her, she came back to Nina and how disturbed she was.

Her movements were abrupt and nervous, the expression on her face, normally harshly neutral, was broken by a nervous tick on one side, and she had the odd habit of drawing the corners of her mouth down periodically as though resisting the urge to say something or cry out. Illumina was quite sure that none of it came from the events on the road. As she thought back on the events of the last two days, it seemed to Illumina that Nina was quite indifferent to it all, as though none of it really mattered. Then again, given that Nina imagined the personification of death was her own child, perhaps it was not so strange. Illumina could well imagine that nothing else mattered to her.

She played over in her mind various ways that she could ask Nina about it or bring up the question of who the personification of death was; she was always faced in the end with Nina's closed and harsh face, forbidding any contact that might touch on what was within her.

The morning came and the others woke, the moment passed. They all sat together, ate breakfast and packed up and left, returning to the road recently traveled by the mob. Again, the evidence of the presence of all the people depressed Illumina, driving her into herself. It seemed to have the same effect on the others as well, all of them becoming silent, riding along with hardly a word exchanged between them all morning.

Illumina was aware of a heightened sense of expectation as the day wore on. She had no idea what this man might be like. Her reason told her he would be like any other man, just absurdly labeled, through some accident, as the personification of death. Still it was difficult to dismiss some primal fear that hovered on the edge of her mind, darkening the day, dripping a poison of anxiety into her thinking that made it hard to concentrate and see through to the end of a single topic such as Nina's problems.

Part way through the morning they came to the spot where they first encountered the crowd of people. Illumina did not know how to refer to them. They were a crowd but more than that, they were dangerous and destructive, collectively capable of monstrous acts like the slaying of the screaming man.

Table of Contents