Touch Him

Go back the other way: News

Follow this back to: Beginnings

They let the men go in the morning, watching them row up river. One boat contained the two men, straining against the oars. The other boat contained the dead men, a grotesque array of arms and legs protruding above the side of the boat. One hand in particular caught Manueline's eye; the image of it becoming stuck fast in her mind. It looked almost as though the hand was waving at them, bidding them farewell. Like a bright light seen suddenly on a dark night, the image of the hand imposed itself on her vision so she saw it everywhere she looked. The patterns in the water reflected it; she saw it in the clouds above them and in the shapes of the trees they passed as they went downstream. When she closed her eyes and covered her face with her hands, the afterimage was still there, a white ghostly thing outlined against the dark that she found inside herself.

They had taken a mast and sail out of one of the other boats and Manueline had made the men step the mast before they left. Now they could hoist a small sail and use the impetus of the wind as well as the water to drive them on. The wolf rode with them, apparently content for the day. He lay in the bottom of the boat and slept. Manueline had no sense of fleeing from the men that she had sent off that morning.

She was exhausted and indifferent; worn out by the confrontation the previous evening. She found she was hallucinating as she sat in the boat. Odd snatches of conversation came to her; she heard again things Wals had said to her. She found herself reliving the nightmare journey across the river the night she rescued Wals from the death hut. She tried talking to him, trying to take her mind off the things that were invading it, coming to her whether she willed them or not. It was no good; he would not or could not talk. She could get the odd response out of him; force him to say a few words but the effort was just too much for her, she was too tired.

The day wore on into the afternoon. They neither stopped nor ate. She looked up, almost indifferently, when he jerked his head and pointed with a small gesture of his hand saying, "Look, they come." She looked up and saw a whole host of boats following them. Perhaps ten or fifteen of them altogether, they were spread out, some much further ahead than others. They were just coming up on another island like the one they had spent the first night on. This one was close to the shore just a sand bank between it and the bank of the river. She thought she might be able to persuade the wolf to run away, so she turned the boat to the island, seeing they had plenty of time before the other boats would arrive.

There was a rocky beach and she grounded the boat, telling Wals to get out and help her drag it up out of the water a little. Not that it mattered much, she reflected to herself. She tried to tell the wolf to go away but he just became sullen and slunk around her feet watching the people coming, like them, he seemed indifferent, as though it did not matter whether the people came or not. Manueline stopped trying to make the world move and just watched the people come.

They were still some distance away, perhaps two hundred paces or more but close enough now that she could distinguish individual features; she could see what people were doing. She realized that apart from the people rowing, there was almost no movement in the boats at all; no angry shouting, no threats, no one waving weapons in the air or stringing bows. Watching them, she realized why the wolf was so calm. They posed no immediate threat. The people came for some purpose other than their destruction. Manueline stood and watched, the wolf at her feet, Wals by her side.

The lead boat was a little bigger than the others, rowed by four oars a side; there was a group of people in the bow of the boat, two of them standing watching the approaching shore. As they came closer, the other boats fanned out approaching the rocky beach upstream and downstream of them. The big boat ground into the pebbles twenty paces up stream from them. The people in the boat turned and looked but otherwise did not move. The two standing figures clambered awkwardly out of the boat. They were curiously dressed in long robes with cloths wrapped about their heads, one was a man one a woman, both quite elderly.

They exchanged a few words then cautiously approached Manueline and Wals. The other boats all arrived; the scraping, crunching sound of them riding up onto the rocky beach was the only sound they made. No one called out, one or two people got out, pulling the boats up onto the beach but most people just stayed where they were.

The old woman came up to them and put out a hand, stopping the old man as he seemed about to stumble towards them. Manueline could see he had been weeping, even as she looked at him fresh tears came to his eyes. He spoke, seemingly addressing both of them, "What happened to my sons, tell me what you did to my sons?"

Manueline answered, a note of compassion in her voice. "I told your son, it was death to touch him," and she waved a hand indicating Wals, "He would not listen. I don't think he could listen, the madness of death had already taken him and there was nothing anyone could do."

The man by this time was shaking. He muttered something about everything being gone and he shook off the grip the woman had on his arm and stumbled towards Wals. Wals came to him and caught him, holding him for a minute as he shook and shuddered, his eyes rolled back showing only the whites, he cried out and lay still. There was some whimpering and crying from the people in the boats; one or two of those standing on the beach moved a little to better see what was happening, otherwise nothing was done.

Manueline shook her head, looking down at the dead man. "It is death to touch him, did I not say so?" The other woman looked at her an odd mixture of sympathy and calculation on her face. "You spoke truly." She turned around and shouted up the beach, "Those who wish to die, come and touch him." She strode up the beach crying out the same message to the people in the boats. She strode down the beach, careful to keep her distance from Wals, telling the people again, those who wished to die should come and touch him.

People began to cry and wail, most of them climbing out of the boats, many of them working themselves up into a frenzy of emotion that Manueline could only put down to a combination of grief over the dead men and fear over the presence of death amongst them. Wals stood indifferently, mostly just looking out over the water. Out of the frenzy, four others came up to Wals. He turned and embraced them. Two of them died on the spot, one of them cried out when Wals let him go and plunged into the river never to be seen again.

The remaining man came in a frenzy and seemed to become even more frenzied from the contact with Wals. Manueline looked on fascinated and horrified as he screamed and frothed at the mouth. He started tearing at his own face and then bent down and picked up a rock and ran to a group of people standing beside one of the boats. They seemed frozen in place as he ran up to them, still screaming, blood streaming from his face. Manueline stood a mute and horrified witness as he started clubbing them with the rock. He killed four of them, two men, a woman and a child, before the others seemed to come out of a trance and turned on him, picking up sticks and rocks, savagely beating him until his body was nothing but a bloody pulp.

No one interfered. The old woman had returned to stand near Wals and Manueline. They watched, not saying or doing anything. Manueline felt the gore rise in her throat and turned away, another horrible image burnt into her mind. The old woman spoke quietly, as though for their benefit only, as though offering some kind of explanation, "There was a grudge." She gestured towards the dead people by the other boat. "They hated each other, have done for years."

They stood silently for a long time. There was almost no sound except the water and the occasional sob or cry from someone on the beach. Manueline spoke, "Bury them, take them up the beach and bury them, pile rocks over them." The old woman took up the cry and the people seemed to take on a purpose in life, the whole crowd of them dedicating themselves to burying the dead on the beach. Some scraped away a shallow hole; others dragged the bodies, the frenzied man and the four people he killed, the old man, the two who died when they touched Wals.

Manueline, watching them being dragged off, was sure at least one of them was not dead at all but it seemed to make no difference, no one stopped to look. No one looked at them at all. She reflected that perhaps they were better off dead and turned her face away. They dumped them all in the grave and the whole crowd of people set themselves to gathering rocks and stones and soon had a mound of rocks as high as a man piled over the bodies of the dead.

Manueline watched them, both fascinated and repulsed by what she saw, then she tore herself away, grabbed Wals, getting him and the wolf into the boat, and pushed off leaving the crowd of people on the beach. One or two of them turned to watch as they rowed out into the current and disappeared downstream but most of them seemed to take hardly any notice, just sitting and standing around on the beach in apparent apathy. Manueline traveled a little way downstream not really seeking to get away; there seemed no escape in her mind. She just wanted somewhere they could spend the night without being in the presence of the others.

To follow this thread in the story go to: Keep Moving

Table of Contents