Beguilers by Kate Thompson

Intention until he was nineteen, then went out into the were-woods and killed a snowbuck, to prove that he could. Although he hadn’t yet made a Great Intention, he was nevertheless a man. A year or so later he announced that he was going after beguilers and was gone from the village for more than twenty years.’
    ‘Twenty years!’
    ‘Yes. We all assumed that he was dead, but one night in autumn as the snows were beginning he came back. He was as thin as a broom handle; even the lice had abandoned ship, I think. My husband, Bream, had been killed in a landslide the year before, and since that left me with plenty of space and no responsibilities it was natural that I should take Dabbo in. No one expected him to survive, but he did, and as soon as the snows melted in the spring he set off again up the mountain. That became his pattern after that, to come back to the village during the worst of the snows and leave again after the thaw. He wouldn’t stay in my house the next winter and never did again, but we had become friends of a sort and he would visit me quite often.’
    The water in the pot began to steam and Hemmy, who had been slowly straightening up as she told her story, now moved around the wall of the room towards the fire. She didn’t speak again until she had come to a halt and balanced herself. Then she continued.
    ‘Dabbo used to wear out chuffies like no one I’ve ever met. Even worse than me, he was.’
    I looked at the exhausted creature on the floor and wondered how much longer she would stay. Hemmy had, indeed, had quite a succession of chuffies.
    ‘It’s just as well there’s no shortage of them,’ she went on. ‘Otherwise the village might have had to take action.’
    She threw a small handful of eazle-corns into the boiling water and then began to crumble dried puffberries. It was one of my favourite brews. I shaved the sugar for her, then we sat back and waited for everything to infuse.
    ‘Where was I?’ said Hemmy. ‘Oh, yes. Dabbo. As I was saying, he used to come and visit me quite often. His mood was very changeable. Sometimes he would sit perfectly quietly, and at those times there was no point in talking to him because it was clear that he wasn’t taking in anything that you were saying. Then, at other times, he chattered non-stop. I don’t know how much of what he said was real and how much of it was made up, but it was during those times that he told me about some of his exploits with the beguilers and about these things that he had.’ She nodded towards the articles which I was holding in my lap. ‘He used to leave them with me when he was down in the village and collect them again when he went off in the spring. They were the sum of his possessions and they never changed. He was here in the village when he died, which is how I come to have his things. I’ve had them now for thirteen years, wondering what to do with them. That was why, when you announced your Intention last evening I quickly revised my own.’ She smiled, rustily. ‘I was going to say the same thing again.’
    I laughed, struck by the absurdity of it. ‘You may be well prepared for your death by now, Hemmy, but I don’t think your death wants you.’
    She nodded, the smile still on her face. I dropped the drawings back into the trunk and poured out the brew. I tried to wake the chuffie for her share but she was still a long way from morning.
    ‘You haven’t told me what it was you meant when you asked me if I could follow orders,’ I said.
    Hemmy slurped her drink. ‘What Dabbo told me, or what I managed to gather from his rantings, is this. The shawl will never let the cold into you. The coil of gut will never be too short and it will never break. Those things are easy, he said. But what is not easy is the rule of the beguilers’ eyes.’
    ‘The what?’
    ‘That’s what fills the little bag, so he told me.’
    ‘Beguilers’ eyes?’ I said, with ridicule in my voice. I began to tug at the knot