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Authors: Kevin Brockmeier
Tags: Fiction
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it. “Don’t cry,” I said, and with three loping strides I set her on the other shore.
As the reapers led the children into Woolpit, I kneaded the coins in my pocket, feeling their satisfying weight and the imprint of their notches. Seven birds came together in the sky. The coming week would bring a change of fortune. It was the plainest of signs.
The river spills straight through the center of town, with the fields, the church, and the stables on one side and the smithy, the tavern, and the market on the other. It is an angry foaming dragon, the current swift and violent, and only the strongest can cross it without falling. The nearest stepway is half an hour’s walk downstream, a wedge of stone so slippery it seems to sway beneath you like a lily pad, yet before I took my place on the shore, the people of Woolpit made that journey every day. I was just a boy then and liked to stand on the bank casting almond shells into the water, following beside them as they tumbled and sailed away, memorizing the trails they took. By the time my growth came upon me I knew the river well, every twist and eddy and surge of it. I soon discovered I could cross it with ease. I had found my work.
The days after the green children appeared were busy ones. I would rest on my stone no longer than a moment before a new party of townspeople would arrive, their coins gleaming in their hands, eager to see the wonders at the house of Richard de Calne. One by one I would hoist them onto my back and wade into the water, leaning against the current and rooting my feet to the ground, and one by one I would haul them back to the other shore when they returned some few hours later. At night, as I lay on my pallet, the muscles of my back gave involuntary jerking pulses, like fish pulled from the river and clapped onto a hard surface. The sensation was entirely new to me then, though I have experienced it many times since.
The people who had seen the green children spoke of little else, and I listened to their accounts as they gathered in clutches on the strand:
“The girl is covered in bug bites, and the boy just lies there and shivers.”
“I hear that de Calne has hired someone to train them in English.”
“Green to their gums! Green to the roots of their hair!”
“Have you seen the midget who lives at Coggeshall Abbey?”
“I made a farting noise with my tongue, and the girl smiled at me.”
“The chirurgeon says that it’s chlorosis—the greensickness.”
“They’re the ugliest specimens I’ve ever seen—uglier than a boil, uglier than that hag Ruberta.”
“I can see them glowing like marshfire when I close my eyes.”
“Did I tell you my milk cow dropped a two-headed calf last year?”
“Mark my words—they’ll be dead before the first frost.”
The river was swollen with rain from a storm that had broken in the hills, but the sky over Woolpit was so windless and fine that the current ran almost noiselessly between its banks. As I carried the townsfolk through water as high as my gut, I gave my ear to them and learned that the green children had eaten nothing for several days, though bread and meat and greens had all been set before them. I learned that though they did not eat, they did drink from the dippers of water they were given, and that sometimes the girl even used the excess to clean her face and hands. One of the men who had examined the children for hidden weapons said that their hair was handsomely clipped, their teeth straight and white, and their clothing was stitched from a strange-looking material with many narrow furrows: it fell on their bodies with the stiffness of leather, yet was soft and smooth to the touch. “They huddled together as soon as I drew away,” I heard him say. “They clutched their stomachs and cried.”
On the third day of the children’s keeping, one of the growers brought them some beans newly cut from the field. The children were plainly excited and slit the stalks open
As the reapers led the children into Woolpit, I kneaded the coins in my pocket, feeling their satisfying weight and the imprint of their notches. Seven birds came together in the sky. The coming week would bring a change of fortune. It was the plainest of signs.
The river spills straight through the center of town, with the fields, the church, and the stables on one side and the smithy, the tavern, and the market on the other. It is an angry foaming dragon, the current swift and violent, and only the strongest can cross it without falling. The nearest stepway is half an hour’s walk downstream, a wedge of stone so slippery it seems to sway beneath you like a lily pad, yet before I took my place on the shore, the people of Woolpit made that journey every day. I was just a boy then and liked to stand on the bank casting almond shells into the water, following beside them as they tumbled and sailed away, memorizing the trails they took. By the time my growth came upon me I knew the river well, every twist and eddy and surge of it. I soon discovered I could cross it with ease. I had found my work.
The days after the green children appeared were busy ones. I would rest on my stone no longer than a moment before a new party of townspeople would arrive, their coins gleaming in their hands, eager to see the wonders at the house of Richard de Calne. One by one I would hoist them onto my back and wade into the water, leaning against the current and rooting my feet to the ground, and one by one I would haul them back to the other shore when they returned some few hours later. At night, as I lay on my pallet, the muscles of my back gave involuntary jerking pulses, like fish pulled from the river and clapped onto a hard surface. The sensation was entirely new to me then, though I have experienced it many times since.
The people who had seen the green children spoke of little else, and I listened to their accounts as they gathered in clutches on the strand:
“The girl is covered in bug bites, and the boy just lies there and shivers.”
“I hear that de Calne has hired someone to train them in English.”
“Green to their gums! Green to the roots of their hair!”
“Have you seen the midget who lives at Coggeshall Abbey?”
“I made a farting noise with my tongue, and the girl smiled at me.”
“The chirurgeon says that it’s chlorosis—the greensickness.”
“They’re the ugliest specimens I’ve ever seen—uglier than a boil, uglier than that hag Ruberta.”
“I can see them glowing like marshfire when I close my eyes.”
“Did I tell you my milk cow dropped a two-headed calf last year?”
“Mark my words—they’ll be dead before the first frost.”
The river was swollen with rain from a storm that had broken in the hills, but the sky over Woolpit was so windless and fine that the current ran almost noiselessly between its banks. As I carried the townsfolk through water as high as my gut, I gave my ear to them and learned that the green children had eaten nothing for several days, though bread and meat and greens had all been set before them. I learned that though they did not eat, they did drink from the dippers of water they were given, and that sometimes the girl even used the excess to clean her face and hands. One of the men who had examined the children for hidden weapons said that their hair was handsomely clipped, their teeth straight and white, and their clothing was stitched from a strange-looking material with many narrow furrows: it fell on their bodies with the stiffness of leather, yet was soft and smooth to the touch. “They huddled together as soon as I drew away,” I heard him say. “They clutched their stomachs and cried.”
On the third day of the children’s keeping, one of the growers brought them some beans newly cut from the field. The children were plainly excited and slit the stalks open
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