Chapter 147: Wilderness Hunt

Richard opened his eyes at six o'clock sharp. The brass bed springs gave a muffled groan as he rolled over.

He dressed in his coat and looped his scarf twice around his neck.

The Webley sat in its holster at his hip, the outline hidden beneath his coat.

No one was downstairs.

Careful not to wake anyone still sleeping, he eased back the wooden latch on the front door and stepped outside.

The air was much sharper than indoors. Smoke was already climbing from several chimneys across the village.

Richard set out along the eastern stone wall.

Roughly half a li beyond the village boundary, the ground sloped down toward the southwest.

Pale reeds and frost-bowed shrubs spread across the moorland, broken here and there by mounds of sheep dung.

He stopped on a high ridge overlooking the river valley.

He was still over a li from the mill.

The square marked on his map lay at the bottom of that distant valley. From here, he could make out the broken outline of the mill's roof.

He went no closer.

One of Mr. Hutton's instructions from the previous night stood out: the entity trapped inside the seal was sensitive to human Micro-circulation. Isolated from the living for thousands of years, she grew restless at any contact.

Richard made a preliminary sweep with his Spirit Vision.

The ether field across the valley was distinctly uneven.

The deepest depressions were concentrated around the derelict stone structure at the bottom of the valley.

The seal was still holding.

If it ever failed entirely, that ether field would spill outward and drift toward the village.

On his way back, he met an old man.

The man was climbing the slope from the sheep pens below, leaning on a polished oak shepherd's crook carved with a curled ram's horn at the tip.

Six or seven goats trailed behind him, working their way up the hillside.

Richard stepped aside to let them pass.

The shepherd stopped beside him and said something.

It was Gaelic; Richard could not understand it.

He answered in the Albion Language: "Hello."

The old man lifted his empty right hand, touched his own chest, and traced a diagonal line across Richard's.

That finished, the shepherd turned and continued up the slope, his goats scattering behind him.

Richard rubbed his chin.

He had seen that gesture in the supplementary notes Isabella had left behind.

An appendix titled "A Brief Study of Ancient Celt Rural Folk Customs" listed a gesture known as the kinship greeting.

It was never offered to strangers; locals used it only among themselves to say, "We both stand upon this land."

After the Romans arrived and dispersed the priests, the custom had filtered down from the clergy to shepherds and blacksmiths.

Richard continued toward the village.

He thought back to the conversation in the inn the night before. The seniors had spoken freely in front of the proprietor, and Mrs. MacNeil had even handed out assignments on the spot.

At the time, he had assumed the innkeeper's family also belonged to the mystical world.

Now it seemed that circle was wider than he had thought.

The locals around Whitcom knew by instinct how to live alongside this land.

Neolithic priests had raised stone circles here, pre-Roman druids had lit midsummer fires here, and the Gaels had told their stories here for over a thousand years.

Every generation learned the rules of the land, including how to cooperate with Practitioners from the mystical side.

As he reached the inn, the bell in the small church east of the village struck seven.

The lobby was already lively.

Behind the bar, the landlady was frying bacon in a heavy iron skillet.

Edmund sat at a table by the window. Theodore sat opposite him, a stubborn tuft of hair standing up on the back of his head.

"Morning," Edmund said, glancing up. "You went out?"

"Took a walk around the east end," Richard said, unwinding his scarf.

"See anything?" Theodore asked, lifting his teacup.

"A flock of sheep and an old shepherd," Richard said, sitting down.

Theodore laughed. "No wonder you took so long. Once an old man starts talking, he'll run through his family tree from his grandfather down to his grandson."

"He didn't talk."

"Not a word?"

"One sentence I didn't catch, and then he traced a diagonal line across my chest."

Maggie came downstairs then, wrapped in a wool cloak a size too large for her. She looked even colder than she had the night before.

"An old Gaelic custom," she said. "He was greeting you."

The landlady came out of the kitchen with the skillet and set the bacon in the middle of the Newcomers' table.

"Eat up, you four," she said.

Her accent was heavy, but her Imperial was clear: "You're in for a hard day."

Talk at the table soon moved from the fat on the bacon to the work ahead.

Mrs. MacNeil wiped her mouth, folded her napkin, and set it beside her plate.

"The reinforcement ritual will take three or four days to prepare," she said.

She held up a finger.

"Mr. Hutton and I will stay in the village for the next few days."

"We need to draw the master ritual diagram, prepare the implements, and gather local mediums—the Stone Tablet, salt, flint, and certain plants.

"We also have to coordinate with the magistrate. The village will need a small-scale evacuation when the time comes."

"Evacuation?" Theodore asked.

"Once the ritual begins, no ordinary person can remain within three li of the mill valley."

Mrs. MacNeil explained, "A few households here in Whitcom live on the outer edge of the valley. We'll need them to spend a night in the village."

"Will they agree to that?" Edmund asked.

"The people here," Mr. Hutton said from the side, "are very agreeable."

"As for you four," Mrs. MacNeil said, looking at the Newcomers,

"for the next two days, you'll be working with Captain Field and Ms. Sarah."

"Doing what?" Maggie asked.

"Patrolling a ten-li radius around the mill," Captain Field said.

He set down his fork and laid his knife across the edge of his plate.

"We need to clear out a batch of weak points around the mill before the ritual starts."

"Weak points?" Theodore had his pen out already.

"I'll explain later," Captain Field said, gesturing for patience. "Listen first."

"Clearing the weak points is the first task," Mrs. MacNeil said.

"The second is taking you into the near-shore layer behind the veil for the first time."

At that, the four Newcomers tensed.

"Of the four of you, I expect Maggie is the only one who's been inside," Mrs. MacNeil said, glancing at the red-haired girl.

Maggie set down her cup. "I went in a few times when I was little. I could see my great-grandmother in there. She'd always pat me on the head, and my mother called it an ancestor's blessing."

"Edmund?"

"We covered it at the School of Theology," Edmund said slowly. "But they taught the Church's version of the near-shore—the 'Spiritual Window.' The nature of it is slightly different."

"Different how?" Theodore asked.

"We look in from behind a crucifix," Edmund said carefully. "They open the door and walk through."

Theodore considered that and let it drop.

"Richard?" Mrs. MacNeil asked.

"Never been in," Richard said.

"Good," Mrs. MacNeil said, folding her hands. "Then we'll use these two days to make up the lesson."

She looked to Mr. Hutton, leaving the floor to him.

"Whatever the four of you have learned about the world behind the veil," the old man said, studying them,

"is likely quite shallow."

"Today we'll go deeper."

"Do you know a psychologist named Jung?"

"I've heard of him," Edmund said at once. "He came up in philosophy at the School of Theology, though not in detail."

The old man nodded.

"Over the last twenty years, he and another psychologist worked out a theory."

"He believed that all human minds are connected in the deep subconscious."

"That deep layer holds every emotion humanity has experienced over and over again."

"Fear, hatred, love, jealousy, violence... He called it the collective unconscious."

Mr. Hutton paused to watch their faces.

Edmund looked thoughtful, Maggie's expression did not change, Theodore wrote furiously, and Richard sat listening.

"I mention Jung because his work sits at the edge of modern academic thought."

The old man continued:

"But long before he proposed that theory, people had already drawn their own conclusions about what happens behind the veil."

"When people saw gray mist rising from a marsh, they named it after the stories they knew."

"The Gaels called it an Infatuation Lamp, the Saxons called it a night-walker, and the Celts called it a Drop-Attracting Fire."

"The names change, but the thing itself is the same.

Ether responds to those stories and takes on their shape. That is what evil creatures and the other phenomena behind the veil really are."

He turned his teacup by the rim.

"The evil creatures you've heard of—ghouls, vampires, headless horsemen, water ghosts, banshees, black dogs—were all shaped by generations of people on this land through fear and storytelling."

"They are born from human imagination."

The table went quiet for several seconds.

"So every ghost story we've ever heard is true," Theodore said, still trying to grasp it.

"Not entirely," Mr. Hutton said. "It depends on which side you stand on."

"On this side, in the material world, they're fiction."

"On the other side of the veil, they only exist because people keep telling the stories."

Richard spoke up.

"Sir, how do those evil creatures interact behind the veil? And does that connect to what we're doing over the next two days?"

Mr. Hutton nodded, pleased with the question.

"The lower-level and lowest-level evil creatures in the near-shore layer operate on simple instinct."

"That instinct is to feed on residual ether. Now and then, they materialize where the veil is thin."

"One or two cause no real harm," the old man said. "The danger is convergence."

"Convergence?" Maggie asked.

Mr. Hutton folded his hands on the table.

"A Swamp Corpse will draw drifting Infatuation Lamps toward itself."

"Once enough Infatuation Lamps gather, they attract a predator from the next tier up."

"That predator feeds on the lamps, lingers in the area, and draws something larger still."

"That builds a food chain. And as the ether builds up, those evil creatures grow more numerous and more dangerous."

"Which is why Hunters have to enter the near-shore layer and cull them regularly," Captain Field said.

"We don't let evil creatures reach those numbers," Sarah added. "That rule has stood for thousands of years."

"Since industrialization, the younger generation has been leaving the land, and the old ways are breaking down."

"The older Hunters have retired, and there aren't enough new ones to take their place."

"At the same time, the veil itself is wearing thin. Over the last few years, the workload at every Branch Office has doubled."