Chapter 460: Dual Anchors

There were no more trains further north.

Gasoline required ration tickets, and the local cars had long since been parked in sheds and covered with tarps. The vehicle that came to pick them up was a mail carriage pulled by two horses.

The driver was a girl in her twenties wearing her father's old coat.

She flicked the reins.

"My brother left last autumn. This year, it's just me."

MacFie said something in Gaelic.

The girl looked back at him, her eyes lighting up, her attitude noticeably warmer.

The carriage traveled for a day, peat bogs lining both sides of the road.

"We're here," the girl said, reining in the horses.

The village consisted of a dozen or so low houses, their roofs weighed down with turf.

An old woman stood at the village entrance.

She wore black clothes and a dark headscarf, both hands tucked under her apron.

"Hector MacFie."

"I remember that after your father passed away, your mother came back to live in our village."

"The last time you came was for your mother's funeral."

"Nineteen years ago."

"Seventeen years. Your mother passed away the second week after Easter. Half the lambs died that year."

MacFie lowered his head. That massive head, which normally brushed doorframes, bowed before her.

"Seventeen years." He couldn't even remember clearly himself.

It was still light in the village at seven in the evening.

Richard sat by the old woman's door for a while, watching her pull the wooden shutters closed on the west-facing window, latch them, and brace them with a wooden bar.

Richard stood up. "Ma'am, it isn't dark yet."

"It doesn't matter if it's dark or not."

"Then why close them?"

The old woman thought for a long time, so long that Richard assumed she wasn't going to answer.

"My grandmother taught me. She couldn't say why either, only that things would come from the sea to the west."

"What things?"

"I don't know."

She wiped her hands on her apron.

"It's because I don't know that they need to be closed."

That evening, the entire village pooled their food for a meal.

Half a basket of potatoes, a small jar of pickled herring, two eggs, a cloth-wrapped block of butter, and a sun-hardened haddock.

There was also a live chicken; the old woman wrung its neck herself, doing it where no one could see.

Laid out on the long table, the meal looked quite filling.

MacFie sat on his left.

The white-haired giant picked up his knife and fork, habitually cut a large piece of chicken, put it in his mouth, and paused.

Richard also put his knife and fork down.

The two exchanged a look across the table, everything understood without a word.

For the rest of the meal, Richard deliberately ate slowly.

He would finish a piece of potato, glance at the others' bowls, and only then cut the next piece.

The old woman beside him thought he wasn't used to the food and kept adding more to his plate.

"Little sir, you southerners eat rather little."

"...It's not a little. I usually eat like this."

Beside him, MacFie picked up his soup bowl, drank less than half, and set it down very solemnly.

Catherine sat between the two of them. It wasn't until they were halfway through the meal that she wrote a single line.

"You two are working pretty hard at pretending."

Someone suggested boiling another pot of meat stew for the guests, but MacFie immediately refused.

"No need, no need... We've eaten plenty on the road these past two days."

The old woman clearly knew MacFie and asked with concern if there was something wrong with his health.

The professor merely used his age as an excuse, saying he couldn't eat as much anymore.

Richard thought this was probably the biggest lie he had heard since meeting the professor.

After the meal, eight women carried in a roll of woolen cloth fresh from the loom and spread it out on a long wooden board.

The cloth was wet, and a pungent, stale reek immediately filled the room. Richard fought the urge to pinch his nose.

"Hot water can't produce this effect. You have to use something else."

"...I can smell it."

"Endure it. There are far worse smells in our line of work."

MacFie spoke from behind him:

"Newly woven wool is loose. It has to be soaked through and pounded. We'll need this for tomorrow's ritual too, so watch closely."

Richard stood to the side.

Everything this village did tonight had been passed down by word of mouth for who knew how many generations.

Before they even began pounding the cloth, someone started a tune. The one leading the song was the girl who had driven the carriage to bring them here.

She placed her child in a basket beside her and sat on the outermost edge. After she sang the first line, the other seven women joined in.

Under his Spirit Vision, Richard could see the rhythm.

The ether in this room had originally been scattered, but the moment those eight pairs of hands fell, all of it was pushed in the same direction, layer by layer.

Richard thought about how he used his condensation mirror method; from the initial press onto that line, it took three to four complete cycles, and the slightest distraction would cause it to scatter.

These eight women chatted and laughed while pounding the cloth. Halfway through, one woman even turned her head to scold her dog.

The rhythm didn't falter once.

"What are they singing?" he asked in a low voice.

MacFie leaned against the doorframe, his arms crossed over his chest.

"They're singing about a woman waiting on the shore for a ship."

"Did the ship return?"

"Not in this one."

"In the next one, it returns, but the man who comes back isn't her husband."

"What does she do then?"

"She finishes pounding the cloth."

One song finished, and another began.

During the transition, the girl took a sip of water, wiped her mouth, and started a new tune.

This one was faster, and the women started laughing.

After singing one of the lines, several of them glanced together at an unmarried girl in the corner, whose face instantly flushed red.

Richard understood that look.

"What is this song about?"

"It's about which family's young man is the most useless."

"Don't the men get angry?"

"The men aren't here."

..................

Before dawn the next day, when Richard woke up, only Catherine was left in the room.

She had already wiped down the equipment and was stuffing paper into a canvas bag. A bowl of completely cold porridge sat on the table.

MacFie waited for them to finish eating, then led them up the mountain to see the sealing stone circle.

The path up the mountain had been trodden by sheep. It was only a foot wide, bordered on both sides by knee-deep heather.

Halfway up the slope, the wind was so strong that they had to walk sideways.

At the peak, twelve stone pillars formed a rather irregular circle.

Richard untied the canvas bag and took out the Rubbing Machine.

Catherine squatted beside him to help hold down the paper.

The wind was too fierce; the thin roll of grid paper threatened to fly away the moment they let go.

Richard spread the paper over the carved surface of the third stone, tied it tight with two cloth straps, and then unscrewed the thumb-thick small copper urn by half a turn.

As he turned the crank, the bit of Condensate inside the urn seeped along the silver wire onto the back of the paper.

By the third turn, words began to appear on the paper.

Richard peeled the paper off, flipped it over, and held it up in the wind. More content had appeared on the side facing the veil.

"Professor."

MacFie walked over to take it, pulling a pair of reading glasses from his coat.

The three of them sat down on the patch of short grass in the center of the circle.

After the white-haired giant finished reading, he began formally outlining the procedure.

"Tonight, the three of us will each have a task."

The white-haired giant held up a finger.

"Catherine's task is to stay on the mountain and replicate the seal. I've been teaching you this all along."

"Richard, your... Inspiration is higher, so your task is to go to the island to conduct the Ferrying of the verdicts."

When he mentioned "Inspiration is higher," the professor glanced at him.

"The Anchor for the hidden section is on that island."

MacFie turned around and lifted his chin toward the west.

The small island, half a mile away, was currently mostly exposed.

The tide was receding, and a ridge of pebbles arched out of the water, wet and gleaming.

"The tidal window and the ritual window must align."

He pulled out a tide chart copied by the local postal agent from his pocket; the handwriting was crooked.

"Low tide tonight is around eleven-forty, giving us roughly four hours in total."

"I will sit in the center of the circle, chanting the core incantation to link everything together and watch over you two."

"This ritual is exactly what I mentioned before: merging two necessary tasks into one."

"The old array lacks an Anchor. The original Anchors were those two clans, but they are gone now."

"What the newly deceased lack is that the Latin verdicts of the Church of Final Repose can't hook the people in steerage, much less the infants."

"By splicing the Sleep-Return Ritual into the sealing structure, the sleep-return of the dead becomes the array's new Anchor."

"We've already acquired the necessary names in Queenstown."

"I'll leave the rhythm to those eight women who pounded the cloth last night."

"They've pounded cloth their entire lives. That tune is structured as a call and response, with one name embedded in each line."

"Finally, that leaves the fire."

He glanced toward the village, where smoke was still slowly crawling out from the rooftops.

"The original fire for this ring of stones—one family died out, and the other left."

Richard thought of the Fire Worship Temple Pillar.

"Can we divide a flame and bring it up? I've done flame division before."

MacFie shook his head.

"The day the last member of that family was buried, the house was returned to the landlord. The hearth ashes were swept out and scattered in the fields. The fire can no longer be divided."

"What do we do then?"

"First, we extinguish every single fire in the village, leaving not a single one."

"Once they're all out, we rub two pieces of wood together to start a new one."

"This fire will have no ancestors; from tonight on, it will be its own ancestor."

"In the local dialect, it's called Tein'-éigin, the fire born only in times of dire necessity."

At eight in the evening, the village began putting out the fires.

Richard had never seen anything like this in his life, and he would probably never see it a second time.

The old woman went door to door. Whenever she reached a house, she would speak a phrase in Gaelic.

After speaking, the woman of that household would go inside and use an ash rake to clear out the hearth.

The third house on the east end was inhabited only by an old woman, ninety-one years old, who had long since gone deaf.

The old woman went in and repeated the phrase three times, but she still didn't understand.

When she finally realized that the basin of fire had to be doused, she pressed both hands against the edge of the hearth and refused to step aside.

She began to cry silently, her shoulders trembling.

"What is she saying?" Richard asked.

"She's saying that she has never let the fire in her home die in her entire life," MacFie said.

"The year she married, her mother-in-law handed the fire to her, and her mother-in-law received it from hers."

"It survived the cholera, it survived the rinderpest, and it survived the house burnings of 1814."

That year, her mother-in-law carried a glowing red coal and walked nine miles through the snow."

The white-haired giant crouched down.

His head, which nearly touched the ceiling beams, lowered in front of the old woman.

He spoke for a long time.

Halfway through, the old woman raised her hand and stroked his hair.

Then, she stepped aside and poured the water down herself.

At nine o'clock, there wasn't a single fire in the entire village.

Then began the most primitive method of making fire: pulling a rope against wood.

The old custom required nine men, but the village couldn't muster them.

In the end, those who stepped up were four women, three old men, a fourteen-year-old boy, and Richard.

The moment the rope was pulled, the wood spun, producing a dry, grating sound like a millstone.

They spun it for twenty minutes, but nothing happened.

Thirty minutes passed, and still nothing.

The boy's palms were the first to tear, his blood smearing onto the straw rope.

He didn't make a sound, simply changing his grip and continuing to pull.

"Follow the rhythm of the cloth pounding!" the old woman shouted from the side.

She started a tune herself, and the eight women answered, line by line.

The nine people pulling the rope fell into step.

Richard pushed down with the condensation mirror method and saw that same rhythm stand up once more.

After who knew how many dozens of pulls, a wisp of smoke curled out from the seam of the wood.

The nine people didn't change their strength; the rope continued back and forth just as before.

The old woman crouched down, brought the dry moss she had prepared earlier to the wisp of smoke, cupped her hands around it, and blew twice.

The fire ignited.

That spark was smaller than any Richard had ever seen—so small that a random gust of wind could easily extinguish it.

The old woman scooped it up with both hands and nestled it into the pre-arranged pile of kindling.

After the pyre flared up, cattle were driven through the smoke.

Once the smoke dissipated, every family came to take a piece of the flame.

At half-past ten, smoke began to rise once more from the rooftops of the seventeen households.

One flame for each home, all divided from that single source.

The long board was set up on a flat, sheltered piece of land at the bottom of the slope.

The women spread out the wool, flattened it, and waited.

The local pastor stood ten paces away from the long board, his hands behind his back. He never sat down from beginning to end.

When he had arrived that afternoon, he had made a single remark: this was a pagan trick.

But after saying that, he didn't turn around and leave.

The pastor walked over, moved the stone paperweight, picked up the first page of the name list, and muttered to himself as if self-hypnotizing.

"Reading names is not witchcraft."

"Reading names is something done for the dead."

He cleared his throat.

"Patrick Dolan."

The eight women brought their fists down together.

They repeated it, letting the three syllables roll through their mouths.

"Bridget Dolan."

Another heavy thud struck the board.

"Child, female, one year and two months, Dolan."

As this line fell, the hand of a woman at the far end of the board slowed by half a beat.

The old woman struck up a tune, weaving these three names into the song about waiting for the ship.

The child in the basket by the feet of the girl who drove the mail carriage woke up and began to cry.

She tapped her heel against the basket as she sang, keeping time with the rhythm of the wooden mallets falling.

The child cried for a little while, then stopped.

Standing halfway up the slope, Richard couldn't help but glance at the basket.

"That child probably won't be used to sleeping in quiet places from now on."

Those eight pairs of hands rose and fell neatly and steadily.

The names were foreign, but the tune was local; yet, when put together, they served perfectly as a catalyst.

He activated his Spirit Vision and saw the scene behind the veil.

The grass and heather were gone. The wind remained, but the scent in the wind had changed.

The sweet scent of peat faded, replaced by the smell of seawater and the stench of bilge and damp wool that hadn't dried in three months.

The path of return in the west had risen.

It emerged from the sea, hovering the height of a man above the water, and rolled flat onto the hillside.

A line of figures marched along the road, one after the other, moving neither fast nor slow.

The one at the very front of the line turned their face to the side and began to listen.

Richard didn't pay any more attention to it. He exchanged a look with Catherine beside him, and the two headed to their respective destinations.