If you want to know––Old An pounded her stick on the ground, then stood. We hushed our laughs and watched her––if you want to know, you have it all wrong. There was nothing of this giggling and play-dancing involved. You’d do well to remember the solemnness of the loss

—a whole generation gone—and the loss of our feast.           

So, if you want to know, here is what I recall, which is more than your mothers or grandmothers can or will.  

It was the last few days before the last true Saints John and Paul Feast. It will seem strange to you now, all the hubbub for the feasts, but that one was our favorite. It was the one we stayed up all the long summer night readying for, through the pink-pearled dusk and the rising of the bullfrogs’ calls in their mucky holes, to the lighting of the long tapers, the gold flames large as penny coins. When their glow withered, the fireflies took over the work, the children catching them in their hands and shoes, in their mouths, in milk buckets and bassinets. We had glass rooms for the fireflies then, and the children spat and shook them free inside, where they blinked on and on and kept us lit while we worked through the night, readying for the festivities.  Here was the first year in ever I could remember that our ankles weren’t bitten to shreds while we skinned the lambs, and that was because the red-pants man had done his work just a few days before. He was nothing like the sketches they make of him now––nothing to laugh over. You haven’t seen a thing like him, tall and striped from his collar to his waist, his hair black and silky as his red pants.  Most all were scared to get near him when he first arrived, with his big, dark eyes and the way he stepped high, raising his knees to his chest with each step. But I wasn’t put off. Even when they called, “An, come back!” I wasn’t put off. I was always the one that went straight at a thing. 

So, I went straight at him. Though I came but to his mid-chest, I looked him up in the eye.

“What’ll you do with these rats?” I asked. 

He grinned and winked, patted his coat pocket. So, I asked again, and this time he took

out the flute. 

It was gleaming silver when you looked straight on, but if you turned your head even a bit, the color shifted: a slight right and there was plum purple, a shift left and green like a spring garden snake. The more I looked, the more it seemed to swerve and coil. I could hear it start to hiss. I was torn between wanting to reach out and run away. The red-pants man watched me and started laughing, deep and double, like there were two inside him, sharing the laugh. Then he put the flute away and whispered to know why I was asking after the rats. 

I told him that the feast was coming, and the rats were so bad, so full underfoot and overfoot, that we’d thought of holding off the feast. He asked if that was so bad a thing, and I could feel my mouth hang open with the shock. I told him that it was only the very worst thing and that it might even be we’d damn ourselves in the not-doing. 

Now you’ll ask me why in dark heavens we suffered ourselves to celebrate a feast for two saints of some foreign, gone-by religion. And I’ll say it was for the feast itself. Nothing now can compare. There were the lamb shanks and sweetmeats wrapped in feathered green herbs, roasted slow, the salty drippings used to baste piles of young carrots and wax beans. There were the buttered purple yams, the fig and acorn chutneys, the seven-wheat breads, the lemon dainties like little yellow clouds that took hours of slow-pouring the melted sugar through the lemon rinds and honeysuckles––though, the story of John and Paul is a sad one if you've never learned it, and it lent a somberness to everything. Two brother eunuchs, lost within sight of the lights of their own home, their heads taken and buried without them. 

The elders and all the parents always gave them a solemn thought in the chapel early on the feast day, then sang the Eleven Hymns of the Long Roads before they gathered with the children in the log house. No one wanted to see the day pass unremembered. Even after the dark time, we still held on to their hymns. 

The red-pants man whispered back to me, his mouth hardly moving, that there was no need to worry––a deal had been struck, and he’d have the rats gone before the next evening. He bowed his head toward mine, and his black hair fell over his shoulders. He reached out one long finger, longer still with its long, pointed nail, and slowly ran it along my cheek. I felt myself nod at his words, then watched him walk off.          

That night the rats were loud. They weren’t content to squeal in the larders as usual, but they found their way up into our rooms and climbed the bedposts, scurrying their dank fur over our heads, whipping their tails as they went. The screeching went on and on. Mam even screamed once or twice, and that, more than anything, sent a chill through me. No one slept a wink, so at dawn we’d all had enough and went to wait for the red-pants man to return and do his work. 

Near the warmest part of day, we saw him top the west hill above town, stepping his high steps down to the middle of the square. There, he sat himself on the cobbles with his arms and legs crossed, his head turned toward the sky. You could see his lips move every now and then, but couldn’t make out a word. We turned our own heads up and watched. And there, of a sudden, the clouds came from all directions, joining themselves over his head. The more that joined, the closer they came to him, until he reached his arms up, and they touched. He kept on mumbling to them, and deep inside the cloud pile, we could see thin lightning darting like replies.         By late afternoon, the whole town was there around him, every one of us, all quiet as could be and watching. Finally, he stood and the clouds moved and made space around him. He looked at us, solemn and straight, and said, “Close your eyes.”

Yes, we all did. No one would think to disobey with the mystery before us. And, in a minute, there was the sound of something I never have heard––or something full of every sound I’d ever known. Rain mixed with river current, mixed with pasture wind, and underneath, screech owls and bear snarls and metal spoons scraping burnt porridge from tin pots. It went     on and on, and you could feel yourself swaying, though I can’t say it was a tune.

We felt the air shift, and the hairs of our necks rose and stayed like that. There was a crash somewhere, then another and another, and the squealing started so you couldn’t hear anything else. Then across all our toes and grazing our ankles, we felt them come, tens, hundreds, thousands, more and more, the smell of their dirty fur filling our noses and making us sneeze. The squealing rose higher and higher until even sticking our fingers in our ears couldn’t quiet it. And then—Old An slapped her hands together—whoosh, the sounds stopped.           The red-pants man whispered that we could open our eyes, and we saw them, piles on piles of rats, large and small, brown, black, white, speckled, whiskers twitching, all watching him, and us watching him, too. 

He looked out at us, surrounded to his high knees by rats, smiled, then turned back toward the west hill. He raised his foot high and stepped, the rats shifting to make way, keeping their black eyes on him. He made his way past them and past the crowd of us, the clouds just above and moving with him. Just at the foot of the hill, with his back to us, he raised the flute and started playing, stepping slowly, the rats following just as slowly behind where he led. And when they got to the highest point the clouds covered them all.

And that was the last we saw of the rats.  

Now, I was just coming to full maiden age at that time, and Pap had already begun the gifting with Leanore that would bind me to her son Frederik. He was a quiet boy, and not so slow of eye, but four years younger than me. In those days, the gifting began sometimes as early as six or seven years before the binding. I’d been wearing my green ribbons for over a year by then.            When Frederik was younger, I was sometimes sent to watch over him while Leanore did the threshing. I’d bring him to the pond where he’d swim with my brothers, bobbing in and out of the water like a carp, and when his fingertips turned blue, I’d call him out and rub them warm with the fleece. There were still many moons ahead before we’d be bound. Frederik was only just learning to do the calving. 

Maybe it was the age or the waiting, or maybe it was the quiet of that long night, now with no scurrying to interrupt it, but I couldn’t keep myself from thinking of the red-pants man, of his smooth black hair, of the feel of his nail point slow on my cheek. I thought of running over the hill and finding him there, just on the other side, waiting for me and smiling, whispering in his double voice, stretching his long fingers toward me, lightning flashing all around. 

In the morning, I was still thinking of him when I heard the call that he was back. I ran to the square, but only in time to see him leave, passing back over the top of the hill. A crowd had gathered. All the men and women were there, their clothes dusty from the fields, their rakes and shovels still in hand. Even Pap and Mam were there, and the Mayor and all his band, all mumbling. “He’s done the work. Give him his fee,” some said, but the Mayor and that lot all shook their heads. “We can’t spare it. More, we don’t have it. We offered the difference in new grain, but he wouldn’t listen.” Then another, “What’s he plan to do? Send the rats back?”   

The Mayor smiled. “If he does, we’ll be ready. We’ll set a line of whiteshade poison across the top of the hill, enough to kill even a man if need be. That’ll take care of that.” And everyone got their axes and barrows and started the long walk out to the grove of whiteshade trees. The sun was even with the fields by the time they returned, barrows overburdened with trunks and branches. Wherever the axes had touched, the thick orange sap seeped out.              

You’ve never seen the way to harvest whiteshade. They’ve never used it since. They would string a line of thick rope between the two old pines, then drive the iron hooks into each piece of whiteshade and hang them all on the line, letting the sap fall into a row of new barrels set underneath. The next morning, when the trunks were shriveled and the sap had hardened, they’d put on the heavy wool suits with the canvas sacks over their heads and just the two small slits for their eyes. 

They’d have to burn those suits right after. Even a trace of the poison touching the skin could make you sick or worse. Cure? Yes, there was one cure, though it didn’t always work. If they caught you at the first sign of boils, there was a chance. Then, they’d paint you with crushed lilywort and lay you on the white stone circle past the oat fields. You’d stay like that all night, uncovered, where the moon could shine on you and lift the whiteshade free. But if they didn’t catch you in time, the boils would spread until you were covered. Then the bloody tears. Then you’d start gnawing at the tips of your fingers and your forearms, and well . . .

So, after they were suited up, they chipped the barrels away and brought in the blackstone rollers to grind it all down like grain. They got the powdered whiteshade in the barrows, rolled it to the top of the high west hill, and spread it across the whole length. 

One day passed, then the next, but no rats. No one and no thing came over the hill. Everyone began to feel there was no cause for worry. The Mayor smiled and patted his large belly, proud to have fixed the thing. But I spent those quiet nights wishing for the red-pants man and his song, wishing even for the rats to come back. I sharpened my nails to points and slid them across my own cheek. 

Then it was the day before the Saints John and Paul Feast. Mam and I were at the well, scrubbing wax beans and yams. The children were squealing and running, catching fireflies, throwing them in each other’s hair. When it was dark enough, all you could see of them was that little glow around their heads. Mam laughed, and I wished I could run with them, with Frederik and the rest. But those times had come to the end for me, and I kept myself at my work, gouging the eyes from the yams with my nails. 

At the trill of the morning fox sparrow, we were up again. It was my first year in the heavy, blue wool skirt, and tying the long sash round and round my waist made me feel proud to be older. I held hands with Mam and Pap, and we walked down to the dark chapel while my little brothers slept. 

All the men and women were there, and we each lit our blue candles. While the wax dripped slowly down, I steered my thoughts to the Saints and their missing heads. The more I thought, the more the shadows and the solemn faces began to overwhelm me, and I lay my head on Mam’s shoulder. Then the Mayor, dressed in the velvet robes, cleared his throat and began the first hymn. We all joined, our flames flickering with each note. 

Well into the third or fourth hymn, I felt something begin to happen in me, a small sway I couldn’t control. Mixed in with the singing, I could hear a kind of low hum and a crackle. My fingers started to shake, and the hot wax fell on my hands and skirt. I looked at Mam, who smiled and put her arm around me. “Hold on,” she said, her mouth to my ear, “it’s all a bit much the first time.”  But I didn’t feel calmed. I felt I needed to run and the feeling got harder to ignore. I dropped the candle and went out the doors.

It had turned bright and clear and so still. Even the birds were silent. I ran, not knowing why, past the old oak walls of the chapel, past the tea rose and honeysuckle gardens and the wheat fields, down to the square, my eyes looking and looking and resting finally on the hilltop. There was no one, no sound, but still I ran hard as I could, my hands clenched, the pointed nails cutting my palms. When I neared the top of the west hill, I fell, all my breath gone. I kept looking though, but the only thing to see was the scattered orange dust of the whiteshade, the faintest outline of little footprints. 

I sat there, straining for a glimpse of red, for a whisper of tune, but there was none. The hum had gone. Then I was falling, falling backward and rolling, landing halfway down the hill.  I wanted to scream, but my voice had left me, so I lay there, my eyes on the blue sky, watching nothing, hearing nothing, for ages it felt, until the yelling started.

I turned my face toward home, and there they were, all the men, all the women, all running, prying open cellar doors, kicking through hay mounds, calling down the wells. Mothers had climbed their roofs and stood peering down chimneys. Fathers were diving and wading in the pond.  I could see Leanore, running round and round the bleached walls of her cottage, pulling at the roots of her hair. I could see them winding through the grove and the deeper woods, and turning over barrels full of goat’s milk and the kettles for the feast. 

None dared come up the hill. 

I watched them like that, running and screaming, until the sun had sunk, until all the candles were gone, and the fireflies in their glass rooms blinked out into the growing dark.