XXI. Your dog has gone missing again. He is only occasionally useful, usually when on the hunt, but game has been scarce in the few areas where this is even allowed for you, so his disappearance has gone unnoticed for some time. In fact, no one can remember when the dog left. Your wife is not even sure that you ever had a dog and your third and sixth daughters argue with you about this. “What dog, man?” your wife says to you. “‘Man?’” you think, “do I not have the rank of ‘husband?’ I should have some authority, at the very least in my own home.” You are about to speak when Berkind and Bryland begin moaning again. “Water…” they seem to say, day in and day out, and all through the night, despite your giving them ample water. Their delirium has not faded. Neither your wife nor Hafdold have been any help, nor have your daughters when they make an appearance. The “war brides” are the only ones who even take notice, and all they seem to do is stifle laughter. “Water…” they say, almost in unison. Like clockwork, the “war brides” snort and you have had enough. “Damn you! What is funny in their suffering, tell me!” Hafdold rubs his temples, walks over and translates. “They say Berk and Bry aren’t saying ‘water,’ they’re saying ‘uwada,’ which is a potent herb in the land where we were at war.” Your jaw goes slack. “What devilry is this?” you ask the room in a whisper. “There is no priest to dispel this evil. Hafdold, you must pray with me to Almighty God to spare your brothers whatever magic of hate has been cast upon them.” “It’s not magic, they just want more of the herb,” he says, “I’m going for a walk.”

XXII. The day has come to mill the coarse rye and bitter spelt, but first it must be threshed and winnowed, so where are the womenfolk? Your eldest daughter is in the barn doing God-knows-what and your wife went for firewood hours ago and hasn’t returned. It’s up to you, but you don’t know what to do, really, having been trained in men’s work. You go to the barn to ask… Fenempra, yeah, how the whole deal works. You walk into the barn to find her talking to one of the cows. “Fen… uh, empra, what are you doing?” But she pays you no heed. You walk up to her and gently grab her shoulder. She spins around, her face twisted and wild, her pupils enormous, and yells something like, “I am speaking to this beloved Lord cow in a manner which pleases the good High God of gods in the council above and below and I have spoken with Argyle and Mort and all of their brethren and all have consented to my speaking with this beloved Lord cow so leave me be or I shall hex you terrifically, oaf!” It seems she mistook henbane for lettuce again. This can’t keep happening. You have explained the obvious differences in appearance so many times that it’s just crazy. You leave the barn and go look for what you hope are threshing and winnowing tools. 

XXIII. Your only hoe has broken, so it is off to the blacksmith, Ogilthwarpe. He is a coarse and generally unpleasant man, but the only blacksmith for many leagues. A decision to make: It is either a long walk around the western marsh or a much shorter one directly through. You’re feeling uncommonly optimistic and the sun is high in the sky, so you opt for the latter. Not a hundred feet into the marsh, the broken bit of the hoe falls into the water. You spend the next two hours trying to find it but only manage to make the situation worse, likely piling more muck onto the thing. Another decision: You can keep looking and perhaps find it or you can keep going and hope both to get to Ogilthwarpe’s smithy by dusk and that he has a new hoe head with which he might part. You opt, again for the latter. By the time you reach your destination, it is long past nightfall. You hope that Ogilthwarpe’s hounds are not out. You call out and whistle and yes, they are certainly out. You make a mad dash for the door of his brick house—brick! such is the fortune of a blacksmith, you think—and bang on the door, yelling for him to open before you are devoured by his hounds. You steel yourself to fight off the curs with the little you have, a broken hoe and a dying torch. You see their eyes glowing, approaching, but when they are a few yards away, you are yanked inside by a hand that feels too large to be human. The light given off by Ogilthwarpe’s roaring hearth is blinding, severely disorienting you. “The Earth on God’s green  Hell do you want, you, you?” Ogilthwarpe says, swaying wildly. A third decision to make: Are you honest with Ogilthwarpe and hope that he is in a merry-sort-of-drunk mood, or do you take advantage of his stupor to get what is rightfully yours since he totally swindled you on no less than four occasions, the giant ass. Like before, you opt for the latter. You convince him that he owes you a hoe head, which makes his already-crossed eyes roll around in their sockets like bloodshot tennis balls you’ve never even heard of. He gives a vague assent and stumbles backward toward his forgeroom, emerging a few moments later with several hoe heads. “Pick what you like, you, you… What did I owe you again?” On the spot, Ogilthwarpe crashes to the floor. Eyes wide, you creep over to his face to check that he is breathing, which he seems to be, so you grab all the hoe heads you can fit in your cracked, leather satchel, and make a run for it, dogs be damned. You wonder if he’ll remember anything when he wakes up. How the hell do you get back home now, though?

XXIIII. A comet has been spotted in the sky and has been taken as a good omen for the building of the nunnery which is to replace the church. Unfortunately for you, pagan beliefs are still rampant where you live, and not everyone takes the comet to be a good omen. Your livestock start to be picked off in the night. Your crops are trampled here and there. You catch a couple of hooded men trying to set your barn alight. Why would they target you? Are they not also good, Christian men? Evidently not, so you set up night watches, divided between you, Hafdold, and, ostensibly, at least one of your daughters, but it’s unclear which of them actually know of this plan—and if the ones who don’t know will be told by those who do. In any case, you take second watch. Hafdold has been up to all sorts of acts long-banned by the Church with his “war wives” in the middle of the night, so it’s best to just get out. Pity you can’t put carrots in your ears to drown out the bestial sounds they make. You have to be able to hear the pagans creeping around your farm. And eventually, you do. It’s coming from the unuseable, rocky field. You’ve been meaning to talk to Hafdold about moving some of those stones but he has been pretty taciturn these days. In any case, you grab your father’s rusted hewing axe that’s really just a wide hoe he cold forged into a dull mockery of such. You make your way as quietly as you can manage toward the field, where you can see three hooded figures running in a circle, chanting something that sounds a lot like the gibberish your “war daughters-in-law” produce when they attempt to speak. “In God’s name, give me your Christian names and clear out, you bandits!” you yell into the night. The figures stop running in a circle and turn in your direction. You take immediate flight as they begin running directly at you. You look behind and they are terrifyingly fast. Just at the moment you know that they are going to catch up with you, you feel something hit you in the back. They’ve shot you with an arrow, across from your heart. You’re going to die slowly, drowning in your own blood. You fall to the ground, lying on your back. You accept your fate. You say your prayers. The hooded figures gather around you, laughing. “You devils! God will punish you for this!” One of them gives you a little kick, but there are… no surges of pain through your body. You haven’t been shot. “What have you done to me!?” you demand. The bandits then proceed to pelt you from above with heads of garlic. Garlic. You were hit with garlic. The one who kicked you then says, “Full moon’s coming. Just calm down, old man. Enjoy the gods’ garlic.”

XXV. Hafdold has gotten it into his head that the way to get his brothers out of their nigh-catatonic state is to employ them in moving the large stones from the field they are preventing from being used. You think this may be a good idea, but really, Berkind is completely non-verbal and Bryland’s only way to communicate it via slapping things he wants. Hafdold doesn’t seem to care, so he tells you to grab Berkind while he takes Bryland, and to just drag them to the useless field. Even in their still-semi-emaciated state, they’re heavy as hell, but you do manage to get them to some of the stones that need removal. Hafdold starts smacking them and yelling at them regarding the rocks. To your amazement, they rise with a strange strength and steadiness and begin moving a particularly large rock. Hafdold joins in and yells for you to grab something to use as a lever. There is, of course, nothing to use as such, so you just run to help roll the stone out of its ancient divot. About a minute of rocking and grunting later, you manage to roll the thing a little toward the road. Underneath, you see something rather odd. There seems to be something resembling a body, though utterly flattened, dark and leathery, with the decomposed remains of a rope around its neck. “So that’s what happened to Albert,” Berkind says, the first real words out of his mouth since his whoreish return from whatever war he was fighting. “Who is Albert?” you ask in total astonishment. “No one anymore,” Bryland says. You see Hafdold closes his eyes and rubs his temples, saying, “Put the rock back, brothers. I forgot about this shit.”