XXXVI. A man calling himself a “tutor” has appeared seemingly out of thin air and is sitting—crouching, really, because all the chairs have broken and your back is in a bad state—in the middle of your hovel with your sons and a few daughters around him. He has a stylus and a board on which he is writing. You see the “war wives” cowering in the corner, apparently praying, but who knows what is coming out of what you imagine are their mouths. You ask the tutor what he is doing and how much it is going to cost for your children to learn to read and write. He claims that this lesson is “free with purchase of boards and styli for each student,” to which you respond by grabbing by the throat and escorting him to the door. He kicks and yells about the “importance” of this and that and also he left his stuff inside but you’re not having any of that bullshit. You throw him out onto the contaminated mire that has become the front of your hovel and, covered with muck that will likely at the very least make him violently ill in the near future, he crawls away weeping. You turn to face your family and see that they have broken the boards and thrown them into the fire. You could have bartered those for at least a bag of roundish stones, you think, disappointed but really just pissed off at that guy who materialized in your hovel trying to sneak-sell you literacy with that “free first lesson” crap. 

XXXVII. A loud knock on the door. Sounds like the knuckles are encased in soft leather. It’s the Shire Reeve again, you think to yourself. It’s not even dawn so what on earth could he want. You fall out of bed—did someone move the bed?—and stumble to the door. You find that it isn’t, in fact, the Shire Reeve, but someone who is dressed rather like him but with much darker skin and a mustache that has to be twenty thumbs in length on each side, projecting directly outward from his face. “Taxes!” the odd man yells, way, way too loudly for the asscrack of dawn. Taxes… you feel like you just paid taxes but who are you to argue with someone as obviously powerful and strange as this guy. You ask how much you owe. He leans in within a hand of your face and asks, this time in a low tone, “How much do you own?” He smells of garlic and spoiled meat but you can’t let on how much you need to vomit. You stammer something about whatever he sees before him and that you have a family you at least attempt to feed most of the time. He laughs, throwing his head back almost comically, saying that every John on the moor and everywhere he has been in this “Hellish place you call ‘home’” makes the same claim, and that he will have none of that. You don’t know what to do. He’s just truly yelled that last bit and you turn your head to see if your sons have been thus awoken and might come to your aid, but no they’re not even in bed. “What, my good and gracious lord, might I call you?” you have to ask. He roars back at you at a volume that seems impossible from a human throat, “I am the Over Reeve, and you shall die ten deaths before I tell you my Name of the Narrow Passage, slave!” You’re done with this. You grab all the monies and goods worth anything and offer them to the Over Reeve. He looks at your paltry handful of motley assortment of capital and essentially random belongings, stares you down with his pupils swollen past his irises, and slaps it all out of your arms. He turns his back to you and mounts his dappled steed. It’s still pretty dark out but you swear it doesn’t have the right number of legs. He turns and howls something in that language you keep meaning to ask about. His horse rears up and gallops away, but not before kicking an entire stones-worth of mud onto your face. It takes you a good ten seconds to get it off your face, during which you panicked because it felt this hypoxic shit would be your absolutely fitting end. You turn around and Hafdold and Berkind are standing in the doorway. “Where were you, sons?” you demand between coughs and dry heaves, trying to clear your airway. They look at each other and then back at you, shrugging simultaneously and walk out into the field with blighted turnips, just leaving you there, baffled and filthy.

XXXVIII. You’re out late into the evening some day after the days are way too hot but before the nights are cool enough that you can sleep and are greeted by John Sweetpeat and John… whatever his surname is—you haven’t seen him since there were surnames—from the forest clearing. Bent over and panting, they inform you that Gypsies are on their way to the moor. Gypsies. You’ve heard of these people and that they are not to be trusted. You’ve heard that they aren’t good Christians and are probably witches and warlocks and barter slightly differently than you do in your land. You thank John Sweetpeat and… you ask John Johnson from the forest clearing what his surname is. “Surname?” he asks. John Sweetpeat puts his hand over his eyes and hangs his head, shaking it in annoyance. “You’re not John Johnson anymore. None of us are. How much pine sap liquor have you gotten into? You know that stuff will make you blind and mad. You’re called ‘John Stumblepath,’ remember?” There is a look of dim recognition on John Stumblepath’s red and swollen face who, quite suddenly, turns toward the valley, like he heard something. “What is it?” you ask. “I thought I heard someone talking about doodlebugging.” John Sweetpeat slaps him in the back of the head and they walk away. “It’s the goddamn liquor, John.” 

XXXVIIII. It’s that time of the decade again: Time for the whole family to bathe. You seem to recall an old building near the ravine that was used as a sauna, but there’s not much left since it was attacked by bandits when you were away fighting a war when you were about 11. Your only options are to haul buckets of water from the well and dump them on your family, but the buckets have rotted away almost completely and no one is willing to man up and make new ones. Or, you can all go to the stream in the ravine and have a splash bath. Your soap was stolen years ago, so the ashes from the hearth, mixed with, uh, a special ingredient, will have to do. You inform your family that it is Washingday and are met with grumbling. A voice calls out from the fray claiming that cleaning oneself removes the “swarm of angels” and another, the “cloak of bees” but you can’t make out who on earth is saying these things. Hafdold is sweating bullets and has his arm in front of the “war wives” as if to protect them from not stinking so much as to trigger your gag reflex. They break out from behind his arm and bolt through the door, which you realize is gone, along with the hinges—there is just the doorway. The grumbling turns to snarls and another voice calls out, “You’ll have to drown me if you want to get this horrid stench off.” You guess it has been quite a long time since anyone bathed. You sigh and tell the room—no one in particular, because for whatever reason you can’t make out individual shapes of people—that you will be down by the stream if anyone wants to join you. Silence, as expected. You exit through the doorless entryway and see that the door has been broken into its component boards which have been arranged in a circle just beyond the festering muck in front of your hovel. The war wives are running counterclockwise inside the thing, ululating, and that is just the limit. You take your leave of the pagan scene and eventually make it to the stream, though you realize that the soles of your shoes are now more holes than leather, which would explain why your feet are constantly bleeding and the straw at the foot of your bed smells of pig iron and spoiled meat. You remove the tatters of your shoes and clothing and wade into the stream, but you’ve forgotten the “soap.” 

XXXX. Sunday, Sunday! Another glorious Sunday—well, it’s gloomy and raining buckets but you swore to Saint… Someone, you can’t remember the name, that you would, rain or shine sleet snow hail or brimstone, at least make the trek to the church grounds, “soon” to be a nunnery, and make penance to Lord God for all the awful things you do all the time. You manage to dig out the remains of a woolen cloak from the outdoor cellar for beets and onions, though it’s been years since any of those would grow. You wrap it around you the best you can and look around your hovel. Whom can you get to go with you? They are all in need of penance, certainly, but who among them might actually go? Your wife? No, you can see that she drank nearly half of a peck of the stuff she gets into when the mandrake wine goes sour. She’ll be out for a week. Your sons are asleep but they need their rest, for the War Worry is back with all three of them. A number of your daughters seem to be sleeping in two heaps, but you can’t make out how many and if they’re able to sleep like that it’s probably best not to try and wake them. The “war wives?” Yeah no. So, off to the church you go. It’s a dreary walk up to the grounds and the latter half you have to walk barefoot, since you slipped a number of times, your shoes being just absolutely done. You hope that no one sees you praying shoeless. John… well, John who lives in the very small shack at near the edge of the northern moor—you should find out what they’re calling him these days; it’s actually sort of convenient, these surnames, but it is a bit of a bother learning them all when you see other human being so infrequently, though you’re pretty sure it wasn’t always like this—John was once caught praying barefoot and spent a week in the pillory for it. You eventually make it to the church grounds to see that a large, black tent has been set up. You are overjoyed to see something you haven’t seen before but are slightly apprehensive because it’s something you haven’t seen before, and it’s black. You make your way to the entrance and find that gaggle of nuns inside, hiss-prattling in what sounds like a mode of chant, though one totally foreign to you. They stop suddenly as the Mother Superior, or whatever she is, motions toward you and everyone inside turns to look at you. You give them a hearty Christian greeting, despite the nagging feeling that they may not quite get it. Yeah, they don’t get it. They all turn around again and go back to that chanting thing while the Mother Superior waves her hands in the air. There are chairs—real, actual chairs, things designed for sitting on, which you can actually do and not get hurt or risk breaking them—arranged near the front, so you sit down. The Mother Superior stops again and makes motions like she wants you to leave. You stand and say, “Please, I only wish to pray and beg forgiveness for my sins, for they are myriad and deathly and should I fail, I will burn for eternity, please!” The Mother Superior rubs her temples and walks toward you. You realize that you were under the impression that she was standing on some sort of podium or stool or something, because she was so high above everything else. Nope. She’s like 7 feet tall or something. You’re frozen in terror—she certainly was not that tall when you met her. Also, no one eats well enough to be that tall, not here and not wherever this monstrous nun comes from. She stops only a cubit and half from you, looking down and says, “Bandits.” You… back away slowly. You’re not going to be able to pray here and this woman is just terrifying. You only turn your back once you’ve cleared the entrance to the tent by 10 yards or so, and then turn to run into the church, the only place of potential salvation. It’s locked. Is it worth banging on the door? Could anyone be inside? You bang anyway. The rain has gotten heavier and the sky has darkened, though it is yet midday, and lightning now spreads across the sky every few seconds. You look back and see that Mother Superior demoness thing just staring at you as you continue trying to get someone to open the door to the church. Eventually, you hear the massive lock turning. “Oh thank the Good God in Heaven, please let this Christian man in! There is something intolerably unusual afoot!” The door opens and you see a number of very dirty men. They smell terrifically and the odor is immediately recognizable: They are bandits. They pull you into the entrance to the church, beat you, and take your cloak. How did that frownish nun know that you would head directly to the bandits? They kick you, rolling, out of the church, and you hear it locking again. You can hear them laughing loudly. One says, “This fucking cloak is just the worst cloak look at these holes there’s more holes than cloak. This won’t even fetch a pair of oblong horse bones, throw it into the fire.”