The Sexton house, ~1pm Sunday May 5th, 1771


All was calm in the carpenter's house whilst the collected family of Sextons, Bees and Yendales ate pickings of toast and dripping at the kitchen table, waiting for the lamb leg to roast and turnip to boil. Andrew and Maggie had told of their tracking adventures whilst the tokens were made, though unfortunately they'd missed the opportunity to tell the Doctor and Vicar of them as the gentlemen had tarried little between some other buisness and heading off for the Hall. Goodie Westcott had listened with concern and confusion and pledged to drop in after some duty was attended to with a mysteriously lamed horse.
"So-o-o," Lucy drawled at length, having demolished her share and wiggling impatiently in her chair. "Sayin' you caught this thing as was pretendin' to be Tom, what then would you do with it?"

"D'we...think it ate Polly?" Robin asked a slice of toast, then started slightly on realising he'd said that aloud, flushed and backed up on himself: "I suppose it wouldn't eat, if it's trees, nor sleep'n such, 'less it wanted to...what does it want with looking like folks, though?"

Maggie sets down her bread and nudges her little brother, conspiracy-like, "S'posin' ye wanted t'spy in yer enemy's camp, Rob, an' stir up trouble belike. Wouldn't ye want a guise t'let ye blend in with 'em an' never be suspected?"
This message was last edited by the player at 19:46, Mon 19 Sept 2022.

Thomas was silent as he was told of the tracking and he did not add anything to the observations of Lucy and Robin. "It seems the mysteries from the wood are getting more dangerous to us in the village the longer it goes on and it seems we are no closer to ending them then when we started." He rubbed his forehead with his hand and sat back in his chair.



-

Andrew silently understood that he would have to venture into the woods soon, in search of game for the table. He was thankful that Master Fox had met his inadvertent admission of hunting on his lands with bemusement. Even so, a trek into the forest now filled him with dread for what he might stumble across there, aside from game.

The talk at the table unsettled him further, though he did his best to keep his emotions hidden. ”It is discouraging,” he agreed quietly, ”For now, it seems that wisdom would dictate that we remain watchful, vigilant for anything unusual or unexpected. And that we talk with one another frequently of what we know, so that all in the village are aware. Mistrust among us will only cause further harm.”

Robin frowned in thought at his sister's words. "Are we enemies? But Herself Up There's already got hares, and they're down in the village now...you can fit hares about anywhere, seein' as they might hide behind a bucket or low in some grass or jump up to somewheres you wouldn't expect a natural hare to be, where you wouldn't look for it...an' they don't have to get the voice right, pretenden."

"It might not be us that's to be fooled, though," Lucy said, leaning forwards a bit, "-think if it went to some other village. Hares can't carry folk off, nor change their face to another person's when the sherriff's men have a description of the one."

"Oh, that...could be true."

"If that's what She means to do," Widow Sexton agreed, blanching ground elder. "Vigilance is fair, of course, but if we're to get ahead of Her we need some manner of idea what She wants, and why. So...we think women, maybe, or if that's superstition...no, she can't just want meat, not if she can make a creature to go about and infect others with that mazy green, have them serve themselves up..."

Lucy gave Tom a wide-eyed look. "Would...would we know if we had it? We'd smell bad, right? Mister Sexton, do you think the animals knew they were mazed so? You were right close to the stag, they said." She flinched at the thought of where she and Robin had been at the time, or rather, the reason they'd wound up hiding in the workshop, shutting her eyes tight rather than looking over where the chopped rabbit had gone.

”I honestly cannot say,” Andrew answered gently, ”It seemed to me that the stag was fearful and lost. And it attacked me because it was anxious. But up close, it was plain that the animal was ill. That green fluid we saw on some of the other creatures leaked from its eye. But I don’t know if it understood that it was sick. People are different, however. We might possess awareness and understanding that animals might not.”

He sighed. Shaking his head, he said, ”I’m afraid that I don’t have any sense at all about what she might want, Mother. If she is seeking out women for her service…I suppose it would be best to try to guard the women of Scorch Norton against her influence. But I think we’d need to ask the Vicar about how to best go about that. Or perhaps Goodie Westcott.”

Her son's words brought a warm look of amusement to the Widow Sexton's features, one that swiftly eased into a slightly frightening mischief. She turned and grinned at the table, the lines of frequent smiling in her face making their appearance like the familiar grain of a sound beam. "Oh, well, since Herself can go'n turn our heads so much neater than a sergeant's drum and She can't be tied down all to one man, I should think the menfolk of the village ought to be moved to try and outdo her offers."

"Lucy, wouldn't you like a man to bake bread for ye, to win your favour? -an' one to sweep out the house, an' one to plump up your pillows and beat the coverlet, but bring you good things besides? Or how about it, Maggie, we run oft an' become whatever She makes of those that gave birth - does, maybe."

Lucy flushed, embarrassed and not at all certain what to make of this rogue's paradise. Widow Sexton eased off and let her gaze go distant, leaning back against the counter. "Your Dad would fight a stag for me," she told Andrew, or the edge of the low ceiling. "He actually fought Bill Hartman once, y'know that? I'd already as much as picked him for my best boy, but they 'ad to have it that I'd be more impressed by whoever came out standing if they locked horns..."

She shook her head. "I was though," she added, wistful, then refocused.

"No, for the most part, men aren't keepin' our wild nature down when we marry 'em: mostly we've made a choice to help carry their best nature up," she concluded, scrunching the cloth over the spoon in her apron and releasing it. "We can't be going about in pairs forever, though...and mind, until you three - Tom: you, the Young Squire and Samuel - went in, She wouldn't give men back as had been to the middle there."

"So. How it was was that She was up there, we was down here, and we let each other be. Then someone took Polly to Her, She invaded the place with pot animals, you lads went in, you came out, and she called the beasts off but sent this mimic-thing...what does that get Her, or what changed?"

Maggie chuckles at the thought of Jack Hurley crashing around in Kate's kitchen, not that he'd ever stoop to women's work. Yet she could put in a full day laboring in the fields beside any man in the village. Well, such was the way of the world.

"Aye, consultin' with Mercy an' with th' parson is as well, I reckon. Somethin' has upset order around here an' that's certain. Must be some way to set it aright again."