THIS bombshell was more than Michael could stomach. He remained mute—though of course silence can be revealing. He looked around at the others in the room, but not one of them was willing to come to his rescue. He knew it would be he—and only he—who could answer that question.
In the end he weakly muttered, as before: “How do you come to that conclusion?” But he knew there was some truth in what Peter was saying. “Do you have behind-thinks, like Petra did?”
“ ‘Behind-thinks’? Ah, I think I get it. Thought-shapes you’re not supposed to catch, yes? No, not in the way that Petra did, at any rate. Though maybe my powers are more developed than some others’ perhaps? No, I think my only advantage is that of having lived a good deal longer than any of you—lived in relative safety, as you can see—of having learned in all the long years how to ration my use of the dangerous thought-shapes to the absolute minimum. As you can also see. My powers may indeed be more developed than any of yours, but used sparingly.
“But continue. I take it you reached Waknuk without further mishap. And were reunited with Rachel here.”
“Yes. We skirted well clear of Waknuk itself—I mean the original farmhouse after which the village was named. For obvious reasons. Rachel’s house is about a mile to the west, and had not yet then fallen under suspicion. When we got there, we found a surprise: well two surprises really. Rachel’s Mum, Amelia, appeared to have a bit of the thought-shape powers herself—though only in a rudimentary fashion, without the ability to transmit or receive herself. But she already knew about us, and she knew about Sophie. It was she who suggested we change her name to Stephanie—so that’s what she’s been called, ever since.”
“Good choice,” said Peter. “Not too different, but enough to put pursuers off the scent hopefully. I take it she approves of the new name…”
“Absolutely. But the second surprise was even more unexpected. Mark, the last of our Waknuk group, turned up out of the blue. Mark, who we thought was dead! Apparently he’d been ill and had lost some of his powers, but he was very much alive.”
“Well, that is a surprise!” put in Peter. Michael waited for him to say more, but that appeared to be all he had to contribute.
“Indeed,” continued Michael. “Once he realised he wasn’t getting through, he decided to contact us in person, as soon as he was fit enough. He arrived a day after us. Some of his thought-shape powers are indeed coming back to him, though it’s a slow process.”
“Where is he now?”
“That’s one of the problems. We don’t quite know. Since it was dangerous even for him to remain in the Waknuk area, he was going to wait a while, then follow us to Kentak. And maybe even as far as Rigo. With Sophie—Stephanie—for company. They seem to have become good friends.”
“ ‘Good friends’?” interposed Peter, with a twinkle in his eye.
“Yes. Just ‘friends’. Anyway, they contacted us before we left Kentak. Since then—nothing.”
“Well, there’s a remote possibility they’ve turned north, just as you did. But unlikely: unless they were facing close pursuit, as you were, they’re more likely to have kept to the road direct to Rigo. We can’t reach that far, in thought-shapes. Someone could make a trip south, see if they can contact Mark on the road. But I don’t hold out much hope…
“And meanwhile: what do we do with you two? Any plans?”
“We want to continue on to Rigo as soon as possible,” put in Rachel. “If you won’t send anyone to accompany us, we’ll go on our own. No argument.”
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“No. I’d strongly advise against that—sorry! Winter is fast approaching and the weather will be bitterly cold and stormy. Even if you make it to Rigo, there’s little chance you’ll find a ship willing to put to sea at this time of year. Whatever you’re planning at Rigo, it’ll just have to wait till the spring. So my advice is: stay with us for a few weeks. We’ll be glad of the company, all of us. You can help with the farm—I didn’t tell you we have a farm, too, did I? Just a couple of fields on the edge of the village, we grow a few vegetables and some wheat and oats there. And stable some of our own horses, as well as a few from others in the village—and yours, of course. Also we keep a few pigs and chickens. And meanwhile I have my book to finish…”
“Your book?”
“Yes. Didn’t Justin mention, I write books? I’m hoping to finish the one I’m working on, in the next few weeks.”
“What’s it called?” asked Michael, who remembered the adventure stories he’d found and enjoyed, in the library at Kentak, during his schooldays.
“Pre-Tribulation Communities in Labrador. A pretty dull sort of title, you’ll admit, even for a history work. By the way, I don’t like the expression ‘Old People’ very much. I’ve been researching quite a lot, and I know plenty of things you won’t have been taught at school, Michael. For example, I’d heard of the Waknuk community even before Petra’s little outburst. There was a town at that place before Tribulation, but it was called Wabush, not Waknuk. No record of any settlement where Kentak now stands, though.”
Michael and Rachel were both interested now. “And Rigo?” asked Rachel.
“The name seems to be derived from a tiny pre-Tribulation settlement called Rigolet, out on the coast—but the present-day Rigo isn’t quite in the same place as Rigolet, which was completely inaccessible except by boat—when the sea wasn’t frozen.”
“Was the sea frozen often, back then? And what sort of people could live here?”
“Yes. And nowhere near as many as Labrador’s population, now. As far as I can work out, there were two distinct tribes in this area. One of them was similar to present-day Labradoreans, but they didn’t farm the land. It was too cold. Instead they grew trees for timber and mined the rocks for minerals. And did some fishing. You’ll be surprised to learn that they spoke two distinct languages. One was like the one we use today: English, but the other was quite different. French, it was called—and it originated in Europe…”
“Europe! We’ve heard about that. One of the places we want to get to.”
“Well, I wish you luck—if Europe still exists. And further north, here in Labrador and the islands further north, there seems to have lived a tribe who could endure the cold far better than we could. They too had their own language, called Inuit. They passed their lives mainly in fishing and hunting the seal. I believe some of their descendants still live in the far north of Labrador. And many towns and villages are still named in the original Inuit language—or something very similar to it.”
A sudden thought occurred to Rachel. “And what about the name of this village? ‘Ragnarok’?” she asked, remembering the name she had copied onto the map.
“Well, that’s one of my puzzles—but perhaps my most interesting discovery. Seems to be an exception. Although it looks like a Labradorean word, all my research seems to indicate that it isn’t. Not an English, not a French, not an Inuit word. Certainly not derived from any local pre-Tribulation settlement—if there ever was one here: evidence says not. One source indicates that it’s simply the word for ‘Tribulation’ in some unknown, forgotten language. Perhaps an early settler, a speaker of that language, made the first homestead here shortly after Tribulation itself, and wanted to remember. But I’m more inclined to believe another legend, which says, it’s the name of one of the gods who actually brought Tribulation down upon us.”
“One of the Gods? But we’ve all been taught that there’s only ever been one God, sometimes referred to as ‘Lord’, sometimes as ‘Jehovah’—and that He doesn’t have any other names…”
“Aha. Yes, that’s what you would have been taught in Waknuk and Kentak, no doubt. No: the pre-Tribulation folks, around the world, had many different gods, all with different names and different characters…”
Both Michael and Rachel found this hard to digest. It went against all the teaching they’d had, and it made them uncomfortable. Peter sensed their uneasiness.
“Some things you learn about won’t be easy. I know that. But let’s leave it for now. I’d like to show you both around the house, the village, and our fields. Then I’ll leave it to you to think about staying for a while. Don’t worry, you’ll be able to continue on your trip to Rigo in time.”