THE SHERIFF OF HNUT / CH. 17: TRUTH

LENEPOLI'S PARENTS' HOME, 9PM THAT NIGHT.

“Ruath?” Dirak asked “Can we have a private discussion while the ladies are gone?” Ethepoli and Lenepoli were both out, making arrangements for yet another reunited family — Zaheln, Chif her quiet husband, and little Zif — to stay for a few nights. Tanepoli and Chelf would be staying longer, it had been agreed; the doctor had proclaimed Tanepoli unfit to be even sitting sitting up in bed.

“Certainly, Dirak? Is there a problem? Other than this terrible business with the hool, I mean. I can hardly believe it. That going on for hundreds of years!”

“People are good at keeping secrets, sometimes. Even when you've lived somewhere a long time, even when you've grown up somewhere. Have you spoken to Rangar this week?”

“He told me that you'd prayed for him on Restday.”

“I did, yes. Did he say what about?”

“He said he couldn't, but you would, and that was fine by him and the others.”

“I will. But I'm not entirely sure where to start, so I'll sort of spiral in, if that's OK. So, one of the big mysteries of Hnut is solved, the summer crazies is caused by copper, but it's more complicated. Do you know where the village got its name?”

“Not really. I read something once, that the name was here before the village.”

“Almost certainly. Rangar said that when the village was started no one knew where the name came from, then they found out. In many ways, pastor, the summer crazies are a not a chemical problem but a spiritual problem, and also a pest problem. Rangar and the others want to protect people from it, but they can't.”

“I'm not really following you, Dirak.”

“I'm dotting about much less than Rangar was, I assure you, pastor. Let me get closer to the point, at least. I think, that when I tell you the problem, you'll agree that next rest-day, as long as it's not snowing, but maybe even if it is, it would be very good to hold some kind of funeral service up on the high fields, for all the poor little innocentfluffballs . You can just about see the mountain above Tumpf from there, so it's fitting. I'd then like to do two things.

"One is dedicate the high fields as a cemetery, and the second is try to persuade the growlers to go that way.”

“You're not making much sense, Dirak. Why dedicate a field as a cemetery, and why send growlers if we're going to bury people there?”

“The growlers are to keep down the fluffies. There are too many up there, and that's a big part of the problem. No one should be digging up there pastor, not fluffies, not farmers trying to hide the truth from their wives and children, not grave-diggers. You don't dig new graves on top of old ones.”

“The high fields are a graveyard?”

“There was a hool up there, pastor. It must have been abandoned long before the village was settled, maybe even before Polithanapoli's mother rescinded the law requiring yellow winterborns to be sent to a hool. Maybe even because the fluffies were digging up fluffball skeletons. But they're still doing it. The farmers have tried to keep it from their wives and children, try to re-bury them and hide that there was such an evil on their doorstep, but they can't really cope with it themselves. So they dose themselves on copper. Rangar said the copper sulphate for his thlunks is just an excuse, it gives him a perfect reason to have straw covered in copper sulphate they can burn, to forget. That's why I say it's a spiritual cause, they're not turning to God, they're not asking him to take away the nightmares, and instead they're trying to solve it themselves. And sometimes the wind changes direction, and the poison smoke affects people who have no idea what's going on.”

“And so, trying to hide the sins of the past, they hurt more innocents.”

“Yes, pastor, I'm sorry for your own loss to that... well-meaning stupidity.”

“It happened a long time ago, Dirak.”

“But still continues.”

“So this was the Hool on the Utt. Perfectly positioned, the cross-roads, the ford, out of sight but convenient from both town and mining villages.”

“It was a place of evil, but it is not now, pastor, I am sure.”

“No, thanks be to God, but you are right, we must stop the farming of the upper fields. Dirak, do you think it is right that the men do not tell their wives and children?”

“I don't know, pastor. It is a terrible secret that is destroying lives. But I wonder if some people will be happy to stay here knowing that it was there. I do not know if telling the truth will rip the village in half.”

“If we declare it a graveyard, with no burials, then people will think we are enacting some meaningless ritual.”

“Yalinth was not the first winterborn in this village, pastor, and all the crates are numbered. It would be possible to find the crates, to give the poor innocents a proper burial. The other idea I have had is to collapse the mine, and bury all that way. I do not know which is better.”

“So we could bury our own dead, repent as a village that this has ever happened, ask God to wash us clean from the blood-guilt of our ancestors.”

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“We could. The other thing is that there may well be records, for example in the royal archives, or even something within the records I have from the Tumpf mine. We could 'uncover' that sad fact, without mentioning that the men knew of it. I don't know if that is wise or not, but it would allow the men to say 'we thought it might have been so'. Oh, Rangar also says there have been adult skulls dug up by the fluffies too, probably parents. But I do not want the evil to continue to be hidden so well that it is never cleansed, and continues to fester.”

“Yes, and keeping the secret the men have guarded... for centuries?” Ruath asked, and Dirak nodded, “that terrible secret must come out, mustn't it? And that ground must not be farmed. Who thought of such a thing?”

“According to Rangar, it was farmed for a year, then the terrible truth discovered, then it was left fallow, but children went there, and found strange balls.”

“And played with them?”

“How would youngsters know better?”

“We must make the truth known. That is my calling, Dirak.”

“Mine also. I'm sorry for becoming scared. I said the truth must be known to Rangar, but then I became scared myself of telling others, of how they would react. We should cry out to God for his forgiveness, of trying to hide this evil.”

“Yes. We should.”

“I'll call Keldi, if you don't mind? She might even know about it already. Avid reader of historic documents that she is.”

It didn't take long for Keldi to catch on.

“Hoo on Utt was once the site of a hool?”

They agreed. “I'm not at all surprised. There were many hools, Dirak, Ruath, all across the north. It was not just winterborns. It was winterborns, and orphans, and fluffballs captured as part of a blood-feud, and fluffballs born of condemned criminals. All were condemned to a hool as being a 'kinder' death, to die in their sleep, not crushed underfoot, which was the alternative way they treated fluffballs. Our ancestors were godless people, back then; the word of God came first to the greens of the south. Have you ever noticed how some dialects pronounce hole and hill the same? Often the hools were on hilltops. It is not surprising that a hilltop beside a ford would be considered as a good place. But given what I've been reading I'd frankly be surprised if there wasn't a hool near the village.

"And I have been looking at old records. Hnut was not a new village when the rebels came here. There had been a market there for centuries, according to what I've found, not just a market, although officially that's why it became the district village. And I've finally got an answer to a question I've had about why there have never been any royal names starting with Utt.”

“I don't get the connection.” Ruath said.

“Royal names proclaim, generation on generation, the districts over which the family rules, in alphabetic order. Keldithanapoli, queen of Keld, over on the coast, Lanthi queen of Laneth.”

“The district downstream of Reqiq,” Dirak chipped in.

“And I hear you've got Tanepoli up there, princess of the Tan, the old rulers of Taniq, which is upstream of Reqiq, and incidentally, the place that Sithini ought to be naming her firstborn daughter after. It's another thing we stole from them. Anyway, Hnut was once known as Hoo on Utt, which was previously known as Hoo on Yatt, which was previously known as Hoom of Yant, the home of the Yant. The Yant, I assume you can guess, being the ruling family of the Yatt valley, now known as the Utt valley. Yanepoli's god-fearing ancestors invited her god-fearing friends here, but Hnut has been her family's ancestral home for literally millennia, and they were a really powerful family, as you can probably guess from getting the whole Utt valley named after them. I said it was naming the districts? The real tradition is that the royal ought to be husband hunting in the district she's named after too, to avoid in-breeding.”

“Wow! Have you told Sithini that yet?”

“No. It's not a law, or anything. But I do notice that Ranthilakiina found herself a husband from Wendig, which is in Ranet.”

“And Sithini ought to be finding herself a husband from urmm, Sinth?”

“No, that's a town. She ought to be looking for someone from the distinct

of Sittin. Which is to say...”

“The city?”

“Not all of it. It doesn't include Drana, she might be pleased to know, that was a marshland no district claimed, hence the cheap rents once it got drained. It does include the college, and parliament, and some of the guild buildings, but also the villages with 'sit' in their names nearby, Unsit, and Sitwel, and so on. Sorry, I'm going really off topic, aren't I?”

“I'm happy to know I'll never be tempted to call Sithini the queen of Drana, Keldi, but it is really helpful to know this village wasn't named after the hool.”

“Urgh. You were thinking that? That'd be a horrible thought. No, your home is named after being the home of the Yant clan, and you might say I'm a clan member too, Yathanepoli being the first queen after the conquest.”

“Keldi, can you come up on Restday or Skyday and tell this to the village?” Ruath asked, “Dirak is thinking that we should dedicate where the hool was an a cemetery, rather than pretending it wasn't there.”

“And try to persuade some growlers to go that way.” Dirak said.

“Why would they want to?”

“It'd add a loop into their migration path, but there's a lot of fluffies up there.”

“How would you do it?”

“Catch some fluffies, I guess, let them go at roughly the right time and place and see if any growlers notice them running home.”

“Talk to Thuna first, Dirak. You don't want the growlers deciding it makes a good winter home. But yes, certainly I'll come up. I'll bring the family; Lanthis' got a week's study break after the weekend.”

“Are there any noble families in Laneth?” Dirak asked.

“No, there was one complicated inbred extended clan, the Lanthins, who duelled and blood-feuded themselves out of existence about two generations back. If any of them survived I'd forbid Lanthi from marrying one anyway. Far too bellicose. I don't suppose Yanepoli has any younger grandsons who like books, does she?”

“Sithini was getting chased by a grandson who dreams of studying architecture,” Ruath said, “and is getting entirely carried away at the thought that there might be some real city architects coming to work on building the school.”

“The designs Sithini brought back were from a grandson? Well!”

“They were good?” Dirak asked.

“The guild architect looked at them today, and wanted to know what Ranth was bothering him for, if we had an architect already. When he learned it was from someone untrained, and had another look, he said he'd obviously studied and had a lot of talent, the old style it was in wouldn't be popular in the city, but he could see it being appreciated somewhere traditional, and of course it would stand up. He did suggest a few changes, but just things like wider doorways and corridors.”

“You're saying his designs are going to be built?” Ruath asked, “He'll weep.”

“Weep? Why?”

“He was dithering about whether to ask Sithini to give them back. He wanted to impress her, but didn't really want them to actually be shown to anyone. I don't think he thinks they're good enough.”

“Oops. Lanthi needs to apologise then. Sithini showed Lanthi, since Lanthi's doing an architecture option for her ISC, Lanthi said she couldn't see them properly and laid them out in the college dining room, Ranth came in and she showed them to him, Ranth was impressed and showed them to the guild architect.”

“And perhaps when she apologises she could ask him for improved ones?” Dirak asked.

“Good idea.”

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