Barnaby the Wanderer

Chapter 31: The World as Holy Mill

Two days of cautious travel brought the Benefactors to a winding valley empty of all voices but their own. No birds crossed the sky, nor sang from the gnarled trees. No animals eyed their passing from brush or burrow. The silence weighed heavy, declaring them trespassers in the hall of a grand but empty house, closed and barred to outsiders.

At times the path wandered beneath some giant face carved into a cliffside. Many of these monuments showed beings whose features implied stern and noble thoughts. Other times... the stone visage twisted in some expression of divine madness, staring down upon the travelers with no emotion mortal minds could name. Eyes wide, great mouths gaping to shout revelations to shatter stones and souls.

Barnaby shivered in the gaze of these effigies, keeping eyes down. While Friar Cedric glared up at them, almost in challenge.

At times the path wound past old shrines. Crumbling steps leading to toppled pillars, faceless statues wound about with vine. These places did not make picturesque ruins. They seemed warnings set to remind all that here no saint ruled, no king reigned, no law held. Only wind and ice, sun and storm, stone and empty sky held mastery.

Barnaby cast an awed glance up to a carven profile. Great as the mill house, female seeming, rich lips pursed in thought. For all her fixed gaze, the smooth stone eyes gave an impression of blindness.

Emboldened, Barnaby stared openly, feeling defiant. The great face was stone, and only stone. This ancient saint could not see him, would not hear him. Whether he shouted to her in praise, prayer or insult.

Barnaby pondered Cedric's view that the saints were only forces of nature to which bards and millers added face, name and testament.

If wind and storm, birth and death, sun and moon were not wise beings to honor and beseech... what then? All the grand House of Saints became a thing of weights, pulleys and wheels, exact as his mill.

Barnaby walked on, turning this idea about in his head. Supposing he were to name the vanes of his father's mill? Paint faces upon the greater and lesser wheels and cogs? Gave holy titles to the grinding stones? And declare the threshed grain an offering, the returned flour a blessing... He'd have to wear holy robes while working. And a great grand sacred hat.

The picture made him laugh aloud. Which laugh echoed through the valley, up to the blind stone face and down again.

The same mood turning Barnaby's thoughts solemn, had fallen over all the Benefactors. When he laughed now, it made them jump as if he'd sounded a dragon-engine whistle.

"You gone off your head?" asked Bodkin, annoyed.

"Sorry. Thinking about hats."

Evening came early, the sun sinking behind mountains same as into storm cloud. A chill wind now wended through the quiet valley, muttering of trespass and its consequences. The benefactors took shelter in a hollow hidden from wind and the mad gaze of mountain faces alike. Yet still they felt the brooding stillness of the valley; warning they camped in a place not meant for mortals to wander.

When the fire was built and supper passed round, the Society of St. Benefact sat quiet. Their thoughts turned inwards, staring into the embers like six millers before a kitchen hearth.

In the morning, the society awoke to feathers of white drifting down from a sky gone the gray blue of a frost giant's frown. The flakes hissed as they fell into the campfire embers.

"What happened to autumn before winter?" grumbled Barnaby, cocooning himself into his blanket, tight as cold caterpillar into warm silk.

Val stood weary with keeping the night watch. She looked down upon the would-be butterfly Barnaby, and with no lover's gaze.