good omens

thursday

There was a newcomer in the village.
New people were always a source of interest and speculation among the Them, [It didn't matter what the four had called their gang over the years, the frequent name changes usually being prompted by whatever Adam had happened to have read or viewed the previous day (the Adam Young Squad; Adam and Co.; The Hole-in-the-Chalk Gang; The Really Well-Known Four; The Legion of Really Super-Heroes; The Quarry Gang; The Secret Four; The Justice Society of Tadfield; The Galaxatrons; The Four Just Persons; The Rebels). Everyone else always referred to them darkly as Them, and eventually they did too.] but this time Pepper had impressive news.
"She's moved into Jasmine Cottage and she's a witch," she said. "I know, because Mrs. Henderson does the cleaning and she told my mother she gets a witches' newspaper. She gets loads of ordinary newspapers, too, but she gets this special witches' one."
"My father says there's no such thing as witches," said Wensleydale, who had fair, wavy hair, and peered seriously out at life through thick black-rimmed spectacles. It was widely believed that he had once been christened Jeremy, but no one ever used the name, not even his parents, who called him Youngster. They did this in the subconscious hope that he might take the hint; Wensleydale gave the impression of having been born with a mental age of forty-seven.
"Don't see why not," said Brian, who had a wide, cheerful face, under an apparently permanent layer of grime. "I don't see why witches shouldn't have their own newspaper. With stories about all the latest spells and that. My father gets Anglers' Mail, and I bet there's more witches than anglers."
"It's called Psychic News," volunteered Pepper.
"That's not witches," said Wensleydale. "My aunt has that. That's just spoon-bending and fortune-telling and people thinking they were Queen Elizabeth the First in another life. There's no witches any more, actually. People invented medicines and that and told 'em they didn't need 'em any more and started burning 'em."
"It could have pictures of frogs and things," said Brian, who was reluctant to let a good idea go to waste. "An'-an' road tests of broomsticks. And a cats' column."
"Anyway, your aunt could be a witch," said Pepper. "In secret. She could be your aunt all day and go witching at night."
"Not my aunt," said Wensleydale darkly.
"An' recipes," said Brian. "New uses for leftover toad." "Oh, shut up," said Pepper.
Brian snorted. If it had been Wensley who had said that, there'd have been a half-hearted scuffle, as between friends. But the other Them had long ago learned that Pepper did not consider herself bound by the informal conventions of brotherly scuffles. She could kick and bite with astonishing physiological accuracy for a girl of eleven. Besides, at eleven years old the Them were beginning to be bothered by the dim conception that laying hands on good ole Pep moved things into blood-thumping categories they weren't entirely at home with yet, besides earning you a snake-fast blow that would have floored the Karate Kid.
But she was good to have in your gang. They remembered with pride the time when Greasy Johnson and his gang had taunted them for playing with a girl. Pepper had erupted with a fury that had caused Greasy's mother to come round that evening and complain.
[Greasy Johnson was a sad and oversized child. There's one in every school; not exactly fat, but simply huge and wearing almost the same size clothes as his father. Paper tore under his tremendous fingers, pens shattered in his grip. Children whom he tried to play with in quiet, friendly games ended up getting under his huge feet, and Greasy Johnson had become a bully almost in self-defense. After all, it was better to be called a bully, which at least implied some sort of control and desire, than to be called a big clumsy oaf. He was the despair of the sports master, because if Greasy Johnson had taken the slightest interest in sport, then the school could have been champions. But Greasy Johnson had never found a sport that suited him. He was instead secretly devoted to his collection of tropical fish, which won him prizes. Greasy Johnson was the same age as Adam Young, to within a few hours, and his parents had never told him he was adopted. See? You were right about the babies.]
Pepper looked upon him, a giant male, as a natural enemy.
She herself had short red hair and a face which was not so much freckled as one big freckle with occasional areas of skin.
Pepper's given first names were Pippin Galadriel Moonchild. She had been given them in a naming ceremony in a muddy valley field that contained three sick sheep and a number of leaky polythene teepees. Her mother had chosen the Welsh valley of Pant-y-Gyrdl as the ideal site to Return to Nature. (Six months later, sick of the rain, the mosquitoes, the men, the tent-trampling sheep who ate first the whole commune's marijuana crop and then its antique minibus, and by now beginning to glimpse why almost the entire drive of human history has been an attempt to get as far away from Nature as possible, Pepper's mother returned to Pepper's surprised grandparents in Tadfield, bought a bra, and enrolled in a sociology course with a deep sigh of relief.)
There are only two ways a child can go with a name like Pippin Galadriel Moonchild, and Pepper had chosen the other one: the three male Them had learned this on their first day of school, in the playground, at the age of four.
They had asked her her name, and, all innocent, she had told them.
Subsequently a bucket of water had been needed to separate Pippin Galadriel Moonchild's teeth from Adam's shoe. Wensleydale's first pair of spectacles had been broken, and Brian's sweater needed five stitches.
The Them were together from then on, and Pepper was Pepper forever, except to her mother, and (when they were feeling especially courageous, and the Them were almost out of earshot) Greasy Johnson and the Johnsonites, the village's only other gang.
Adam drummed his heels on the edge of the milk crate that was doing the office of a seat, listening to this bickering with the relaxed air of a king listening to the idle chatter of his courtiers.
He chewed lazily on a straw. It was a Thursday morning. The holidays stretched ahead, endless and unsullied. They needed filling up.
He let the conversation float around him like the buzzing of grasshoppers or, more precisely, like a prospector watching the churning gravel for a glint of useful gold.
"In our Sunday paper it said there was thousands of witches in the country," said Brian. "Worshiping Nature and eating health food an' that. So I don't see why we shouldn't have one round here. They were floodin' the country with a Wave of Mindless Evil, it said."
"What, by worshipin' Nature and eatin' health food?" said Wensleydale.
"That's what it said."
The Them gave this due consideration. They had once-at Adam's instigation-tried a health food diet for a whole afternoon. Their verdict was that you could live very well on healthy food provided you had a big cooked lunch beforehand.
Brian leaned forward conspiratorially.
"And it said they dance round with no clothes on," he added. "They go up on hills and Stonehenge and stuff, and dance with no clothes on."
This time the consideration was more thoughtful. The Them had reached that position where, as it were, the roller coaster of Life had almost completed the long haul to the top of the first big humpback of puberty so that they could just look down into the precipitous ride ahead, full of mystery, terror, and exciting curves.
"Huh," said Pepper.
"Not my aunt," said Wensleydale, breaking the spell. "Definitely not my aunt. She just keeps trying to talk to my uncle."
"Your uncle's dead," said Pepper.
"She says he still moves a glass about," said Wensleydale defensively. "My father says it was moving glasses about the whole time that made him dead in the first place. Don't know why she wants to talk to him," he added, "they never talked much when he was alive."
"That's necromancy, that is," said Brian. "It's in the Bible. She ought to stop it. God's dead against necromancy. And witches. You can go to Hell for it."
There was a lazy shifting of position on the milk crate throne. Adam was going to speak.
The Them fell silent. Adam was always worth listening to. Deep in their hearts, the Them knew that they weren't a gang of four. They were a gang of three, which belonged to Adam. But if you wanted excitement, and interest, and crowded days, then every Them would prize a lowly position in Adam's gang above leadership of any other gang anywhere.
"Don't see why everyone's so down on witches," Adam said.
The Them glanced at one another. This sounded promising.
"Well, they blight crops," said Pepper. "And sink ships. And tell you if you're going to be king and stuff. And brew up stuff with herbs."
"My mother uses herbs," said Adam. "So does yours."
"Oh, those are all right," said Brian, determined not to lose his position as occult expert. "I expect God said it was all right to use mint and sage and so on. Stands to reason there's nothing wrong with mint and sage."
"And they can make you be ill just by looking at you," said Pepper. "It's called the Evil Eye. They give you a look, and then you get ill and no one knows why. And they make a model of you and stick it full of pins and you get ill where all the pins are," she added cheerfully.
"That sort of thing doesn't happen any more," reiterated Wensleydale, the rational thinking person. "'Cos we invented Science and all the vicars set fire to the witches for their own good. It was called the Spanish Inquisition."
"Then I reckon we should find out if her at Jasmine Cottage is a witch and if she is we should tell Mr. Pickersgill," said Brian. Mr. Pickersgill was the vicar. Currently he was in dispute with the Them over subjects ranging from climbing the yew tree in the churchyard to ringing the bells and running away.
"I don't reckon it's allowed, going round setting fire to people," said Adam. "Otherwise peopled be doin' it all the time."
"It's all right if you're religious," said Brian reassuringly. "And it stops the witches from goin' to Hell, so I expect they'd be quite grateful if they understood it properly."
"Can't see Picky setting fire to anyone," said Pepper.
"Oh, I dunno," said Brian, meaningfully.
"Not actually setting them on actual fire," sniffed Pepper. "He's more likely to tell their parents, and leave it up to them if anyone's goin' to be set on fire or not."
The Them shook their heads in disgust at the current low standards of ecclesiastical responsibility. Then the other three looked expectantly at Adam.
They always looked expectantly at Adam. He was the one that had the ideas.
"P'raps we ought to do it ourselves," he said. "Someone ought to be doing something if there's all these witches about. It's-it's like that Neighborhood Watch scheme."
"Neighborhood Witch," said Pepper.
"No," said Adam coldly.
"But we can't be the Spanish Inquisition," said Wensleydale. "We're not Spanish."
"I bet you don't have to be Spanish to be the Spanish Inquisition," said Adam. "I bet it's like Scottish eggs or American hamburgers. It just has to look Spanish. We've just got to make it look Spanish. Then everyone would know it's the Spanish Inquisition."
There was silence.
It was broken by the crackling of one of the empty crisp packets that accumulated wherever Brian was sitting. They looked at him.
"I've got a bullfight poster with my name on it," said Brian, slowly.