Water's Edge

Chapter XXVI

They Who Worship the Brimflód

Neo-Saxony was a pipedream. A sewage pipe, but still a pipedream. It preyed upon the defenceless and the lost, and I hated it. Those who had been classed as CHAVs, the destitute, working class detritus on the shores of an economically collapsed England were swept up in the promise of a world without civilisation. What better a place could be, to not have a world where you could lose jobs? It wasn't your laziness, nor was it the state failing you, it was that civilisation itself was the problem. And somehow, without fail, it was always packaged up with old fascist emblems, and the truth that, yes, the brown people were stealing your jobs.

I felt for them. I really did. When your third kid has died from poverty, and Universal Credit won't be paid for another four months, what options do you have. And here comes a bone fide wizard of the Humber, who can take all those trials away. Return to the soil of the land, and find peace.

I both loathed and pitied them, and I hated myself for it.

The road led to a make-shift clearing of yurts of the Saxon style. Everything nearly felt like a historical re-enactment, but the anachronisms were stark. I had to constantly remind myself this was a new movement. The Saxon affectations were the mortar, but the bricks were made from harvested flotsam and jetsam from civilisation itself. Part Amish settlement, part anarchist commune. They took from civilisation what benefitted them, and destroyed the rest, filling in the gaps with incorrect historical accounts of 'the true England', which they called Angelcynn.

I sat on a low log they directed me to, casting the smoke from my mouth as I waited. It was the most established settlement I had seen; usually tribes would sprout up temporarily, loitering and vandalising, before camping out for a bit until the next round of work came in. But these were different. They had fully embraced the ideas of their blogging King. Whoever Godwine Seamark was, he was a formidable leader of his community.

Out from one of the yurts came a man wearing found bits of metal furnished into jewellery and ceremonial armour. He wore a pair of dark jeans, his feet bare to feel the mud. Tall, bald, in his late fifties. I wouldn't have wanted to get into a pub brawl with the man.

"Gódlíf nífara." He approached me and held out his hand, "I am Galdorgalere Godwine Seamark, he who guides The Hælsings. Who are you?" He shook my hand, brusquely.

"Thought you guys reject civilisation." I offered him a cigarette and he obliged me, "How do you read your Kings blog?"

"Oh," He reached into his pocket and retrieved an old military issue lighter, "We all have to make sacrifices." He lit our cigarettes and I followed him back towards his larger yurt, watching his ceremonial wares jangle on his belt and body, "I assume you are here because of what happened to that poor boy. It's awful. We found another."

"Another?"

A woman pulled back the drapes of the yurt – I realised only now they were made from old curtains sewn together – and a young girl came out, looking quite sorry with herself, but otherwise unharmed, "We found her playing by the Humber. It's too dangerous." He said to her, "Can you take her back? I'll try and help however I can in return."

I looked to the girl, "Who are you? Are you alright?"

"Yeah... I'm Katie."

Godwine shook his head at her, worried for her, "They always play by the dam. It's dangerous. But, kids will do such. I used to play by the quarries when I was young."

"Why don't you take her back yourself?"

Godwine beckoned us into the tent. It was well furnished with pillows and blankets, with an oil lamp for light and warmth, "Can you imagine. They already distrust us, wouldn't be good to bring a child with us into town."

"They think..." I paused and looked to Katie, "Would you be alright to give us a moment?" She'd been with these people for a while, I could leave her alone a while longer. The woman took Katie outside, and I could hear other kids coming to join her to play, "They think you are responsible for all those drowned people?"

Godwine frowned, "All?" He opened a chest beside him, retrieving cheesecloth wrapped around a lump of cheddar and some bread, "You must forgive me, I don't follow the news." He smiled lightly, hearing the joke of the matter, "We only know of the boy."

"There were others." I didn't want to give everything to him.

Godwine shook his head mournfully, "It's dangerous out there. We want to work with Wada, King of the Sea, but we must be cautious. Even us who worship the brimflód know to give it respect. It swallows us whole, as is Wada's way."

"You know the path Hector took then?" I said, watching him chew considerately on the cheese.

"Oh yes. We could show you, but we are trying not to show ourselves around there. Reputations." He seemed truly sad about this, "You must understand, we check those routes for children playing, like Katie Naughton here. But we move on swiftly, or people will start thinking we throw them into the sea. We offer the sea sacrifices, but not like that." He was truly shaken by the idea of Hector falling into the waves, taken by Wada, who I presumed to be their sea god.

"Who found Katie? Who often checks those routes?"

"I do." He said emphatically, "With some of my closest cempan and cempestran." He paused and seemed apologetic, "I am sorry, all these terms. We have grown accustomed to speaking the true language of Angelcynn, England." He corrected himself again, courteously.

"Where were you the night Hector vanished?" I gave him the date, and some details of the other bodies across the months, the full timeframe, but nothing concrete he could use as a lie. I wanted to trust him though; prejudice makes a detective weak.

"I must have come back from a patrol of those embankments. I do remember Benny, was it?" I nodded, "The environmentalists, good people, but stopping good work."

This surprised me. The dam was distinctly a brutalist piece of architecture, firmly opposed to the ideas of worshipping the sea and the old ways of Saxony, surely? And yet it appeared Godwine approved of its construction. I told him I was surprised, and we shared another cigarette each, him pocketing the cheesecloth. I noticed as he leant forward, he had tattoos of runes across his back, arching above The Black Sun. There it was. Ex-military man turns to pagan fascism. Saxons were always like this; no wonder this tribe flourished: military gumption.

"We approve of the dam. I know it seems backwards, and I am sure our Kunungaz Æðelræd Blátǫnn would oppose of some of my methods—but we worship Wada, you see. The waves, the Estuary, which took Faxfleet and on... this deserves respect. But it cannot keep taking our children. The dam will help. We make our sacrifices to Wada in an understanding that we may build the dam."

"What kind of sacrifices?"

"I can show you?" I agreed, and followed him out of the tent, "I never got your name?"

"P.I. Fields."

"Wæl agénarn Detective Fields, duguð waðum sîn costêow êow."