Water's Edge

Chapter XXVII

More Than One Way To Skin a Cat

I was nervous. We had been walking for too long. And although Godwine had opened up on the journey, it did not alleviate my fears. We were trudging away from their settlement, towards the cooling towers, and the fresh-stench of brackish water leading into the Humber. I realised they were quite some distance from the dam itself, but which way did the water flow?

Godwine explained he had once been a lieutenant stationed on the Falklands during the French Invasion, his birth name Sam Godwin. After learning on the island about folk-rights, an Anglo form of law, before the formalisation from England, from the Kelpers who helped defend the island, he had researched more thoroughly into the realm of the England-before-England: Angelcynn. He even said he regretted his tattoos, but hoped one day they would reclaim their original intentions, much as the Swastika could be reclaimed by the Hindus.

"I respect Æðelræd, however. Don't get me wrong. We're all angry. Angelcynn has lost its soul."

I kept my hand on my belt, feeling the weight of the Glock against my thigh. I was too far from the Zee for comfort, and the tents had disappeared over the horizon. My legs ached from trudging through the mud, industrial concrete and smells washing over the breezes.

We approached the stream of Hedon, expanded by the floodwaters. A fleet of Greater Scaups watched us arrive and quacked merrily. At the shore line stood two boys, and the ribbons hanging off any available iron pole or railing indicated this must be a sacrificial spot for these people.

The boys, no more than twelve, younger than Hector even, held aloft, over the water, a cat, a black tabby with a white splodge on the tail as if dipped in Tippex. They held it by the scruff, the cat oblivious to the boys, dangling and watching the ducks hungrily. Godwine paused and I looked between him and the boys. One reached behind him, under the waistline, under his t-shirt, and retrieved a metal shiv. The cat wriggled in their grip, ready to disembowel the poor thing, an offering to the water. Godwine hadn't been lying when I said sacrifice—

My thought was cut short. Godwine ran forward, his metallic embellishments jangling, yelling, "Nese! Forniman hearra dûne!" The boy dropped the shiv and looked terrified. The other dropped the cat, who stayed at the kids feet licking itself after a perfect landing, "We âðollan nâ blôtan ðone as Nîetenlic. Sê Eorðe canne ne symbel uppe duguð Eorðe." Godwine picked up the cat which scrambled a bit in his arms, turning back to me, "Niman!" He said and the boys ran back to camp, "I am so sorry Detective."

"Are we adding animal cruelty to your crimes?"

"Please," He pleaded a little, and the cat escaped his arms and ran after the boys, "Those boys, they are... not themselves. They read what that want to read."

"Sure." I said, taking out a cigarette. I didn't offer one this time, and Godwine noticed, "You follow the tenets of a man that blogs from his bedroom about how to eat pet cats to save the tribe, and you're surprised?"

Godwine chilled, stood taller. The ducks flew away, "I said, I respect the message, not always the medium." He was a smart man for someone who spoke a dead language through Google Translate, "Our Kunungaz, he blogs. Sure. And it's dire sometimes. He is a sad, elderly man. But I firmly believe in this return to the soil, in the belief of Wada. I saw what happens when you don't believe in the land enough, Detective." He approached, and his military bulk showed, "We do not sacrifice animals, whatever Kunungaz says. Those boys read what they find cool. I read what I find beneficial." He turned me around by the shoulder, and I knew he had clocked me holding my gun a little tighter, "The state abandoned them. Their own people abandoned them. If they beg they are left to freeze on the streets. If they loiter, the police teach them a lesson at the end of a truncheon. I give them a home. And all I ask is that they follow the rules of Kunungaz that I deem beneficial to this home, and to their futures."

I walked away from their sacrificial spot, thinking about Katie left with these people, living as if the Iron Age had never ended, anachronistically enjoying BBC Radio 4 in a yurt by the Humber Estuary, stealing the flag of a Swedish Province, knowing nothing of history but putting all solace into it.

"What do you expect me to do?" I said, matter-of-factly.

"Don't rile the settled," He means those still living in the present, "They hate us enough as it is. I just want to give these boys a home."

"Who were they?"

"Who knows... they come out of the cities, the flooded towns. They've lost jobs. The state won't provide."

"And then they kill their pet cats?"

Godwine paused and let asilence fall so his words held sincerity, and purpose, "I just want to keep thepeople safe. Wada wants to reclaim all of this land, flood it all. I can't havethe people of the land remove us, or we'll all die." I could tell he believedit, which worried me more than if he hadn't.