He was trying to seize a strand of this stuff when he woke. In the ancient dawn light, Norsgrey was harnessing up his reindeer. The animal held its head low, puffing into the stale cold. Huddled under their wrappings, the rest of Greybeard’s party bore as much resemblance to human forms as a newly-made grave.
Wrapping one of his blankets round him, Greybeard got up, stretched, and went over to the old man. The draught he had been lying in had stiffened his limbs, making him limp.
“You’re on your way early, Norsgrey.”
“I’m always an early mover. Lita wants to be off.”
“Is she well this morning?”
“Never mind about her. She’s tucked safe under the canopy of the cart. She won’t speak to strangers in the mornings.”
“Are we not going to see her?”
“No.” Over the cart, a tatty brown canvas was stretched, and tied with leather thongs back and front so that nobody could see within. The cockerel crowed from beneath it. Norsgrey had already gathered up his chickens. Greybeard wondered what of their own equipment might not be missing, seeing that the old fellow worked so quietly.
“I’ll open the door for you,” he said. Weary hinges creaked as he pushed the door forward. He stood there scratching his beard, taking in the frost-becalmed scene before him. His company stiffed as cold air entered the barn. Isaac sat up and licked his sharp muzzle. Towin squinted at his defunct watch. The reindeer started forward and dragged the cart into the open.
“I’m cold and stiff; I’ll walk with you a minute or two to see you on your way,” Greybeard said, wrapping his blanket more tightly about him.
“As you will. I’d be glad of your company as long as you don’t talk too much. I like to make an early start when the frying’s not so bad. By midday, it makes such a noise you’d think the hedges were burning.”
“You still find roads you can travel?”
“Ah, lots of roads still open between necessary points. There’s more travelling being done again lately; people are getting restless. Why they can’t sit where they are and die off in peace, I don’t know.”
“This place you were telling us about last night…”
“I never said nothing last night; I was drunk.”
“Mockweagles, you called it. What sort of treatment did they give you when you were there?”
Norsgrey’s little eyes almost disappeared between folds of his fibrous red and mauve skin. He jerked his thumb into the bushes through which they were pushing their way.
“They’re in there waiting for you, my bearded friend. You can hear them twittering and frying, can’t you?
They get up earlier than us and they go to bed later than us, and they’ll get you in the end.”
“But not you?”
“I go and have this injection and these beads every hundred years -”
“So that’s what they give you… You get an injection as well as those things round your neck. You know what those beads are, don’t you? They’re vitamin pills.”
“I’m saying nothing. I don’t know what you’re talking about. Any case, you mortals would do best to hold your tongues. Here’s the road, and I’m off.”
They had come out at a sort of crossroads, where their track crossed a road that still boasted traces of tarmac on its rutted surface. Norsgrey beat at his reindeer with a stick, goading it into a less dilatory walk.
He looked over his shoulder at Greybeard, his misty breath entangled with the bright hairs of his cheeks.
“Tell you one thing – if you get to Swifford Fair, ask for Bunny Jingadangelow.”
“Who’s he?” Greybeard asked.
“I’m telling you, he’s the man you should ask for at Swifford Fair. Remember the name – Bunny Jingadangelow.”
Wrapped in his blanket, Greybeard stood looking at the disappearing cart. He thought the canvas at the back stirred, and that he glimpsed – no, perhaps it was not a hand but his imagination. He stood there until the winding track carried Norsgrey and his conveyance out of sight.
As he turned away, he saw in the bushes close by a broken-necked corpse pinned to a post. It had the cocky, grinning expression achieved only by those successfully long dead. Its skull was patched with flesh like dead leaves. Thin though the corpse’s jacket was, its flesh had worn still thinner, had shrivelled and parted like moisture drying off a stretch of sand, leaving the bars of rib salt beneath.