Eifelheim - Michael Flynn [159]
He feared to press the matter further and left the cottage shortly after with Gregor. Outside, the mason rubbed his injured finger absently. “She is a sweet woman, if a simple one. And she may not be entirely wrong about the demons. It may be as Joachim says—the supreme test. But who is tested? Do we lead them to humility, or do they lead us to vengeance? Knowing men, I fear the second.”
AT BREAKFAST the next morning, the Kratzer opened a flask that he kept in his scrip. The contents proved a murky broth, which the Krenk stirred into his porridge. He screwed the cork back into place, but sat frozen with the flask in hand for some time before returning it to his scrip. The Kratzer pulled a spoonful of porridge to his lips, hesitated, then returned spoon and contents to the bowl and pushed it away. Dietrich and Joachim exchanged puzzled glances, and the Minorite rose from his seat and went to the pot to check the porridge.
“Does it fill, but not nourish?” Dietrich asked in jest, remembering what Gregor had said the day before.
The Kratzer responded with that stillness in which his folk seemed to turn to stone. Always unnerving to Dietrich, the gesture became suddenly clear. Certain animals responded to danger by likewise remaining still. “What is wrong?” Dietrich asked.
The Kratzer stirred his porridge. “I ought not speak of it.” Dietrich waited and Joachim watched with a puzzled frown. He ladled porridge into his own bowl but, although he had to reach past the Kratzer to do so, the Krenk did not move.
“I have heard some among you,” the Kratzer said at last, “speak of a famine that befell many years ago.”
“More than thirty years past,” Dietrich said. “I had been lately received into orders and Joachim was not even born. It rained mightily for two years and the crops drowned in the fields from Paris to the Polish marches. There had been small hungers before, but in those years there was no grain anywhere in Europe.”
The Kratzer rubbed his forearms together forcefully. “I was told that people ate grass,” he said, “to fill their bellies—but the grass did not sustain them.”
Dietrich stopped eating and stared at the Krenk.
“What?” Joachim asked, sitting down.
Dietrich sensed the sidelong glance of the creature, who remained otherwise entranced by some inner vision. “How much longer,” he asked the Kratzer, “will your particular stores last?”
“We have eked them out since the beginning, but drop-by-drop even the mightiest sea must one day empty. Some hold out great ‘hope,’ but their way is hard, perhaps too hard for some of us. It has pleased me,” he added, “that your ‘early time’ came before the end. I should have missed seeing your flowers bloom, and your trees come back to life.”
Dietrich looked on his guest with horror and pity. “Hans and Gottfried may yet repair—”
The Kratzer kratzled his forearms. “That cow comes not off the ice.”
PRAYING A horse from Everard, Dietrich sped to the Krenkish encampment, where he found Hans, Gottfried, and four others in the lower apartment of the strange vessel, clustered around a “circuit” illustration, and making a great chitter of discussion. “Is it true,” Dietrich demanded bursting in, “that your folk will soon starve?”
The Krenken paused in their work and Hans and Gottfried, who wore head-harnesses, turned about to face the door.
“Someone has told you,” Hans said.
“‘Jaws have hinges,’” Gottfried commented.
“But is it true?” insisted Dietrich.
“It has truth,” Hans said. “There are certain … materials—acids is your alchemic word—which are essential for life. Perhaps four score of these acids befall in nature—and we Krenken need one-and-twenty of them to live. Our bodies produce naturally nine, so we must from our food and drink obtain the others. That food which you have shared with us holds eleven of those twelve.