At first light, me and Dad got the shovels and buckets out of the shed and walked down to the feeding post to clean up the remains.
Bones were scattered around the post. The grass was patchy and sparse and the earth was stained red. Chunks of meat glistened in the pale morning light, steaming in the cold air. The stench was thick and gamey and made me want to gag. Dad looked down at the remains. “This is still warm. It didn’t eat straight away.” “Is that bad?” He didn’t reply. He poked at the mess with his shovel, turning it over like the ashes of a bonfire. I caught a glimpse of a thigh bone in amongst a coil of innards. “It’s not eating as much,” he said. He sounded worried. I thought back to last night, to the sounds that carried across the field to the farmhouse, the guttural, snorting noises as it fed. It had sounded as if it had eaten plenty. “Maybe it wasn’t hungry,” I said. “It’s always hungry.” He looked out past the feeding post to the woods that sat beyond our field. The morning light couldn’t get through the thick branches and all I could see between the tree trunks were black shadows. “Is something wrong with it?” I said. Dad stared into the woods for a moment longer, and for a second, I thought he hadn’t heard, but then he turned back to me. The worry on his face disappeared, and he smiled. “It’s probably nothing,” he said. He ruffled my hair. “Come on, let’s get this cleaned up. You’ll be late for school.” We shovelled the remains into the buckets and hosed down the feeding post and the surrounding ground as best we could. The post had sat at the bottom of our field for as long as I could remember. It was three foot high, as thick as a man’s leg, with a heavy metal ring bolted to the top. Its edges had been worn smooth by age and the weather. Its surface was covered in scratches – tiny marks from fingernails and deeper gouges from teeth. There was a short length of rope attached to the metal ring. It was frayed and shredded and wet with blood and drool. I pulled it free and tossed it into one of the buckets. We carried everything back up to the farm. We gave what it had left to the pigs. I washed and got ready for school. I didn’t have breakfast. I wasn’t hungry. I never was, the morning after an offering. .. School was a short walk across the fields and down the narrow lane that wound its way through the village. Along with the school, there was a shop and a church. It was everything we needed. Only other kids from the village went to the school. I was in my final year. I’d be sixteen next year and it was expected that I start work properly to support the village. It wasn’t like other schools, where kids had to stay until they were eighteen. Our village wasn’t like others. Mrs Trent taught the final year. She was in her sixties and, like everyone else, had lived in the village all of her life. Like everyone else, she could trace her family history back to the start. History is important to us. My dad says we have to preserve the old ways. Before the day’s lessons began, Mrs Trent led us all in prayer. We joined hands and closed our eyes, reciting the words we all knew by heart, giving thanks to the power that watched over us. At the end of the prayer, we whispered the declaration and opened our eyes. Mrs Trent was looking straight at me. She smiled and gave me the smallest of nods, as if to say thank you. .. Everyone in the village knows what my family do. My friends at school ask me questions about it sometimes, even though they know they’ll get into trouble with Mrs Trent if she hears. They’re curious about it, and maybe a little scared. There’s not really a name for what we do. Dad likes to call us stewards of the land. We’ve been doing it for years. It’s something that’s passed down from father to son. My granddad did it before my dad, and my great granddad before that, and so on. It’s in our blood. It’s who we are. “It’s about doing what’s right,” Dad told me once. “For the village, for your neighbours. We look after each other. Not like out there.” Dad took me out there, once, to one of the cities, so I would know what it was like. So I would understand just how important it was to be a steward. So I would know just what we were protecting our way of life from. I hated it. Everything was just... too much. Too much noise. Too much dirt, too many choking, poisonous smells. Too many hard faces. It felt like everyone was rushing, jostling, crashing together and then bouncing apart again. “This is what they’re like,” Dad said. “This is what’s coming for us. This is what we guard our way of life against. We don’t choose to do it. We have to do it. Do you understand what I’m saying, son?” I understood. We do what we do so we won’t be like them. .. I don’t know what it is, or how its power works, not exactly. All I know is that it lives in the woods, and that it’s old, older than the village itself, as old as the land and fields and the hills. And that it needs to be fed. In return, it protects us. Watches over us. Helps us prosper, so we don’t need anything from out there. We take care of it, and it takes care of us. We need each other. My family has made sure it’s fed for as long as anyone can remember. Dad says it’s because we’re connected to it. There’s something in our bloodline. We share a bond that can never be broken. “It’s like us and our sheepdogs,” he said. I always wonder which of us is the dog and which is the master. We feed it once every twenty nine days. We’re careful. We only take the kind of people that Dad says won’t be missed. “They won’t be missed because out there, no one cares,” he told me. “No one belongs. They’re disconnected and alone.” I’d never heard anything so sad. The first time I went with Dad to get one, I cried afterwards. I kept asking him if there was something else we could do instead, like giving it goats or sheep. He told me that animals wouldn’t work. It had to be a human. “It has to be a worthwhile offering,” he said. I couldn’t stop crying. He gave me a hug and told me it was all right to feel that way. “That’s part of being a steward. Doing difficult things, things that hurt, for the greater good.” .. We picked up the next offering on one of the A roads that run North to South, several miles away from the village. He was a hitchhiker. We never have any trouble picking them up. When they see me, it puts them at ease. Especially the women. I offered him a drink from my flask. It had sweet tea inside. The sugar masks the taste of the herbs Mum collects from the edge of the woods at the bottom of our field. He was asleep before he’d finished the first cup. We drove back to the farm, stripped him and tied him to the feeding post. Dad cupped his hands to his mouth and gave out the call. Something from the woods called back. We walked back up to the house. That night, I went to bed with my headphones on, listening to music. I didn’t want to hear it feed this time. .. The next day, at first light, we collected our things and went down to clean up. As the feeding post came into view, we stopped. Dad dropped his shovel. The hitchhiker was still alive. He was moaning to himself. I couldn’t make out the words. He seemed like he was in shock. His thigh and belly had been gnawed and gaped open with red, wet wounds. He looked over at us but didn’t seem to see us, his eyes blank and empty. Dad looked worried. Worried, and a little sad, as if he was somehow expecting this. As if he knew that this day would come. He put his hands to his face and blew out a long, shaky breath and then turned to me. “Go get the shotgun.” I ran back to the house. I glanced back over my shoulder. I thought I saw something in the woods, something moving low to the ground, black against the dark shadows. .. I helped Dad carry the hitchhiker’s body to the shed. He picked up the axe he used to chop wood. “Why didn’t it take him?” I said. “Just go back to the house,” Dad said, his voice cracking out like the back of his hand. “Get cleaned up and get to school.” .. When I got home from school that day, I could hear voices coming from the living room. I crept up to the door and listened. Mum was crying. Dad was talking to her, trying to keep his voice calm and soft. “We knew this was going to happen one day. It’s the way these things work.” “It’s too soon,” Mum said, her voice breaking and disappearing under more sobs. “It’s too soon, too soon. It’s not fair. He’s too young.” “It has to be done,” said Dad, his voice suddenly becoming firm. When he used that tone, it meant the end of the conversation. “It’s the way it is.” Neither one of them spoke after that. The only sound was Mum’s muffled sobs. I crept upstairs to my room. .. Everyone knew it hadn’t eaten that month. No one said anything about it, even though they must have been scared, scared that it wouldn’t protect us anymore. But they were more frightened to talk about it, as if talking about it would make their fears come true. People, the adults, looked at me funny, when I passed them in the village. They’d still smile, still say hello, like they always did, but there was something in their eyes. I didn’t know what it meant, but it frightened me too. .. The next month, when it was time for another offering, Dad told me that there was no need for me to go with him to find one this time. He said he already had one prepared. He looked sad when he said it. But he still managed to smile and ruffle my hair. .. That night, the night of the offering, we left the house to go down to the feeding post. Mum came to the back door with us, which she’d never done before. Her eyes were red. She’d been crying again and I didn’t know why. She stepped out of the house, as if to follow us. Dad waved her back. “It’s not your place to be there,” he said, his voice flat and hard. She pushed past him and pulled me into a hug, squeezing me tight. “Just do what your dad tells you,” she said, her voice tight and frightened in my ear. Dad pulled her away. She looked at him for a long time, squeezed his hand and then ran back inside. “Come on,” Dad said, heading down to the bottom of the field. I thought I saw his eyes shine as he walked past. When we got to the feeding post, there was no one there. "Where’s the offering?” I said. Dad looked at me. “There’s no offering. Not like there usually is, anyway.” He put his hand on my shoulder. “You have to be brave. You have to be a man, now. You have to do what’s right for the greater good. For the good of the village. Do you understand?” I didn’t know what he meant, but I nodded. “It’s stopped eating, son,” he said. “It won’t eat anymore, because it won’t eat from me. Over time, the connection that holds us together fades. It doesn’t last forever. Nothing in nature does. You can’t take these things for granted. Do you hear what I’m saying?” I nodded. “My time’s over,” he said. “It needs a new steward. It needs a new bond. It’s time, son. Time for you to take my place.” His eyes were bright with tears. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen him cry. He hugged me then, and his tears were hot and wet against my cheek. He took a deep breath and stepped away. He dried his eyes with the backs of his hands. “Call it,” he said, looking towards the dark woods. “Call it, just like I showed you.” I cupped my hands to my mouth and let out the call, a series of guttural yelps and growls. Moments later, my call was echoed, coming from deep in the woods. Dad smiled. “That’s it. It hears you. It’s coming.” The shadows between the trees shifted, and it came out of the woods towards us. My breath stopped and a sick, liquid fire shot through my stomach. “Don’t be scared,” said Dad. “It’s as natural as the earth. It loves us. That’s why it protects us.” It made its way to us on all fours. It was dark and wretched, its body warped and terrible. Its teeth were needle sharp, its mouth impossibly wide. Its eyes glinted in the pale moonlight. Perhaps it had once been human, but there was nothing human left in the way it looked at me. “Let it smell you,” said Dad, quietly. “Let it know you.” It squatted on its haunches in front of me, sniffing at the air, making grunting and clicking noises at the back of its throat. It sniffed at my hand. Thick strings of drool dripped from its mouth and onto my fingers. “That’s it,” Dad said. “Good lad. It’s taking to you. Make the call again... but quieter, slower, like you’re talking to it.” My hands shaking, I placed them to my mouth and did as Dad told me. It watched me, its head cocked. “That’s it,” said Dad again. “Can you feel it? The connection?” I nodded. I could feel something between me and the thing at my feet. Something deep and familiar. Something that felt sickeningly comfortable. Dad smiled. He stepped up to the feeding post and knelt down, and held his hands together as if in prayer. “No!” “It has to be this way, son,” he said. “The old is always replaced by the new. That’s the way. Don’t you cry. Don’t. You have to show it you’re strong. You have to let it know it can trust you, let it know it can depend on you to do what needs to be done.” He looked at me. He didn’t look frightened. He looked at peace. “I love you, son. I’m proud of you. You’ll be a good steward. The best. You’ll keep us safe. You’ll keep our ways alive. Now... let what has to happen, happen.” I stepped back, my vision blurring as I fought to hold back the tears. It circled Dad, its jaw opening and closing. It looked at me, as if awaiting my command. I made a clicking noise deep in my throat. |