Free The Chimes by Anna Smaill

again?’
    I repeat the phrase and he follows on from there. The first cadence closes by a slim white-barked tree between two fallen mossed gravestones. Each of the pair has a small, fat rabbit in it, not at all aware of its fate. Brennan holds them soft, gives each neck a sharp turn.
    With some coaching, Brennan remembers the phrase to the next two and it takes us along a path and down some overgrown cobbled steps and into a clearing free of graves. In the middle is an old crosshouse, its roof burnt black and gapped. All around on the stubbled ground are the hunched bodies of memorylost. The sound as we walk of them crooning to each other in half-words, scraps of melody with no meaning. And another sound. That of legs and arms pulled in tight to the body’s keeping again and again. At odds with tarp or roughcloth. The sound is familiar.
    I see the picture in my head of Ropemakers Fields, the green flat space silent and empty. I click my fingers as I do when I’m trying to call up a rhythm. That field, stripped of bodies. Doesn’t it usually look much the same as the view in front of me now? Clusters of bodies, tarps and blankets bundled. People all densely packed together. Seeking desperately whatever comfort bodies give when you’ve no other form of meaning. And that sound, the jerking of limbs. That sound with some underneath meaning I am too deaf to hear. That is usually at Ropemakers too.
    Brennan tugs on my shoulder. He pulls me from the path and behind the trunk of a large tree. I follow him into a crouch in the dirt. Then I follow his gaze.
    Standing at the edge of the clearing, northeast of where we’re crouched, is a tall man in white robes and a brown travelling cloak. We lean close to the tree trunk and watch him. Over the brown cloak is slung the silver transverse flute that tells he’s a member of the Order. It glints in the light as he moves. His back is crooked, one shoulder slightly higher than the other, and it gives a swaggered threat to his stride.
    As we watch, he circles through the clearing. He moves through the memorylost with some reluctance, as if loath to be so near. The thin figures step aside with a shambling, shy confusion as he goes. Some keep their heads down, and some follow with vacant eyes. The member of the Order turns from side to side. Occasionally he steps forward and then stops, his head cocked. He pauses like this several times as we wait still in the shadows.
    Then the tall man is walking towards us. Long strides and soon enough I can see the grey in his close-curled hair. For a moment I believe he is coming for Brennan and me. But then he halts at a tree near the edge of the clearing. A woman is sitting there, unmoving. Hands resting flat and palm upward on her thighs. Her hair is long and her clothes ragged, and on her face is a blissed-out look quite different from the others’ daze. For a moment I think she is a moony. But she has no eyeband. Next to her is a girl about Abel’s age, her hair shaved so close you can see a cluster of crescent-shaped white scars through the stubble. She’s as calm as her mother, leaned into her shoulder like that and with eyes shut.
    As I watch past the tree trunk, the member holds his right hand just above the height of their heads, and he caresses the air in a smooth wave up and down like it’s riding a current that flows over them both. The wave of his hands returns and crests again over the daughter.
    His gestures are familiar. They are familiar to me because I see them every day. When Lucien’s standing in the under and waiting for the tune, he does the same. Listening, divining the Lady’s tide. Yet, this man’s movements are taut with anger. And, subito, some invisible wave breaks inside of him and he steps forward and pulls an object from his belt. Silver moving in his hand. A blade. From where I crouch I see him grip the woman’s shoulder with one hand. With the other he slashes upward in a single fluid thrust. The woman looks