Free The Truth About Celia by Kevin Brockmeier Page A

hair over her shoulder. “So are you going to take me across or not?”
    I slapped my palms against my back and said, “I’m at your service, dear,” but she winked at me and declared, “No, Curran, I want to ride up front”—which is exactly what she did. She wrapped her legs around my hips and her arms around my neck. I swung forward with her into the river.
    As I carried her deeper into the water, she allowed herself to sink slowly down over my crotch, exaggerating her fall with each jerk of my stride. The muscles of the current pulled at my ankles. I could feel her releasing her breath in a long, thin rope against my chest, and my nose began to prickle with her scent. “Why so quiet, Curran?” she asked. “Hmm?” When I set her on the other shore, she placed a slow-rolling kiss on my lips and ran her finger up my penis, from the root to the ember, which was visibly propping up my waistcloth. “So what do I owe you?” she whispered into my ear.
    I brought her hand to my mouth and kissed the knuckles. “No charge,” I said.
    Sometimes I wish it was still that way.
    I was leaning forward on my stone, eating a boiled egg one of the farmers had given me for his passage, on the morning the monk arrived. I watched him hobble around the end of the stables and follow the path toward the river. His robe was coated so thickly with dust I could not tell whether the cloth underneath was brown or white. “Tell me,” he asked, planting his staff at my feet, “have I reached Woolpit?”
    “You have.” I cast the eggshell halves into the water, where they went bobbing off like two glowing boats. I have watched the river for many years, and there is nothing it won’t carry away. I’m told that if you follow it far enough into the distance, past the hills and the long forest of pines, it empties into the sea, offering its cargo of sticks, bones, and eggshells to the whales, but I have never been that far.
    “I’ve come for the monsters,” said the monk. The sun shifted from behind a cloud, and he squinted into the glare.
    “The children, you mean.” I pointed across the river. “They’re at the house of Richard de Calne.”
    “The soldier,” he said. “Yes, so I’ve heard. How much for passage?”
    “Three coins,” I said. He drew open the pouch that was sagging from his belt, handed me the silver, and then rapped my leg with the end of his staff. “Up,” he ordered.
    I looked at him grayly. He was not a large man and I could have broken him over my knee, but instead I pocketed the coins, counting repeatedly to three in my head.
    While we were crossing the river, I allowed him to slip a few notches lower on my spine so that the hem of his robe trailed in the water and took on weight. Snake-shapes of dirt twisted away from him downstream, but he did not notice. He told me that he had heard of the green children from a beggar in the town of Lenna, who had informed him fully of their strange condition. “They speak a language known to no Christian ear,” the monk recited, “and are green as clover. The girl is loose and wanton in her conduct, and the boy shudders at the touch of any human hand. They are a corruption to all those who look upon them.”
    “Most of what you say is false,” I said. A little whirlpool spun like a plate on the surface of the water before it wobbled and came apart. “The children have learned our own tongue now, or at least the girl has, and while I can’t speak for anyone else, they’ve certainly done me no harm.”
    “You’ve seen them?” he asked.
    “I have, and they’re no danger to anyone.”
    He made a scoffing noise. “Yes, but you are clearly an ignorant man. I’m told they will eat nothing but beans. Beans! Beans are the food of the dead, and the dead-on-earth are the implements of Satan.”
    “They eat flesh and bread, just like the rest of us. It was only those first few days that they ate beans.”
    “The devil quickly learns to hide himself,” he said