World's End Read Online Free PDF Page B

sitting out in front of his bakeshop and sucking the sweet red goo from thumbs the size of spatulas. But this, this was something different. “I don’t know,” she said, and her voice was a whisper.
    Around nightfall, Harmanus began to toss on his pallet. He cried out in his sleep, moaning something over and over. Agatha gently shook him. “Harmanus,” she whispered. “It’s all right. Wake up.”
    Suddenly his eyes snapped open. His lips began to move.
    â€œYes?” she said, leaning over him. “Yes, what is it?”
    He was trying to say something—a single word—but couldn’t get it out.
    Agatha turned to her daughter. “Quick, a glass of water.”
    He sat up, drank off the water in a gulp. His lips began to quiver.
    â€œHarmanus, what is it?”
    â€œPie,” he croaked.
    â€œPie? You want pie?”
    â€œPie.”
    It was then that she felt herself slipping. In all their years of marriage, through all the time he’d sat helpless over his torn nets or had to be coaxed from bed to take his dory out on the windswept Scheldt, through all the tension and uncertainty of the move to the New World and the hardships they’d faced, she’d barely raised her voice to him. But now, suddenly, she felt something give way. “Pie?” she echoed. “Pie?” And then she was clawing at the shelf beside the hearth, tearing open sacks and boxes, flinging kettles, wooden bowls, porringers and spoons to the floor as if they were dross. “Pie!” she shrieked, turning on him, the cast-iron pan shielding her breast. “And what am I supposed to make it out of—nimbleweed and river sand? You’ve eaten everything else—shortening, flour, fatback, eggs, cheese, even the dried marigolds I brought with me all the way from Twistzoekeren.” She was breathing hard. “Pie! Pie! Pie!” she suddenly cried, and it was like the call of a great hysterical bird flushed from its roost; a second later she collapsed in the corner, heaving with sobs.
    Katrinchee and her brothers were pressed flat against the wall, their faces small and white. Harmanus didn’t seem to notice them. He shoved himself up from the bed and began rummaging around the room for something to eat. After a moment, he came up with a bag of acorns Katrinchee had collected to make paste; crunching them between his teeth, shells and all, he wandered out into the night and disappeared.
    It was past four in the morning by the time they found him. Guided by a faint glow from Van Wart Ridge, Agatha and her daughter forded Acquasinnick Creek, stumbled up the sheer bank that rose on the far side, and fought their way through a morass of briars, nettles and branches hung with nightdrift. They were terrified. Not only for husband and father, but for themselves. Lowlanders, accustomed to polder and dike and a prospect that went on and on until itfaded into the indefinite blue reaches of the sea, here they were in a barbaric new world that teemed with demons and imps, with strange creatures and half-naked savages, hemmed in by the trees. They fought back panic, bit their lips and pressed on. Finally, exhausted, they found themselves in a clearing lit by the unsteady flicker of a campfire.
    There he was. Harmanus. His big head and torso throwing macabre shadows against the ghostly twisted trunks of the white birches behind him, a joint the size of a thighbone pressed to his face. They stepped closer. His shirt was torn, stained with blood and grease; gobs of meat—flesh as pink and fat-ribbed as a baby’s—crackled above the flames on a crude spit. And then they saw it, lying there at his feet: the head and shoulders, the very eyes and ears, the face with its squint of death. No baby. A pig. A very particular pig. Old Volckert Varken, Van Wart’s prize boar.
    Harmanus was docile, a babe himself, as Agatha drew his wrists behind him and cinched the hemp cords